Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 15

Failure vs Regret

Failing at something that we tried to accomplish is better than not having attempted it at all and regretting about it!

Leaders are Not Great, Leadership Could Be

I stumbled onto an interview with Simon Sinek where he shared his thoughts on what does it take to become a great leader. You can watch the video here. One of his core insight is that leadership requires courage, courage to do the right thing under pressure, courage to stand up to what we think is the right thing to do, courage to make the tough decisions with limited information, courage to set a direction and march forward (believing that it is the right direction), courage to give credit when...

PBTO: The Art of Leading in the Age of AI with Damien Cummings

In this interesting conversation, an accomplished CEO and digital transformation leader, Damien Cummings shares his perspective on the art of leading in uncertain times. He shares how leaders need to do to stay relevant in an ever changing context, specially the technology landscape. Here are some things that we cover in this conversation:  You can find more information about Damien here. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.  Books discussed in the video:  If you would like to watch us hav...

Leaders Worth Following have High Levels of Self Awareness

Premise: I saw this short video about how to master your emotions and was reminded about one of the foundational qualities that leaders worth following need to master – their level of self awareness. I believe that self awareness can be thought as consisting of at least three layers. Intellectual Self Awareness: The outer most layer is the intellectual self awareness. What this means is that they are aware about what they want, why they want it, what are they prepared to do for it and what is a ...

Effective Leadership is about Connecting People with Purpose, Ideas and Resources

Leaders are most effective when they are able to connect people they lead to a larger purpose (larger than all of us), connect people with different ideas so there can be better ideas and finally provide them with the requisite resources to bring those ideas alive. A ll this, while creating an environment or a culture of trust, inclusion and accountability. Even when one of these ingredients is missing, the effectiveness of the leaders takes a nose dive. This also means that it is the responsibi...

How to Be Remarkable and Do Memorable Work?

Premise: I stumbled on to this performance by a school band and thought it was incredible and wanted to share this with all of you. When I think about this a bit more, I realised that there is a lot that we can learn from this band as leaders. Before we move to the learning part, first take the 8 to 10 mins to watch the band perform for the spectators here. One of the most powerful way to stand out is not to conform to the expectations that people have of you. We don’t expect a band to play […]

Failure is an Option, Fear is not!

Earlier today, I was listening to a panel discussion and something that one of the panelist, Bharathi Vishwanathan, said, stuck a chord with me. She is the chief digital and information officer at Suntory. She said and I quote: Failure is an option, fear is not – Bharathi Vishwanathan She said that this was the motto of her company. When I think about it, it makes a lot of sense, specially if you want to innovate and create a culture of experimentation and exploration. I have written about this ...

Blindspots

Premise: Yesterday, I stumbled onto a French advertisement, that shows, in a very impactful way, blindspots of truck drivers. Shot from a first person perspective, the ad has no music, no voice over, no gimmicks, just simple yet powerful visuals. Before we move ahead, please do take the 47 seconds to watch the advertisement here. As I watched this advertisement, the question that was going on in my mind was about my blindspots as a leader. The question is not if we have a blindspots but where ar...

The Importance of Incorporating Elements of Play at Work

Premise: In the past couple of days, I have stumbled on to videos and articles about the importance of having fun in our lives. I have been thinking about this for a long time, so much so that my last book was called – “Being Happy“. It seems that having fun and being happy are not necessarily the same thing. Or is it? And what does having fun got to do with Leading Transformations? Let’s explore this a bit further. But before we go ahead, I would implore you to watch the videos. The first video...

Learning How to Learn

We live in a world which is constantly changing and if we really want to stay relevant, we need to find a way to learn new things (technology, process, business models, behaviours, skills, etc) all the time. So, it pays to get better at learning or get better at learning how we learn. Each one of us learns in a different way. Some of us learn better by reading. Some of us by watching videos. Some by getting our hands dirty by trying something. And some others through conversation and by apprenti...