Leadership

Why the Best Leaders Build Structures That Disappear

During my regular walk yesterday, I passed a building under construction and saw that it was surrounded by a web of metal poles, planks, and cross-braces wrapping the structure like a second skin or in a word – Scaffolding. And when I saw it and thought about what role it plays in the construction or maintenance of the building, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities with leadership. Here is what I think scaffolding can teach us about being an effective leader or a leader worth following. What Scaffolding Actually Does Before we stretch the metaphor, it is worth being […]

Leadership

The Path to High Performance in an Uncertain World

Premise: Last week alone, I’ve had at least 5 conversations with leaders in different functions, all complaining about how they see the engagement among their teams going down significantly due to various reasons, including but not limited to current socio-economic and geo-political situations. I see this growing feeling of helplessness and loss of agency at every level in our society, not just in the business world. What is interesting is not the disengagement itself. It was how the leaders described it. Almost all of them attributed it to things outside their control — geopolitical uncertainty, economic anxiety, post-pandemic fatigue. This […]

Leadership

The One Thing Leaders of Disproportionately successful Teams Do Differently

Here is a post by one of my all time favourite ad men – Dave Trott. I believe that this ability to engage in corkscrew thinking (as Dave puts it) or non-linear or non-obvious thinking is a necessary but not sufficient condition for disproportionate success in any endeavour. My podcast is called – Pushing Beyond the Obvious for a reason 🙂 In his blog, he lists out some of the results of corkscrew thinking and the impact they made on the world as we know it – Bletchley Park, Sten guns, anti-shipping mines, planes made of wood, inflatable tanks and […]

Leadership

What Memes Can Teach Us About Successful Adoption of AI

A recent survey done by MIT found that despite $30–40 billion in investments, 95% of generative AI pilots deliver no measurable P&L impact, with only 5% achieving multi-million-dollar value. The primary reason that they found was that AI systems failed to adapt to workflows, or evolve over time, unlike flexible consumer tools. They also found that there exists a “shadow AI economy”, which thrives as 90% of workers use tools like ChatGPT for personal tasks, bypassing stalled enterprise efforts. So, the question we need to ask is the following – While employees are using AI tools in their personal lives, […]