Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 29

Flourish or Perish – We will be doing it Together

This TED talk by former CEO of Patagonia shows the scale of what is possible, if we have the vision and the leadership skills in place. Kristine Tompkins shares her journey from being a corporate CEO to being a nature conservationist. She shares the extent of the impact that one can have if only we are committed to the cause. She and her now deceased husband – Doug went about doing what they thought was the best thing to heal the planet. They put the larger good of our planet at the center of th...

Your Greatest strength could also become Your Greatest Weakness

Premise In a recent post, Mike Shipulski, talks about how the core strength of a business usually also becomes the biggest weakness for that business, as it ends up consuming all of the resources to optimise its growth and starves all new ideas for resources. I recommend that you read the entire post here. I reckon that this hypothesis holds true for all of us as individuals and as leaders as well. When put in a corner or when we are challenged, we typically fall back to the strategies that have...

How Change will Change You by Jessica Hagy

If you have followed my blog for any duration of time, you would already know that I am a big fan of Jessica Hagy and there have been many a blog posts on this blog that have been inspired by something that Jessica created. Here is one that she has written (I am only used to her pictograms) that is brilliant – both in the content and in the ease of reading. I don’t think I want to say anything at all. Just read the post here (is a bit long, but easy to read).

Unhurried Productivity with Digby Scott

One of the things that absolutely fascinates me is our obsession with productivity. And this obsession almost always leads us to feel guilty about not being busy all the time. I have written about being happily busy (another way to say unhurried productivity, but unhurried productivity sounds much better) here. Digby Scott has created a model that simplifies an important and complex idea is a very simple way. I highly recommend that you read the post by Digby on his blog here. You can read more ...

Lessons on Leading from two Short Stories about Richard Feynman

I stumbled on to a short TEDx video, where Danny Hills shares a couple of stories that he shared with the great Richard Feynman. You can watch the video here. This is a short 7 minute video and I would strongly recommend that you watch the video. If nothing else, you will atleast have a couple of laughs. I am a big fan of Feynman, his work and most importantly, of him as a teacher. As a teacher, he had this uncanny ability to get to the level of understanding his students had about a subject and...

If we can Turn Deserts into Forests, what else can we do?

I recently stumbled onto a blog that talks about how some people have figured out how to transform a barren desert into a lush, lively forest ecosystem. And it seems that the process is not very difficult. This has been done in China, India, Africa. I am always amazed at the ingenuity of the human race. We can accomplish almost anything, once we put our intention, leadership and collective action behind it. You can watch this documentary film created by a photographer John D Liu here, in which h...

What is a “Useful Belief” that can help you Move Forward Today?

The amazing Lisa O’Neill recommended that I read the book “Useful Belief” a couple of weeks ago in a session that she was hosting. I picked up the book at my local library and was really surprised (in a good way) when I was able to read the book – back to back in an hour and a half. More importantly, the book was full of useful lessons that can help us lead a better life. My one sentence take from the book is very simple. Most of what we believe is not true anyway. So, why not believe in […]

Lessons in Leadership from Blind Runners and their Running Guides

Did you know that David Brown runs a 100m in under 11 seconds? So, what’s so special you ask? The special thing is that he is blind. He is the world’s fastest blind runner and has won two world championships and a Paralympic gold medal so far. You can watch a documentary, On | Untethered about him and his journey here. But I digress. When I stumbled onto his story, what struck me was the importance that the running guide plays in his success. The more I tried to read and understand how a running...

Being a Leader is not a Position, it is a Decision

This short image by Jessica Hagy reminded me of what leadership is all about and what it is not. It is not about authority. It is not about position. It is not about power. It is not about the “LEADER”. It is about making a decision. It is about being in service to a larger goal or a larger group. It is about turning up and being a better human. All of us are leaders the moment we decide to be one. It doesn’t matter if we are the CEO of an organisation or an intern in a large organisation. […]

How to Listen as a Leader?

I read this post by Kevin Roberts (founder of Red Rose Consulting; business leader and educator; author and speaker; adviser on marketing, creative thinking and leadership) where he shares his insight on the current state of affairs, which in summary is “Everyone is talking and no one’s listening”. In his post he also shares that there are 4 types of listeners – People oriented, Action or Task oriented, content focused and fast. You can read his entire post (really short one) here. I believe tha...