Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 27

Driving Significant Results

I was going through my notes from the past few years and I stumbled onto my notes from a book called “Turning Goals into Results” by Jim Collins. In the book he talks about the power of something he calls “Catalytic Mechanisms”. These are devices that we put in place within our businesses that play an outsized role in translating our lofty aspirations into reality. We can understand what a catalytic mechanism is and how it helps us by looking at an example. I would like to introduce you to Grani...

Insanely Interesting and Influential People – #2 Paulo Coelho

For the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and thank the people who have had a significant impact on me as an individual. The way they have lived their lives and their body of work has had an outsized impact on how I think about life in general and and work, in particular. Some of these are contemporary thinkers and some of them are just a memory. Some of them are famous in their own rights and some of them are yet to be found by others. Some of them are young and some of […]

Insanely Interesting and Influential People – Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt

For the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and thank the people who have had a significant impact on me as an individual. The way they have lived their lives and their body of work has had an outsized impact on how I think about life in general and and work, in particular. Some of these are contemporary thinkers and some of them are just a memory. Some of them are famous in their own rights and some of them are yet to be found by others. Some of them are young and some of […]

Going Back to Office or Continue to Work from Home?

There is a lot of discussion going on about the opening up of the marketplace and with it comes the question about whether people will go back to the office or would like to continue to work from wherever they wanted to work from. I know that there are people who are waiting to get back to working in their respective offices and then there are a lot of people who are enjoying their freedom of working from wherever they want to. Recently, Dan Ariely (James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Beha...

The Role of a Leader – Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable

This is a picture that I had clicked some time back. This was a street art and at that time, it rang true for what it said, from the perspective of an artist (and yes, I do consider myself as an artist who works with words). When I was going through my instagram feed and stumbled on to this picture again, I realised that this is exactly what a leader is to do – to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable. Leaders comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable – Mukesh gupta Comfor...

To me more Creative, Be open to being Bored!

This is probably the best explanation that I have come across in a long time for the power of boredom. The current zeitgeist is all about shunning boredom. People do not want to feel the boredom. The moment they are alone with their thoughts, out comes the phone or the tablet and we get lost in the world of social media or the imaginary world of audio/video content. I am as guilty of this as anyone else. However, everyday, I slow down and observe what is around me, look for beauty in the surroun...

When problems appear too difficult, we are too close to them. Taking a few steps back will bring perspective!!

What Kind of a Leader Are You?

Early today, when I opened up my LinkedIn feed, I saw a poll set up by Dr. Nirmalya Kumar. He is Lee Kong Chian Professor of Marketing at Singapore Management University and Distinguished Fellow at INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute. In the poll he talks about the three kinds of meetings that he has seen CEO’s run. You can access this poll and cast your vote here. Essentially, the options he shares are not just relevant for CEO’s and their meetings, but to all leaders and the kinds of culture we ...

Creating a 5 Star Employee On-boarding Experience is a Leader’s Responsibility

The responsibility of onboarding the employees we hire squarely falls on us as the leaders of the business unit. The number of times this process is delegated to some HR business partner or sometimes even to some HR executive is not a joke. The on-boarding process is our opportunity to start moulding the new hire in such a way that they can become fully productive and functional members of our team as quickly as possible. In a talk that I gave sometime back, to a HR community, I talk about how c...

This is the Highest Leverage Activity for Leaders

Don’t think of an elephant!! Did you think of an elephant? Did you think of how an elephant looks like? Did you see an image of an elephant? Did you think of a large animal? Did you think of black or a trunk or a sound or anything else that we can relate to an elephant? If you are like the most of us, when asked not to think of an elephant, we automatically think of something that is relates to an elephant. This is instinctual. This is what is called framing. In this example we activated the fra...