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, […]

Leadership

The Ladder of Problem-Solving Expertise

Have you ever attended a meeting that was called to solve a problem and exited the meeting feeling that the meeting was a catastrophic waste of everyone’s time. You’re not alone. Most of us have been in that room. And most of us, if we’re honest, have also led that room. Here’s what I’ve come to believe after years of working with leaders and teams: the quality of a problem-solving meeting is not primarily a function of the people in the room. It’s a function of the level at which the leader chooses to operate. In my experience, when done […]

Leadership

Are You Burning Out Your Team?

The problem One of the findings of the 2023 Work in Americaâ„¢ Survey was that Workplace stress remained at a concerning level, with 77% of workers having reported experiencing work-related stress in the last month. Further, 57% indicated experiencing negative impacts because of work-related stress that are sometimes associated with workplace burnout. This burnout is not just due to having too much work. This overwhelm is due to a combination of various reasons, including but not limited to information overload, cognitive overload, technology and related change initiatives, attention fragmentation and unclear expectations. And as leaders, we are responsible to address this […]