Advertisers can teach us a thing or two about human nature. They know that they need to appeal to our base instincts to get the job done, without appearing to do so in the first place. Manipulate the target audience in a covert way, without giving the impression that you are; pull the right strings…
From my days as an IT salesman, there are some things I remember distinctly. One of them was the way we would structure commercial terms of large transformation projects to meet the requirements of large Indian banks who needed the best technology, but at a hygienic price. Make no mistake, a core banking implementation is…
One of my senior colleagues in my last corporate stint would say “Understand which animal you are. If you are a cat, you can at most become a smart cat or a brave cat. You cannot become a tiger” Very few investors hold stocks for a period of 10 years, most of them tend to…
April was my favorite month of the entire year for almost a decade. It was that time of the year when one could see from close quarters the effects of the annual nautanki known as performance appraisal. Picture a team of twenty at a successful Indian company that has just been told their annual performance…
Employees don’t quit their jobs, they quit their bosses I have never quit a job or a boss, I have quit career choices. Unless your career choice is in line with who you are, you will eventually come to loathe it even if you have a great boss. There is just too much nonsense floating…
Ground Rule: Always prioritize objectives over emotional reactions In 2012, as a rookie salesman with a boutique wealth management firm, I was working on a deal that could potentially move the needle on my P&L. The prospect was an organization that had just received funding and was looking to deploy the funds into fixed income instruments.…
At the very core, good investors share some skills with free riders. I am not implying that investing does not involve work, just that it involves more of pattern recognition, fine judgement and nuanced decision making rather than tangible work on a daily basis. Let’s drill deeper here. When you invest into a business, who…