Understanding the Four Types of Competence
The four stages from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, and why they come in order.
Lab Notes
Stories and frameworks on strategy, leading people, money and running a business.
Strategy and management
Five key risks in business expansion
What a tools manufacturer weighed before entering the lubricants market: bandwidth, diversification, knowledge, money and competition.
AlphaZero: A computer program which is not quite a computer program
A chess game with a cousin, and what a self-taught chess program suggests about creativity and business.
Launch strategy for a health app with the founders
Why a first release should be simple, lovable and complete, not only minimal and viable.
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Resolve to become a purpose-driven business
A hospital's year-planning day, an administrator's challenge, and the director who owned up to letting the vision fade.
The Iceberg of Ignorance
Top management sees about 5% of a company's problems, staff see all of them, and why that matters for strategy.
Strategy begins with why
Four steps to designing a company's strategy: the current reality, a summation, the high-level future, and only then the detailed roadmap.
The Orange Swan Hypothesis
Black swans are sudden shocks. An orange swan is a sudden boom too big to meet alone, and how one company met it with a former rival.
Leading people
The IndiGo debacle
When things go wrong, some teams say "this isn't my responsibility" and some say "this is on me". What accountability looks like in a well-run organisation.
Understanding the Four Types of Competence
The four stages from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, and why they come in order.
Harnessing the power of the Ownership Pyramid
A four-level framework for building accountability and ownership in a team, from the foundation to leadership.
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I don’t agree, but I am aligned: The Power of Co-Creation
What a copper company that debated calling itself a family teaches about the difference between agreement and alignment.
Instruction VS Co-Creation
Assembling a model aeroplane with an eight-year-old, and what it says about involving people in the solution.
Leadership and the guitar
Why playing the guitar is a way to understand leadership: being one with the instrument, and pursuing a vision of excellence without watching yourself.
Communication is not what you speak
A session with young physiotherapists on what communication really is, and "recreation": creating back for a patient what they said.
Being authentic
What authenticity is, why it matters, and a simple three-step practice for living it.
Money and cash flow
Graceful yet assertive payment collections
A workshop on asking for overdue payments without losing dignity, and the team that recovered most of its outstanding dues within a week.
Entrepreneurship
The Melian Dialogue
What Athens told Melos about power and justice, and why principles last only when something sustains them.
"You got lucky"
Why the sentence stings entrepreneurs, what luck really does to a business, and what isn't luck at all.
True expertise does not exist
We are all learning, all the time, and what a program at IIM Ahmedabad taught me about it.
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How I lost more than 2 crores and 5 years, but still profited
A reverse osmosis membrane plant that never worked, the money and years it cost, and what the failure taught.
Want to break a tough habit?
Old patterns can't be erased, but new ones can take over. What it takes is the discipline to stay true to your word.
A very special teacher
Watching my father go through the stormiest phases of his business, and the lesson in resilience it gave me.
A contrarian view: Bhagat Singh and the will to win
A freedom that is only asked for is rarely given. What Bhagat Singh's stand says about will, in a nation's struggle and in business.
Lab stories
Are Our Children More Troubled Than We Think?
A conversation with a child mental health advocate about academic pressure, social anxiety and emotional support in schools.
Empowering nursing champions to deliver care that matters
A communication session for nursing champions at a children's hospital, built on understanding the other person's world first.
Full Circle Moment at Siddhi Vinayak Hospital
Meeting again the surgeon who led a hospital where the author began in healthcare management, eleven years on.
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One dissection, one laugh & one heartbeat at a time
A conversation with a first-year medical student who found her tribe, and a question about giving teenagers room to find their own way.
Photo to come
What matters most to your parents is not what you expect
A Diwali gift for my mother, and what it taught me about the thing seniors value most: the freedom to make their own decisions.
Mental health is a universal human right
A trip with my brother in 2018, the loss that followed three years later, and why we should treat mental health with the respect we give physical health.
How Leaders' Lab began
A passion for helping people build their businesses, a friend's suggestion, and the first meeting of the Lab.