Thought Leadership

  In Leadership Journey Never Forget These 3 Three Engagements    Click the Link Below to Read 👇   https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shahnawaz-qasim-ips-16583110_humanityleadershipseries-leadership-activity-6748241352338812928-mXiv Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels

What you Think is More Important Everybody thinks. Nobody can survive without thinking. Thinking is central to our existence.  But what we think decides our higher purposes in life Everybody gets some ideas which they think are unique. How many times we may have hit upon some brilliant ideas but which remained buried in our thoughts for the rest of our lives unimplemented But what separates great minds from the rest are the “ centrality of the thinking ” & “ groundings of their ideas ” out of the thinking The Successful Thinkers Successful thinkers put their ideas on the ground & believe me most of such ideas are simple in essence At the same time some brilliant ideas just remained thoughts because it was never implemented & tried Most of the successful startups are basically effective implementation of the simple ideas Your thinking can give mental prowess to you but the implementation of those thinking can give solutions to the many What is Thought Leadership  Th...

The Aim  The aim of concepts are far more wider than what we think of. Somehow the concept of Thought Leadership wrongly became the field of winning & success only But it is way above & beyond this temporary destination Thought Leadership adds value The sole purpose of Thought Leadership is to provide "Value Addition" to the domain. It is a more philosophical framework of understanding There are many Thought Leaderships that seemingly failed to become famous J. C. Bose work on material radio signal made Marconi famous but is hardly acknowledged Ibn al-Haytham, the 10 th century Arab Mathematician no one knows. But his works on optics made Roger Bacon famous centuries later Jerome Cardano the unsung Italian genius who invented practically the Quantum Physics & Probality Theory but is hardly credited by any Can we deny.... Can we deny the value additions of such great minds though they are not famous & successful? The collectivity of failings in Thought Leadersh...

Metaphors are signs ...They are saying something The Metaphors are the first signs of knowing things which are literally unconnected to each other. The Metaphors are the first flight of stairs to the realms of Metaphysics What you see plainly are the obvious & the connected dots of our existence. What we don't see easily are the higher thoughts of existence If we can tether the known with the unknown with metaphors our minds get trained to think beyond the common & the observable Thought Leadership & Metaphors  To understand the first step in "Thought Leadership" is to acknowledge the science of metaphors If we cannot talk in two different planes at the same time by metaphors it simply means we may be lacking in conditioning our mind for the "Leadership of Ideas" To read a phrase is one aspect & to understand it is altogether another matter. But to relate it to the metaphors and give it wings of metaphysics is the higher dimensions in Thought pro...

The Moon & the Water  Some news does catch your eyes. Just yesterday it was announced by the scientific community that they have discovered water molecules on the moon  Though it is a great piece of discovery but not very surprising after all. This fact was waiting to be discovered for we have been trying to find traces of water on the moon for decades. It was just a matter of when  Light is Civilization  Water is actually the synonym of life for humanity. Where there is water there is life & there evolves civilization.  But to me the most surprising aspect of the discovery was something else. It was the particular region on the moon on which the water traces were discovered that fascinated me The water traces were discovered on the sunlit portion of the moon. This has a huge metaphorical significance if we can think beyond the obvious  Thought Leadership is showing Light in Darkness  Anything that is lit has life just like the sunlit porti...

If I tell you about the Machines If we create something we expect it to do work better than us. If not then why would be create such things in the first place itself  The purpose to machines was to do some specialised jobs better than the humans  Specialisation is what Machines are expected to do. From the first moment itself the machines knows nothing about anything except its specialised roles  Machines are routine, repetitive, confined & monotonous. They are insipid, soulless, unoriginal & seems lifeless  It is Colourless World  Howsoever beautiful & fantastic the machines look initially but if we keep on observing it regularly it loses all its charms. it has nothing to offer except what it has been specialised to do so When anything becomes precisely predictive it behaves like the machines & is colourless in interactions  Do not let your children become machines  This is precisely what specialisation in education in young childr...

Name is not Everything  The greek word from which their identity emerged means Wise, Wisdom etc. They were people who excelled in knowledge of philosophy, Mathematics, Astronomy, Administration etc just like any renowned scholars of their day.  They even wrote books, taught students and excelled in discussions, debates, lectures etc. They were also famous & liked by the public just like any other scholars of those days  Yet they are never considered Philosophers or Intellectuals even till date. Many even do not consider them as Scholars, Teachers, Wise men etc The mainstream Philosophy has more contempt & disregard for them than any schools of thought Add caption What was Wrong with the Sophists ? The Central Question is what went wrong with the Sophists & Why the word itself came to mean a Pejorative term ?  Similarly it is even important to know why Sophism came to signify a derogatory ideology ?  The answer lies in their non-conviction & non-...

