Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 48

Building a Better Version of Ourselves

Premise:

I strongly believe that irrespective of where we are in our lives, there is always a better place to be. We can always be a better person than we are today, we can have a better impact on our world than we are having right now. There is always a better future to look forward to. There is always a better goal to aspire for. If we agree about this, what is the force that can propel us to become the better person that we can become, create the bigger and more meaningful impact that we c...

Quest for the elusive Innovation Framework

Premise:

I have read countless blog posts, wrote a few myself, watched videos, did innovation courses, read books on innovation, all in the quest to learn what makes innovation happen and if there is a way to institutionalize innovation. While there are people who claim that they can do so, I have come to the decision that it is an elusive quest, one that we may never be able to complete.

Innovation and Parenting:

As is usual, when I was taking a walk post lunch today, I was thinking about in...

The Role of Marketing in Scaling a Small Business using Customer Centricity

One way that small businesses can continue to be not only relevant but in some ways even compete (or out-compete the large competitors) is through obsessing about their customers and creating meaningful experiences for them.

Marketing can play a very important role in this journey by not only knowing who the customer is for their product or service but also ensuring that the entire organisation knows about it as well. This shared understanding enables everyone in the organisation to align an...

Sales Kick-offs

It is the start of another new year. If you are in the profession of selling, you will be invited to yet another Sales kick-off that your company has organised.

The leadership team will get on stage and share the results from the past year. If it was a good year, it will call for some celebration. If it was a tough year, it will still call for some celebrations (not many companies publicly admit that it was a tough year and so instead of introspection about what went wrong, they will still fi...

PBTO Season 2: EP01: Future of Work with Andy Tryba

Opening music credits goes to Riju Mukhopadhyay & Pavan Cherukumilli

Who is he on the show:    In the first episode of the new season, we host Andy Tryba. He is the CEO of Ride Austin, EngineYard and Crossover.com.    Why is he on the show: Andy has spent the last 15 years as CEO of multiple successful startups and is currently running three startups. One of them is a very interesting social experiment and has a very interesting approach to running his other two startups as well. He has bui...

Life is Not A Journey

In this thought provoking video, the kind folks at AfterSkool have converted something that Alan Watts’s thoughts into a wonderful animation.

Alan argues that life is not like a journey or a pilgrimage that we set out for but is like a dance or some other form of playful art.

Depending upon which frame we use to life our life determines our attitude, our decisions and how we spend our time.

How do you look at life? Is it a journey or is it a playful dance?

Seeds of success

Premise:

After the hustle bustle and the celebrations of the new year, we are now entering the time of the year, which is fraught with opportunities and dangers in equal measures. This is the time to celebrate the past year, the peaks we scaled and give a pat on our backs for all that hard work. I am sure every team does that. This is also the time to reflect at the valley’s we encountered in the past year and think about the reasons we ended up in there. And think about what did we do get o...

6 ways to grow your curiosity

 

Holding a curious mindset is a great starting point when you’re leading your team or organization. If you’re in a truly new space, you won’t always know the answers. Your team won’t either. You’re going to venture into the unknown together. Curiosity is a great way to lead that charge.”

–Tim Brown, IDEO CEO

Premise:

It is human tendency to look for answers or solutions, the moment a question or a challenge is posed. We feel good about having solved the problem. There is a rush of dopamine a...

10 Lessons in Leadership from Amitabh Bachchan’s first movie – Saat Hindustani

Premise:

I have always been wanting to watch Amitabh Bachchan‘s first movie – Saat Hindustani (7 Indians). The story of the movie is how a band of 7 Soldiers wreak havoc in Portuguese occupied Goa and show to the Goans that they are also a part of India and that India had not forgotten their Goan siblings in their fight for freedom.

As I watched the film, I could not notice but see a few things that we can all learn from. I would like to share the same here:

The movie starts off with a large...

In Diversity, We Trust

Premise:

There is a lot of talk about the importance of building diversity in our workforce and how it is to be considered as an investment in top talent, new ideas, and better connections.

Then there is a lot of talk about integrating millennials in our workforce and giving them a lot of exposure and opportunities to bring in their perspective to the business.

Both of these are great thoughts and in principle sound extremely sound ideas to implement. However, most organisations need to be ca...