Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 29

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...

Leading and The Future of Learning with Sanjay Sarma

Premise: We are inheriting a world which is seeing an unprecedented pace of change around us. This makes it super critical for us as leaders to enable a culture of continuous and on-going learning for our teams. We need to play a few different roles in this case. We need to practice what we preach, i.e., we need to continue to learn and do so publicly. This sends a message to all that continuous, ongoing learning is crucial for the organisation. This also creates a culture that supports ongoing ...

007 Leadership Skills we can Learn from 007 (James Bond)

This is my 750th blog post on this blog and I wanted to write about something that I absolutely love. I absolutely love watching movies and have been a James Bond movie fan almost since the first time I watched him on screen (since Sir Sean Connery brought this to life). I was watching the trailer of the latest movie in the franchise – No Time to Die and got reminiscing about all the different Bond movies that I have watched in the past. I am looking forward to watching this one sometime soon. Y...

The Power of Diverse Thinking | Matthew Syed

Really enjoyed the short RSA Short Video about the importance of cognitive diversity. Hope you like it too. Watch the video here.