Managing effectively is not just one skill, but a mix of different skills. It is a combination of different kinds of intelligence we have as human beings, which makes it an art and a craft. Have you seen a manager who is highly skilled in technical areas but lacks empathy for others? Or the one […]
We live in a time when our career is not just a sum total of years we spent in the industry. Our career is about what projects we initiated/handled/led and what difference did the project deliver. Project is a new eco-system, a new playground where we play and thrive as professionals to deliver our best. […]
“Practice makes a man perfect”, they say. Only practice is not enough. In business, have you seen people who have been doing something for a long time and still not very good at it? If practice was enough, these people should have been rock stars in their work, right? But they aren’t. So, what’s missing? […]
You don’t need to be a Manager/VP/Director of Quality to be a quality leader, because quality leadership is not about title/experience, but more about mindset/attitude. Irrespective of your title, seniority or position in the hierarchy, you are a quality leader when you: 1) Are passionate about your work… 2) …And know how to balance creativity […]
I remember collecting and writing quotes in my diary as a student. A good quote has power to inspire us, to stir us and sometimes, make us uncomfortable. Quotes provide a spark to our thinking. Here are a few recent quotes from my friends (via their posts) in blogosphere, that inspired me lately. You will […]
I recently came across a company (somewhere on the social web) that claimed that they “shipped leaders”. It looked like they offered leadership training services. It took me back to the old debate of whether leaders are born or made. One thing is clear – leaders cannot be manufactured in a training factory and shipped. […]
In organizations, I have seen people who are “designated” as leaders. I have seen many such designated leaders, who raised their game to meet the expectations that come along with leadership. They make an effort to learn about leadership, read books, blogs and consciously put those lessons in action. On the other hand, I have […]
We live in times where more and more work is executed by teams that are geographically distributed. Leading a virtual team, fostering collaboration and binding them to common set of objectives is one of the key challenges for business leaders. In most of the troubled projects I have seen, the real challenges were not technical/engineering […]
The true test of a leader is when things don’t go as planned. Worst yet, when things fail. In an organizational context, I have seen so many leaders who drive the project/initiative right from the beginning – yet when the project fails, they blame others. They blame senior management, the organization culture, their own team […]