Thought Leadership

The alternative plan that we must know in organisational leadership  

Time is Everything  The importance of time no one can refute. "Time Management" is an academic discourse in all the leading management books.  Perhaps this is the only asset that depreciates continuosly without any change. We also know the rate at which the "time" depreciates and how it goes away never to show even its shadow again Time is the only progressve equation that progressess lineraly and never looks backward. Time never forms a cycle and it moves like a single straight line which has no end. Infinity, time & death are all linked together in the mystic mathemetical equation called life. The Poet Message on Time Management  Omar Khayyam talks about the importance of the present & living in the moment. It means that time can only be controlled by making our moments or the present beautiful & happy. That can be our only link to the future. Do not despair too much for things you can't control. Control the things that you can control and control ...

The Binary Mind  Our human mind is trained to view things mostly in the binary perspective. We generally interpret things as Black & White, Right & Wrong, True & False, Good & Bad, Yes & No etc. We do not allow the world of uncertainty to exist even in our consciousness. We want Certainty to be our guiding light always But our existence is not Binary nor is the ecosystem surrounding it. We exist in the mixture of Certainty & Unpredictability Dont Duple it  Thus the desire to see & interpret things in the simple “Duple” phenomena is a false start Our insecurity & the haste in understanding any phenomena must not dissolve the possibility of the existence of an area of darkness. Just because we do not have answers to certain things doesn't mean we do not understand it An Area of Darkness is sometimes more illuminating than the percieved halo around it Not having an answer is also an answer sometimes. To be ignorant rather than be disdainfully rigid...

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 value the Periphery More  “ Whether the history exists or not is doubtful but there is no doubt that the historians exist. ” Thus lamented a great scholar of history once We value the periphery more than the core as it is easily accessible. To understand the crux one has to transcend the margins & that is difficult While learning we tend to get more influenced by the narrator than the Process, Facts & Events itself. This makes us vulnerable to one sided & distorted understanding of the phenomena The Wisdom to Learn  That is why Wisdom teaches us to always isolate the Matter, Narrator & the Phenomena separately Matter & Phenomena definitely has a natural inbuilt connection with each other. But the Narrator is an artificial construct to both of them. It has the power to redesign the Matter & Phenomena relationship to the point of falsification So do not attach more value to narrators than what is required. Attach much higher value to yourself to un...

Some Ideas Fade into Oblivion. Why ?  Some great Ideas faded into oblivion. Some ordinary Ideas took the centre stage. Why ? Sometimes the delivery mechanism of the idea is far more important than the idea itself The User Experience UX  We have seen that some Apps & Websites create waves of public recognition and admiration. But others of the same contents & value could not create the same buzz The reason lies in the “User Experience UX” Design In the “Leadership of Ideas” the UX is the communication style & mechanism adopted to catch the imagination Sometimes we over value the Matter & neglect the Phenomena which will sustain that Matter itself Create the Ease of Understanding the Ideas  Once an Idea is established twice the effort must be made to create its UX Design. Content is more likely to be accepted if the ease of accessing & understanding the content is flawless & entertaining Richard Feynman lectures on Physics is far more famous & un...

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...

The Thought Leadership & the Quantum Jump  Human civilization progresses by their abilities to think forward & backward & to correlate it with their present. But there is a limit to which these backward & forward extensions in thinking can be conceived There is always a veil of ignorance beyond which everything seems dark If humans have to jump from one stage to another stage of civilization progress then our ability to think both backward & forward has to also take a quantum jump This simply means that we have to create Thought Leadership(TL) . Such civilization jumps occur only when TL creates Quantum Jumps in ideas & actions We jumped from Wheel stage to Engine stage by creating leadership of the minds The Leadership of the Minds & the Great Jump  The challenge is to create such minds & leaderships. Though Scientific & Technological (S&T) minds will be in abundance but the Social & Cultural (S&C) minds would lag in the “GREAT ...

The Genius who could have taken over leadership in science  He was a Mathematician during the Renaissance. Some credits him with invention of Probability Theory. Many cite his works on imaginary numbers. He is the first few to lay the foundations of Quantum Physics.  He was also a certified Doctor.  He could have provided effective leadership in science  He wrote a book “Consolation” lamenting the death of his son. Some even say that Shakespeare copied from his book for his Hamlet “To be or not to be” speech He was a genius whom the world has forgotten You may be wondering who he is ? The weakness of leadership  He is Jerome Cardano, the Italian Genius who displeased the authorities of his time by his free contrarian views & rebellious character He was a great gambler who discovered probability theory to win card games. His medical license was revoked due to his maverick actions He had all the intellectual capacity to become the household name. Some part du...