Madness and civilization Michel Foucault, the french philosopher wrote the famous book Madness and civilization. His views changed the perception of Deviance from individualistic to collective in the social framework. No worldwide intellectual circles of that time remained untouched from his book  Look at things  differently  There was also one scholar who read this book. But his attention got fixated on a passing small paragraph which read “ ‘ In the universality of the Western ratio, there is a division which is the Orient … The Orient is for the Occident everything that it is not ”  This small paragraph evoked sea of thoughts in the mind of Edward Said & the rest is history in the field of Post colonial intellectualism  Influenced by the paragraph, Edward Said wrote “ Orientalism” which is considered one of the most influential books of the 20th century. From this book was born the concept of Orientalism which changed our perception forever  Ironi...

Past is a treasure of learning  Much has been written about the Greco-Persian wars of the ancient times. Much still needs to be learnt from it  The 2nd Greco-Persian War occured around 480 BC. Xerxes, the Persian king marched with such a huge force that the Greeks never anticipated it. If we believe Herodotus, then Greeks were in for a big defeat  Future is not always linear But most of the time events do not unfold in a simple linear way as expected & that too wars. The Greek sides consisting of the Athenians & the Spartans, though numerically less, did not allow Xerxes to make any inroads. Xerxes was getting frustrated though having the largest & the best forces of that time  Xerxes left his forces in the battle to his commanders & returned to his capital. The Greeks defeated Xerxes forces at Plataea & Mycale & he lost the 2nd Greco-Persian war  The Resourceful leadership  leadership is not always about the availability of Resourc...

Do Not Sow in Parts   If you sow in parts you reap in parts. The harvest of the mind is always in doubt. This is the clarion call of the Wise At the elevated conciousness level, knowledge is a unified concept. Astronomy cannot not be separated from Mathematics, Mathematics from Philosophy, Philosophy from Medicine & so on All things are unified if seen from the perspective of Wisdom rather than mere Knowledge            picture credit : jean van der muellen from pexels  Leadership is Wisdom  A wise man is supposed to be the unifier of the knowledge. A solution provider The subject of leadership belongs more to the category of the Wisdom than to the Knowledge Wise leadership does not see problems only from the operational, technical, financial, resource, capacity etc perspective The Wisdom Deficit  They often visualize it at the Macro Level & try to find the “Wisdom Deficit” that led to the problem Wisdom to them is more than...

The Great Imbalance  Have you ever realised the great imbalance we have created in our Self Communication System . Though inadvertently developed but it has a profound & lasting impact on your leadership attributes Speaking, listening & writing are the core  Self Communication System   which connects your personality to the outer world. It's like the visa by which you enter the other people’s mind  But to avail the visa one has to first get the passport    Picture credit : Thought Catalog from Pexels  The Passport to Success  Reading is the passport of your personality. Without it your entire  Self Communication System    is an exercise in self deception  We must have read upteem articles about personalities & their reading lists. Their list is not so important. But the fact that they read is some pointer towards their success  Now the basic question is what to read. The answer is a simple formula which I have ...

The Two Wings  Have you ever thought about the two philosophical concepts that lets your Thought Leadership soar high.  They are like the two proverbial wings which are interconnected & inter dependent for the high flight  The Metaphysics of Leadership  The metaphysics is the art of thinking, visualizing, contemplating & defining of aspects beyond the physical. The Metaphysics allows your mind to probe the abstract & the unknown. It makes your intellect question the beings & the things along with the truth of existence. It lets you search for things that even do not exist in the realms of words & ideas  The metaphysics tests the capacity & the limits of your thinking abilities. It is the most potent tonic for your unharvested mind  The Physicalism of Leadership The “Physicalism” conception brings your mind back to the world of the seen reality. Sometimes Physicalism is casually understood as Materialism. This makes your senses obse...

