The content emphasizes that serendipity is not merely luck. It is something one can cultivate by expanding their “luck surface area” by showing up in rooms you don’t fully belong to, by sharing half-ideas before they are polished and other means covered in the article. Continue reading You Can’t Wait for Serendipity. You Have to Engineer It.
A Leadership Reflection for Women’s Day A friend recently told me about visiting a government office in Pune. When she needed to use the restroom, staff directed her down a corridor, past stacks of broken chairs and old filing cabinets, to a bathroom tucked away in a forgotten corner of the building. “I don’t know why anyone would even want to go there,” she said. The women working in that office had no choice. Most corporate workplaces are better than this. But not by as much as we’d like to think. The bathroom wasn’t hidden by accident—it was designed (or … Continue reading Designing Workplaces for Human Variability
The big story in the Indian press this week is the deferment of the chairman’s reappointment at Tata Sons — involving Natarajan Chandrasekaran and questions reportedly raised by Noel Tata. It goes beyond corporate intrigue – offers a governance lens. Leadership renewals are often treated as ceremonial affirmations of past success. In reality, they are inflection points — moments when boards must answer a harder question: are we extending stewardship merely because the past was impressive, or because the future risk–return equation remains compelling? Dissent at such moments is not disloyalty; it is duty. When exercised with clarity and respect, … Continue reading Salubrious Dissent: What Leadership Renewals Reveal About Board Maturity
Have you ever promoted a “star” performer who consistently hit the numbers—only to discover, a year later, that the culture had weakened and the strategy had drifted. Or, for that matter watched a sales team smash quarterly targets on legacy products while your supposedly strategic new offering struggled for oxygen? I spent a year maxing out the metric my organization said mattered. At review time, a completely different metric got rewarded. It took me a while to realize this wasn’t bad luck or a biased manager — it was a design flaw baked into how most organizations operate. Most of … Continue reading Rewarding A While Hoping for B: Why Smart Organizations Make Predictably Poor Decisions
If you went through Engineering in India, the name Ferdinand L Singer likely triggers a specific kind of trauma. I remember sitting with his “Engineering Mechanics” for days. I read the chapters. I looked at the diagrams. Nothing stuck. The internal exams were looming, and I was staring at a wall of incomprehensible vectors. Then, one Saturday before my internals I did the only thing I could: I shut the door and stayed in the chair. Thankfully mobile phones existed in the sci-fi world then. For five hours, the world disappeared. No distractions. Just the friction of the problems meeting … Continue reading The Flow State: Unlocking Peak Performance
The article discusses “sunflower bias,” where team members conform to a leader’s opinion, stifling genuine debate and diverse views. This bias leads to poor decision-making, reduced innovation, and employee disengagement. To combat it, leaders should foster psychological safety by encouraging dissent, using anonymous feedback, and modeling openness to challenges, ultimately seeking true engagement over mere agreement. Continue reading Sunflower Bias in Leadership: Why Following Blindly Can Cost Your Organization
Noise leads to unpredictable decision-making errors, unlike bias, which results in systematic mistakes. Organizations must measure and address noise to enhance decision quality and mitigate financial risks. Continue reading How Noisy Are Your Decisions?
A recent cyberattack leveraging APIs through Salesloft’s Drift chatbot highlights a critical oversight in cybersecurity—APIs as vulnerable points. Despite their essential role in digital operations, APIs often lack board-level attention, posing significant financial, regulatory, and reputational risks. This post talks of what boards can do, and what questions they must ask relating to API threats to keep teams accountable. Continue reading APIs: The Overlooked Cybersecurity Risk Boards Need to Understand
AI presents a transformative opportunity for businesses, but boards face a dilemma: accelerate growth wisely to avoid risks like regulatory scrutiny and cultural distrust. Effective governance, responsible AI use, and talent readiness are crucial. By ensuring management balances speed with foresight, boards can help companies thrive in the evolving AI landscape. Continue reading Wise Up, Scale Up: The Board’s Playbook for Winning in AI
“Is AI going to take our jobs?” It’s the question everyone’s asking—whether you’re in a boardroom, a classroom, or just chatting with friends. And honestly, it’s a valid worry. AI and automation are moving fast, faster than anything we’ve seen before. So yeah, feeling a bit uneasy about what the future holds is natural. But here’s the thing: history shows us that technology doesn’t usually kick humans out of the picture. Instead, it changes our roles. The folks who win will be the ones who don’t try to go head-to-head with machines but team up with them instead. I like … Continue reading Centaur Employees: Why Humans and AI Are Better Together
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