Category: Leadership is a Personal Choice

  • The power of the extraordinary goal – Part 4

    The power of the extraordinary goal – Part 4

    A good plan with graded steps plays the role of bringing the stars within reach. It also indicates that enough thoughtshare has happened in the genesis of the plan. Potential supporters look for this consciously or unconsciously. For example, when venture capitalists are listening to a business plan, more than looking at the numbers, they…

  • The power of the extraordinary goal – Part 3

    The power of the extraordinary goal – Part 3

    As I have said earlier, it is in the nature of extraordinary goals to inspire extraordinary effort. Nobody rises to low expectations; people rise to high expectations. It is essential that the final result is visualized clearly and is as real as possible to the person who sets out to accomplish it. The more desirable…

  • The power of the extraordinary goal – Part 2

    The power of the extraordinary goal – Part 2

    The challenge was that there was no formal training course, degree, or program that I could attend to qualify as a leadership trainer. Also, I was sitting on top of the hill in the Anamallais while everything I needed to qualify was miles and days away in the cities. To make matters more interesting, I…

  • The power of the extraordinary goal – Part 1

    The power of the extraordinary goal – Part 1

    Believe it or not, the first time that color television sets became freely available in India was after the Asian Games in 1985. Almost everyone I knew in the plantations immediately bought a color TV and a VCP (no VCRs yet), so that the lonely evenings in the plantations could be spent watching films. There…

  • Shift in Education from IA to AI

    Shift in Education from IA to AI

    Covid has brought us face to face with the reality of what is truly important in life. Thanks to the enforced isolation of home quarantine and the shut-down of all public life, we have been forced to face ourselves. Education, like other things has had to change in the way it is experienced – teaching…

  • Hit the road running

    Hit the road running

    A senior manager in Dubai who I am coaching asked me this question. Question: I want to be able to improve my self-belief the way you did this while in the plantation industry and later on in America when you stuck to your guns to become a highly paid consultant. Increasing my Imaan would be one…

  • BC to AC

    BC to AC

    We are living in defining times. Never in living memory has the world seen something like the Covid-19 virus and the disruption that it has caused all over the world. Not in living memory or history. There are those who claim that it is a hoax. But dead bodies don’t lie. The world has come…

  • Every choice has a price tag

    Every choice has a price tag

    The objective of life is to achieve that which you did not know you could. To scale heights that leave you breathless with fear until you realize that it is excitement and not fear at all. Excitement is fear that anticipates a happy ending. Short breath, dry mouth, alive senses, and joy. The objective is…

  • What’s your worth?

    What’s your worth?

    Today we live in a world where dignity has quite wrongfully been linked to material wealth. No matter how learned a man or woman may be, or how kind or truthful or trustworthy, if they are not wealthy, they are treated with disdain. Net worth has only one meaning. And I can’t think of a…

  • Jack Welch, Built to last

    Jack Welch, Built to last

    Jack Welch passed away at the age of 84, on March 1, 2020. I decided to title my podcast ‘Built to Last’, after Collins & Porras’s book by that title which I consider to be one of the best corporate (or other) leadership books that I have ever read. Jack Welch was ‘built to last’.…