Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 14

Lessons in Life and Leadership from the Game “Snakes and Ladders”

When I was young, we used to play this game of Snakes and ladders. It was one of the best pastimes I had. So, I look at it with a lot of fond memories. Yesterday, I stumbled onto this version of the game and it made me think a lot about how insightful the game was at multiple levels. The game offered insightful glimpses into life, risk and a lot more. As I have mentioned before, as humans, we are meaning making creatures. As leaders, we would all do really well to make our own meaning of this ga...

Becoming Leaders worth Following: The Importance of Nuance

Premise: If there is one thing that we lack in our society and as an extension within our organisations is nuance. Almost everyone is polarised on almost every issue. We forget that there is not many things in the world that can be binary in nature. However, almost all the conversations we are having in public or private seems to be binary in nature. In terms of good and evil. In terms of left or right. In terms of oppressors or oppressed. In terms of aggressors or defenders. In terms of right o...

Imposter Syndrome

Premise: One of the things that I have experienced myself and heard from many other leaders is the feeling of being an imposter. Everyone of us at some point in time, have felt the feeling of being an imposter. Sometimes it could be because, we don’t see what someone else sees in us, as capability and/or potential. Other times, it could be that we are not sure if we deserve the leadership position that we currently occupy, specially when we see some really good people on the team. This is self-d...

Foundation for a High Performance Culture

One of the most fundamental foundations of a culture that enables high performance is a sense of belonging amongst the people who are part of that culture. This sense of belonging takes root when we trust our colleagues enough to show up as who we are, with all our strengths and faults. This sense of belonging takes root when the arguments and debates are about ideas and their merits and not about people and their beliefs. This sense of belonging takes root when the people know and trust their l...

Becoming Better Communicators

In this very insightful and a short clip, advertising legend Bill Bernbach talks about the difference between writing and communicating. The writer is concerned with what (s)he puts into his/her writing, whereas a communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. (S)He therefore becomes a student of how people read and listen. (S)He learns that most readers come away from their reading, not with a clear, precise, detailed registration of its contents on their minds, but rather with ...

Stories Provide Emotional Transport for Ideas!

Stories are powerful because they provide emotional transport to ideas. Emotions, specially strong one’s, have the ability to leave their imprints on our psyche. So, if we are in the business of spreading ideas or innovation, we need to get better at telling stories. If we are in the business of building influence, we need to get better at telling stories. If we are in the business of leading and want to share our visions, we need to get better at telling stories. If we are in the business of in...

PBTO: Asking the Right Questions and Questioning the right things with Dr. Alan Barnard

In this conversation with @DrAlanBarnard, we explore how the principles of the Theory of Constraints (originally created by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt) can be used to not only drive significant business results but also to help us make high stake decisions as leaders. In this freewheeling conversation, we explore Dr Barnard’s story about how he met with Dr. Goldratt and his famous motto. We explore who is a true expert. He shares how he got into an argument with Dr. Goldratt and how he then formed a l...

How We Can Do Well and Do Good at the Same Time..

I was surprised today, when I saw this graph on the XKCD blog earlier today. I did some search about the claim and lo and behold, I could find more information about the work of Arvid Högbom and his colleague Svante Arrhenius around the effect of greenhouse gases (not named such at that time) on the climate. As the graph claims, we have known about the harmful effects of the emission of carbon in our environment now for more than 128 years, yet haven’t done much to address the issue. When I thin...

Tendencies and Transitions

We live and work in some sort of a system. Our very body is a system. So, developing the ability to understand and work better with systems can be a super power – both as an individual and (even more so) as a leader. One of the most foundational aspects about systems that we need to understand is that all systems are living, breathing and constantly evolving. However, each one of them has a tendency to be in a specific state or can transition from one state to another. For example water can tran...

Being Accepting of Defeat is Necessary To Be Accepting of Victory – Bruce Lee

I stumbled onto the scene in which Bruce Lee talks about winning and losing, about the art of dying. Before we go any further, take the time to watch the clip here. The wisdom shared is profound in its simplicity and simple in its profundity. Win or lose, Live or die, creative or boring – they are all two sides of the same coin. One can’t come without the other. If we don’t accept one, it’s too difficult to get the other as well. As he says, learning to die is to be liberated from it. What I tak...