What does a Founder / CEO do when the operating plan of the business is owned by a capable team?
– Strategy (making key choices/bets) – Identify what’s changing, and what’s not going to change, and how will company respond to it – Human capital development, and succession planning, specially for leadership positions – Meeting clients and team-members to discover insights and feed into the system – Governance and goal review – Zero to One […]
A simple 4 step framework to elevate yourself:
✅ Surround yourself – With people, books, podcasts, work that inspires and helps you grow as a person. ✅ Think – Your surroundings will influence your thinking for the positive or negative. ✅ Do – What and how you think will influence what you do. ✅ Be – What you keep doing, you will eventually […]
Three forms of intervention to complete a business cycle.
Every business needs all three forms of intervention – Bhramha (Creator), Vishnu (Protector), and Mahesh (Destroyer) to complete a cycle. But there are few problems: 1) Every Founder loves playing the role of creator, but lacks the experience or resilience of being a protector, and lacks the motivation to be destroyer. 2) Founders get stuck […]
Mountaineering and Entrepreneurship are two sides of the same coin.
In 2023, a mountaineer and loved member of Indian entrepreneur community, Anurag Maloo met an horrible accident on top of Annapurna (one of the deadliest 8000+ mts peak). Firstly, Why would someone attempt to climb a mountain where 1 in 3 mountaineers perish? And that too without oxygen support? This is similar to the question […]
The next big frontier.
I am truly amazed at how society at large has embraced entrepreneurship over the last couple of decades. However, I find that many aspiring entrepreneurs are still choosing the old, matured, and ‘less risky’ domains. For example, I still find founders building web design, digital marketing and bespoke software development companies. The challenge is that […]
Harsh leadership truths I know at 47 I wish I knew at 27
1) As a leader, you must role-model the behaviors you want to see. Don’t expect reliability if you’re unreliable yourself. 2) Great leaders practice extreme ownership. The team owns the victories. The leader owns the failures. 3) The difference between the leader you are today and the leader you want to be, comes down to […]
New Experiment: Applying OKR for Personal Goal Management
In 2025, I plan to apply my version of OKR on myself. Keeping ONE key objectives for the year, a few leading indicators, and three key result areas (micro projects) every month to drive me towards that ONE objective. This shall enable me to measure my progress with leading indicators, and course correct where needed. […]
Discovering My First Product-Market Fit: A Journey of Serendipity
When people talk about product-market fit, it often feels like a planned expedition—market research, strategy brainstorming, meticulous iterations. But my first encounter with it was anything but planned. It was an accident, a lucky break, or maybe just being in the right place at the right time. And when I spoke to many successful businesses, […]
Degrees Fade, Skills Get Obsolete, Job Titles Change—Here’s What Truly Stays with You 🌍
A decade ago, no one imagined AI tools like ChatGPT would write code, create designs, or draft business strategies. Today, entire industries are being disrupted overnight—customer support, software development, digital marketing, and even market research. Tech professionals who built careers on a single programming language or a niche skill are now finding that the world […]
Process is a Means to an End – Not the End Itself
Last week, I was with a client who shared an experience that left me utterly shocked. We’re building a large e-commerce marketplace project for them. As part of this, they needed a payment integration partner – someone who’d eventually process thousands of crores worth of transactions. Naturally, they approached one of India’s leading payment aggregators. […]