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Climbing mountains to build teams
The biggest leadership challenge, irrespective of the situation, is the ability to build self-motivated, autonomous teams. Teams who after you have built them, work without you and don’t consider you necessary for their success. My greatest success in my years managing profit centers was in building such teams. This is tough because making yourself redundant…
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A factory, Karpusamy, and a Masjid
My learning in this incident of the bulldozer was the fact that to build credibility it is important to be able to lead from the front. You do not have to do people’s jobs for them. It is not even desirable to do that. But you do need to demonstrate that you know what they…
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Monkey Business
But hunger is the best motivator. The newcomers are hungry. The early movers have eaten. The newcomers know that if they don’t succeed, there will not be anything left for them. They are desperate. Their stakes are higher. That is a winning combination, in business. Even in monkey business. If you want to succeed, get…
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Suresh Menon, my brother, my friend
Suresh and I almost never called each other unless we had something to discuss, but when we did talk to each other, even if that was after several years, it was always as if we had spoken the previous evening.
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Afzal – Indeed he was
If there is one thing that can be said about Afzal as his primary quality, it was his willingness to go out of his way to help others. As he used to say himself, “As long as it is not illegal or immoral, I will help anyone without fail.” There are, I don’t know how…
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Motivation = WiiFM (What’s in it for Me?)
The root of all motivation is to know what one can expect from one’s efforts. WiiFM is a station that everyone listens to. What’s in it for Me? People don’t always ask you that in so many words. But you can be certain that is what is in their minds all the time. If you…
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Planting was a way of life
The more time I spent with myself, the clearer it became that it is important to be ‘friends’ with yourself. The more you are self-aware and comfortable internally, the more you can enjoy the world outside. When you are not aware of what is happening to you inside or are unhappy with decisions you have…
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Fire and Tea
As I stood there, watching this sight, the thing that I was most conscious about was my own helplessness. The fire was so big and powerful that there was simply no way to put it out. We had tried everything already. All the fire extinguishers that we could reach had been used up. The ones…
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First-time Manager
Vision is to be able to see that which doesn’t exist. Anticipation is the key which is not difficult to achieve if you do some scenario planning.