April is more than the Fool’s Day. It is the month of beginnings, a month of new starts, a month that sets the tone for the year ahead, for people as well as businesses. It is the time to plan, learn, reflect and grow.
Almost everything that we do—at home or work—can be done better yet we do not look at improving habits. ‘Improve’ is the hardest skill to follow but if done, it can be magnificently rewarding.
It is not only social media that makes an influencer. It is the resolve, the purpose and the consistency in work that makes an influencer.
Large organisations create teams to address the problem of entropy. But there are processes that bind all teams into a large one—making a big room full of Lego blocks. That’s why startups are agile. They are the small rooms of fewer Lego blocks.
Right and wrong taught as values remain the compass for decisions that define moral intelligence. Like in life, in business, too, a moral intelligence lapse leaves a hole in the company’s trust and value systems.
Informed choices are important in life and in business. In the second of a two-part series on behavioural economics, we look at choice architecture, the practice of influencing choices.
In the first of a two-part series on behavioural economics, we discuss how influencing behaviour can have a wide-spread impact—from saving lives to conserving water.
Rules have changed, a new democracy has taken shape and it is here to stay across all walks of life, including cricket and stock markets.
Try being an adaptive expert who applies knowledge effectively to find solutions to novel or atypical problems
Understanding the consumer behaviour responsible for the success of prepaid mobile adoption in India offers a peek into the evolution of current and future services
A nudge predictably alters behaviour without forbidding any option or significantly changing economic incentives. To count as a nudge, the intervention must be easy—putting the fruit at eye level is a nudge, banning junk food isn’t.
Courage and fear co-exist and managing the balance between the two is the key to our success.
We not only need physical fitness but also mental fitness. It is about looking inward and thinking how to grow fitter. It is about the fittest, not the fittest among us, but a fitter version of our own.
Sometimes when there is too much clutter, there is no clear thinking. Like in designing, where we need to value the negative space, we need to pay attention to negative space in thoughts as well.
Creativity is not just about painting or being an artist, it is about thinking. Creative thinking gives birth to ideas, which are vital not only for business but also for day-to-day life.
Attention is not merely staying focused on the task at hand but is also how to process other information in the brain.
Taking notes makes a remarkable difference when you make it a part of your learning ladder. It helps retain knowledge better, which further helps the mind to build interconnected mental maps or models.
Purpose-driven work creates a competitive advantage for businesses as well as people. To work with empathy is a powerful purpose. Adapt it.
Office space gets you a landing strip for you to move away from other things and enter a work zone.
Learning grows on learning. The more you learn, the more growth you experience.
A business needs to not only lead by goal orientation but also keep entropy low by providing incentives, training, metrics for performance measurement, etc to keep it on track.
The ‘risk hai toh ishq hai’ line from the web series Scam 1992-The Harshad Mehta is a reminder—of the power of timely decisions, alertness towards our availability bias and our circle of competence.
As our life seems more static than growing, designing joy purposefully will bring in energy. Designing joy in small things is nice but grand activities will stimulate mind and body.
Changing our beliefs can have a powerful impact. The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset.
In the entrepreneurial world, you do not wait for a perfect product or a service. You observe the space, orient your offer and decide a course of action.