Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 39

5 C’s of Effective Ongoing Performance Dialogue

There has been a lot of interest in organizations, large and small, to move toward an ongoing performance dialogue replacing the annual appraisal cycle. Irrespective of the performance cycle, it’s still a good idea to have an ongoing dialogue with everyone on our team. This helps ensure that there are no surprises and all confusions are addressed as early in the process as is possible. This also provides opportunities for continuous improvement over time.

However, not all ongoing performance...

Be the Influential Leader you are meant to be “Monday to Monday” with Stacey Hanke

Who is on the show:

In this episode we host communication and influence expert Stacey Hanke. She is a business owner “Stacey Hanke Inc”, a keynote speaker, author and an executive coach and a mentor.

Why is she on the show:

In her forthcoming book, “Influence Redefined”,  she offers readers a new perspective on how to behave such that we can grow our influence and impact people not just when we are around them but even when we are not around.

What did I learn from the conversation: True in...

Samsung unveils A “Phablet” – a Foldable Phone or a Foldable Tablet?

In their developer conference, Samsung revealed (partially) a working prototype of a tablet that can be folded into a phone. 

Tablet or a phone – A matter of framing: 

While everyone around the world is calling it a “foldable phone”, I would like to think of it as a foldable tablet, that when folded becomes a phone. This framing is important in my opinion because, based on what I saw (in the unveiling videos) I believe that most of the use of the device will be in the tablet form rather than...

A Talk based on the book – Thrive at SAP Asia

As part of an employee engagement activity, I was given the opportunity to deliver a talk based on my latest book – “Thrive – Mindsets and Skillsets needed to succeed in a world dominated by smart machines & intelligent algorithms“. 

I tried to record the audio of this recording and would like to share that as part of my podcast.

The recording is not very clean and there is some noise through out the recording and I am sorry about that. I am sharing this despite the noise as I think that eac...

7 Lessons from an Old Indian Tale

Let me share a story with you…

The story of three donkeys, their master and a wise man!

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a young man who lived in a small village. He owned three donkeys and used them to carry loads for people. One fine day, he was walking along a river towards his destination. The sun was at its peak and it was extremely hot. The cool river water was tempting. He decided that he wanted to take a bath in the cool river water.

So, he started tying up his donkey’s t...

#MeToo: Where There is One, There Ought to Be More..

I was reading a book by Max Bazerman “The Power of noticing”. He has a chapter in the book titled “Missing the obvious on a Slippery Slope”. This chapter is based on the results of a study done with Francesca Gino.

The Frog, the Boiling Pot of Water & “#MeToo”

This is very similar to the story of the frog in a pot of boiling water. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately. If we put the same frog in a pot of cold water and slowly increase the temperature, the...

Making Infinitely Better Decisions in Life and In Business

These past few days, I have been contemplating about time and how the thinking in different time horizons affects the decisions that we make in the moment. I have realised that we could make infinitely better and more intentional decisions if we were more intentional and thought about every decision in terms of different time horizons.

This also led me to think about the cost of making decisions and how this impacts our everyday decisions.

Generally speaking, when we are deciding in favor of...

How Different Human Societies Name Colours And the Not So Surprising Fact!

I recently saw this interesting video that shared some interesting facts on how names of colours evolve in different parts of the world independent of each other and how it still follows a similar pattern. 

The thing that is surprising and what we can learn from it is that in some sense, all of the different cultures around the world evolved in a similar fashion.  

Irrespective of which part of the world we grew up in, irrespective of what languages we speak, irrespective of what religion we...

Why Good Ideas Don’t Fly and What To Do About It?

Every leader talks about the importance of innovation to their business. In public, every leader talks about how they and their teams are at the fore front of innovation. In private, the very same leaders confess that they are nowhere near the level of innovation that they would like to be at. 

On one hand, they confess that they are struggling to get the innovation process work as effectively as any of their other functions. On the other hand, there are good ideas that languish within their...

Crafting an Effective Elevator Pitch

I am sure that at some point in time, you would have had the need to come up with an elevator pitch for an idea that you wanted to share with others to either inspire them to action or elicit a commitment.

There are a lot of ways one can go about designing an elevator pitch but I came across Randy Olson‘s TEDMED speech where he shares this simple framework for crafting an elevator pitch. 

“{Premise} and {premise} but {problem} therefore {Solution}” 

This is a simple yet powerful framework fo...