The Much Debated Concepts  There are two diametrically opposite concepts in philosophy that have dominated the minds for ages  The “ Priori ” concept believes that the mind already has certain knowledge embedded in it much before it experiences the sensation of it  The “ Posteriori ” philosophy believes that the mind is like the blank slate on which knowledge is written only after it interacts with the sensation outside Ibn e Sina's influence on the western thought  Plato was to a certain extent a “Priori“ believer while Aristotle was for “Posteriori”  The West was influenced in favour of “Posteriori” by the work of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the father of modern medicine. His Magnum Opus “ The canons of medicine ” is the most celebrated book on medicine ever written. Ibn Sina’s philosophical outlook in favour of Posteriori settled the debate forever in Europe  Where does leadership belong to?  Now the question arises whether leadership belongs to the prior...

The Epic of Gilgamesh "If you want a new idea, read an old book" said a wise man onceThe earliest recorded epic is from the Sumerian Civilization called the "Epic of Gilgamesh"(3000 BC ). It is in the form of five surviving poems Gilgamesh was the ruler of Uruk. He wanted to go to war with the kingdom of Kish Gilgamesh knew that Ego has no place in leadership matters First he consulted the council of elders who always opposed him. As expected they opposed his ideas & plans Next he deliberated with another council of elders who supported his course of actions Now it was Gilgamesh turn to take decisions based on the different advices What Gilgamesh did afterward is another matter of debate Hear all the Sides  Leadership means hearing all the sides of the arguements including the one opposed to your vision, strategy & tactics Those who are convinced & have faith in their own vision have the confidence to hear all shades of the arguements Those who desist fr...

Neccesity is the Mother of Inventions  The prehistoric humans had no written form of communication. Every communication was oral The earliest form of written communication was pictorial. But it could not serve the purpose The Sumerians developed the cuneiform writing. But it was no easy task to remember more than 300 different wedges & even more combinations of wedges Religion popularized the written style of communication  The Akkadians popularized  cuneiform writing  by creating religious hymns in this style The Assyrians refined  cuneiform writing  & the Babylonians shaped it to the point of Alphabets The Phoenicians created the Alphabet system of Writing. The Greeks borrowed the style & created Philosophers out of this A human Revolution in Communication has begun. Art, literature, philosophy, medicine, history, geography etc took birth from the womb of Alphabets No Ideas are Original No Ideas are Original per se. But Improvisations are most...

The Huge Debate  There was a huge debate regarding Quantum Physcis (QP) in the 1920's. The scientific world was split into two camp One favoured Neil Bohr's Idea on QP. The other was with Einstein refuting Bohr's idea Every confrence, meeting, journals etc ultimately became a showdown between the two camps Einsten, Podolsky & Rosen (EPR) wrote the most scatching critique of Bohr's idea of QP & challenged him to respond to it The Response  Bohr responded to the EPR paper. The whole Physics world read both the EPR & its response. It was the most widely read literature of that time But something went wrong in both the papers Einstein lamented that the Physics world did not understand what he asked in the EPR He wanted to raise certain questions but the world did not understand the queries he raised in their paper  Bohr admitted that he could not communicate fully in writing what he wanted to say. Bohr said he understood what he wanted to say but could not fully...

Passion leads to Wisdom  Many say that passion for the domain leads to farsightedness in that field. Obviuosly it leads to leadership in that domain too. An outstanding example of anticipatory leadership comes to my mind from the field of Archaelogy. In the late 1840's one French archaelogist Victor Place was excavating Assyrian sites in Iraq. A great number of Assyrian historical antiquities were discovered which were priceless. The Anticipatory Leadership Everyone wanted the antiquities to be shipped immediately to Paris for further studies. But Victor wanted that the drawings, sketches & copies of every antiquity had to be done before shipping it. This obviously meant more delay in shipping it to Paris. Many objected and criticised his plans but Victor was adamant on following his protocol of business.  Victor requisitioned an artist who drew the sketches, drawings & made copies of all the artificats as per the protocol. It took many days & delayed the shippin...

The five (5) great books that lets you understand Leadership  The subject of leadership is a vast area which requires an even broader vision to understand it. One way to create that broader insight is to read some great books Such books are those which go beyond providing domain expertise. It opens up your intellect to the wide horizons of knowledge & creates thinking processes by which you can link it with your domain area.  There may be many great books on leadership. But according to my understanding there are five (5) books which provide your intellect with wider horizons to understand the area of leadership.  Though some of those books may not directly talk about leadership but their essence would provide the readers with the foresight needed to understand, learn & practice leadership 1. The instructions of Ptah-Hotep This is the oldest wisdom book to survive & is written by the Egyptian Vizier around 2000 B.C. This book talks about ethics, state, admini...