Are internal comms likely to communicate better than you can? Even if you’re the expert on your topic? This is a nuanced topic - part myth, part possibility! | Continue reading
Narrative based writing is often a superior way to convey ideas at work, compared to slideuments. But despite the overwhelming evidence against slideuments, death by PowerPoint is an enduring workplace phenomenon. | Continue reading
Despite living in the creator economy, we often underestimate the power of recorded video in business settings. In this post, I bust the myth that live presentations are superior to recorded video. | Continue reading
As AI becomes a significant part of our work lives, which competencies differentiate the average business user from another? I argue there are three powerful but game-changing skills that you haven’t thought of in this light. | Continue reading
There’s nothing romantic about the average daily commute of the Indian tech worker. We breathe the worst air in the world and endure the most time in traffic, to the detriment of our health. | Continue reading
Regardless of how bad things may be, or how awfully people are screwing up around us, our behaviour is in our control. We always have the choice to be kinder than necessary to those around us. | Continue reading
We often overestimate the value of grand documents over the unglamourous acts of daily documentation on projects. With the advent of AI-powered KM platforms, it’s time to revisit the fundamentals of team handbooks and documentation systems, if we are to generate relevant and time … | Continue reading
While some sections of India Inc. ask for 70, 90 and 140-hour work weeks, the average worker has little or no leisure time. We’re all working close to 90-hour weeks already. | Continue reading
India Inc. has gone on a warpath to advocate for long work hours. I argue that such advocacy serves the interests of the elite minority and seeks to reverse hard-fought gains from a labour struggle of over 100 years. (This is part one in a two-part series about the 90-hour workwe … | Continue reading
Why not use the full complement of resources on this website, to level up your distributed leadership skills in 2025? | Continue reading
While attractive in marketing brochures, long tenure and close relationships in leadership teams can sometimes harm a company. | Continue reading
AI transformation isn’t only about building or buying new systems. New technology often faces systemic inanities in legacy organisations. | Continue reading
Do you dislike using project management tools? Give me a chance to address your objections. | Continue reading
Knowledge workers are often mistrusting of processes for the corporate red-tape they create. But effective processes have their benefits. | Continue reading
When I speak of asynchronous collaboration, I often get the following pushback. “Async is all about remote work, but we’re all in the office.” “Oh, but we’re hybrid.” “We value the energy of spontaneous conversations at coffee machines and in hallways.” Analytics India Mag even w … | Continue reading
It’s entirely possible to have conflicting emotions about your job and your employer. The work vibe matrix helps individuals (and their managers) assess the relationship between their jobs and their employers so they can reconcile such conflicting emotions. | Continue reading
If you set them up right, internal open-source projects can help your company gain extra development capacity and a sense of community. In this post, I discuss four key practices that help you run a successful, internal open-source project. | Continue reading
There are widespread concerns about how AI will disrupt employment and render many people jobless. I argue that jobs that involve routine, non-novel, and acceptably risky knowledge work will be prime candidates for such disruption. | Continue reading
Regardless of how passionate you are about your work, I encourage you to find ways to separate your professional life from personal time. It’s a win-win-win for you, your colleagues and your employers. | Continue reading
If you’re a rookie project manager, maintaining a calm and productive team environment should be one of your primary goals. I recommend three important practices that’ll help you in that quest. | Continue reading
Seductive job titles come with daunting job descriptions. You may not bargain for the pain that comes with roles. | Continue reading
“Scribo ergo sum”. I write, therefore I am. A post about the top three reasons why I write. | Continue reading
When pointy-haired bosses run out of real arguments for a “return to office”, they turn to disingenuous corporate speak. There are many examples out there, but three of them annoy me the most. | Continue reading
Super managers, i.e. managers of managers must monitor if their direct reports demonstrate care for their team members. In this post, I discuss three techniques for super managers to hear directly from their direct reports' direct reports. | Continue reading
