Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 14

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...

Breaking Norms to Breakthrough

I stumbled onto a TikTok video about a skating race and how one athlete out-thought her competitors to register a historic win. You can watch the video here. The athlete won the competition right at the start by breaking the norms of how you are supposed to race to win. The norm was that everyone start slow to preserve their energy and then as they come close to the final laps, put all your effort and energy and get away from the pack. The winner of this race did the exact opposite. She broke aw...

How to Move from Bad Ideas to Breakthrough Ideas

Premise: I came across this reel on Instagram and loved the story and wanted to share it with you all. You can watch the reel here. While the story itself is better told by Dr. Caroline Brookfield in the reel, I wanted to share other things that I learnt watching and listening to the story and wanted to share that with you. So, here we go: Lesson 1: The importance of Psychological Safety The person who shared the idea about poking people’s eye was able to share the idea (which eventually led to ...

Work Remotely or Return to Office

Premise: Currently there is a big debate going on around the world with respect to where do we work from. There is a camp of people who think they are more productive and save time, money and attention by working remotely. There is another camp which believes that working remotely has a lot of limitations, specially around preserving the company culture, innovation or helping new hires integrate with the organisation. Both have their merits but not in the ways that we would think at first glance...