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Women who lead fearlessly! I will always love you, Dolly Parton…
After much emotional effort I wrote this three days after Dolly Parton passed . I am the only one in my immediate circle who loves Dolly Parton and her music, let alone know who she was. The kind of grief you carry for someone like that passing – that no one around you can relate… Continue reading
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When everything is “Cutting Edge,” nothing is. 🔪📉
If I had a dollar for every time I read a deck claiming a tool, strategy, or workflow is “cutting edge,” I could probably fund a truly cutting-edge R&D department! You must have heard one of this sometime:-“Our cutting-edge approach to scheduling meetings…” (It’s a Calendly link.)“We leverage cutting-edge AI insights…” (They typed a prompt… Continue reading
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Sick Leave? Sure, but can you do one small thing?
Leaders, often talk about building high trust, human centric cultures. Yet one persistent challenge hits close to home: how we handle sick leave in India. Next time a team member requests time off when unwell, pause before the instinctive “double take.” Many of us mirror patterns we learned growing up. Think about how we responded… Continue reading
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Run when you hear this- “We’re not a workplace, we are a ‘family’!” 🚨🚨🚨
Every time I hear this phrase dropped in a corporate setup especially here in India, my antennas go right up and my gut goes in twists and knots. On paper, it sounds beautiful. It promises trust, support, and deep belonging. It taps into our natural cultural instinct for collectivism, loyalty, and close relationships.But let’s be… Continue reading
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Why Buzzwords Like ‘Disruption’ Fail Us
“We need a paradigm shift to disrupt the way we use the words ‘paradigm shift’ and ‘disruption’.” 🤦♀️ There was a time when these words carried weight. Today, they’ve become “corporate spices”- sprinkled over a bland strategy to make it taste like innovation. In workplaces, we see these terms diluted daily. We’ve moved from describing… Continue reading
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The Myth of the “Right Fit” (And the Bias Hiding Behind It)
The concept of “cultural fit” is one of the most double-edged swords in human resources. When used correctly, it ensures organizational harmony; when misused, it becomes a sophisticated veil for unconscious bias and stagnation. How “Cultural Fit” is Misused In many corporate environments, “fit” becomes a shorthand for affinity bias- the natural tendency to gravitate… Continue reading
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The curse of being labelled to be in Comfort Zone
We’ve turned “Get out of your comfort zone” into a corporate weapon. Usually it is well-intentioned advice and given many times a day across the corporate world from seniors to juniors, peers to peers. Even as you read this and listen very intently, you can hear it dimly echoing somewhere in corporate sky! But it… Continue reading
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Do good humans make good leaders?
The world is on fire and dare I say many current world leaders are certainly not shining examples of what good leaders are supposed to be like. There are thousands of books on leadership. Podcasts, workshops, courses, papers, movies, perspectives as well explaining how leadership is defined. Showing various ways of how to strategise, think,… Continue reading
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The importance of “Problem Framing” in Leadership
Workplaces generally overestimate problem solving skills in a leader but very few ( and smart ones) invest in problem framing. And quite candidly, it’s a real superpower, a secret sauce if you will! Most messy business situations are not straightforward “solve X”. The next layer of questions is where the magic is – What exactly… Continue reading
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Staying Human in an inhuman world
Over the past weeks, headlines about abuse of vulnerable humans, corruption scandals and institutional failures have dominated our feeds. If you’ve felt the pull to read everything, to understand how deep it goes, you’re not alone. But what we don’t talk about enough is the cost of immersion in darkness. Deep consumption of disturbing content… Continue reading