I’m a big fan of dividing and conquering. After all, isn’t that what asynchronous collaboration is all about? But dividing and conquering without a cohesive vision is mere reductionism. Ingredients are nothing without a recipe. A recipe is nothing without a vision. The whole is m … | Continue reading
AI has disrupted our search and content creation experience. To recognise this shift, Nagarjun Kandukuru and I have written an AI-first KM manifesto , which we’d like to introduce to you. | Continue reading
IT workers successfully pushed back against a draconian 70-hour work week proposal in Karnataka. But such victories are shallow if we don’t stand in solidarity with our other, worker brethren, who often endure far worse working conditions. | Continue reading
In a psychologically safe workplace, people share feedback freely. But when feedback lands on deaf ears, it fosters feedback fatigue. | Continue reading
What should the purpose of artificial general intelligence be? Cut jobs? Slash costs? I argue that the purpose could be to elevate our creativity. | Continue reading
Efficient work rituals lead to predictable, high-quality results. As part of my depth rituals, I setup a clean workbench before I begin any work. The inspiration? Elite sport and master chefs! | Continue reading
Consumer AI is outpacing enterprise AI tools. The bigger the chasm between these experiences gets, the greater the security and engagements risks for employers. | Continue reading
When teams and managers forget about the values and sentiments driving the agile movement, practices become convenient fig leaves to cover up the “inanities of corporate life.” I've observed four such fig leaves most often. | Continue reading
When leading a diverse team, you can’t manage everyone the same way. Depending on their skills, experience and work styles, some people may need more managerial care for them to thrive at their jobs. | Continue reading
Remote work impacts not only standard capitalist measures such as productivity and access to talent, but also social aspects. | Continue reading
Remote work is popular, but its not for everyone. Some people may do better in an office. | Continue reading
Volunteerism at work can do more harm than good. I believe that employees should steer clear of it, when possible. | Continue reading
When I look back at my life’s experiences - by accident or design - I’m glad I ended up being insignificant enough that no one misses me too much when I go away for a bit. I may not have made my dad proud, but I’m happy. | Continue reading
It’s easy to believe that just because people look close to each other on a Powerpoint slide, they’re setup to collaborate with each other. Real life is more complex than slideware. | Continue reading
If a new hire can join your team and start contributing asynchronously in a short time, it shows that you’re running a tight ship. This article, a repost from reworked.co, shares three patterns for effective onboarding to distributed teams. | Continue reading
A meeting-centric way of working on distributed teams can undermine deep work and flow, inclusion, flexible work and in the long run knowledge sharing. It also doesn’t lend itself to scale. Choosing asynchronous ways to collaborate can be an effective alternative to this meeting- … | Continue reading
Not all asynchronous collaboration is productive. There are four ways I see teams get “async” wrong. | Continue reading
LLMs promise to make sense of a company’s unstructured information and surface meaningful information to each user. But a KM strategy that relies only on LLMs is incomplete. | Continue reading
One-on-one meetings are a great way for managers to connect and manage their remote team members. Here’s a guide to run these meetings effectively. | Continue reading
There’s always more to do than I’ll ever have time for. I’m sure you face similar choices in life and at work. I take a detour today, to explain why I’m doing less than I possibly can with this website and my professional presence on the web. | Continue reading
Personal user manuals are a way for distributed workers to broadcast information about themselves to their colleagues. While they aren’t without their pitfalls, they can be an effective way to achieve some personal and team objectives. | Continue reading
Survivorship, or selection bias when telling company stories, promotes an echo chamber, where the organisation becomes blind to its inadequacies. | Continue reading
In many teams, distributed leadership is a neglected capability. People have unproductive experiences, because no one pays attention to the design of their distributed workplace. | Continue reading
While tools aren’t the end-all and be-all for distributed collaboration and knowledge sharing, they’re hardly trivial. Companies cannot allow their collaboration tool stack to languish. They must aim for a world-class user experience. | Continue reading