the inner voice

I am not a frequent blogger, but I always wanted to be. Need to build some discipline around it. So what brought me back. In the early days, had posted a one-line blog titled 'Do what is Right'. For very long I didn't find anyone practicing this. However a couple of things happened in quick succession and here I am.  The CEO of the company I used to offer my services for, did two things which brought cheers and hope. We were debating the introduction of two new products. Obviously, I wouldn't name given professional confidentiality. Many arguments were being put in favor and against both. He came back thundering that it doesn't really matter which is tough to implement or what RHQ or HQ thinks, whether it's acceptable to them or not - but think 'what is right for the company'. Align your thoughts accordingly without any bias of ease-to-implement. For a min, there was a deafening silence. Something like this had landed on our ears after a very long time. ...

As Fall sets in and leaves don beautiful pastel shades of red and yellow before turning crisp to detach themselves - the finale performance act of the season by Nature is a timely reminder for us to take a pause and reflect on the year gone by.  Reflection is a very empowering and fulfilling process irrespective of the time of the year and infinitely more so when we have been wrecked by the pandemic. The Corona pandemic has taken away the lives and livelihoods of millions, pushed them into poverty eroding all the gains made over multiple decades. While the economic impact attracts more attention, the social and mental impact has been worse. Continued isolation due to stringent lockdowns, no social get-togethers, birthdays, anniversaries, vacation breaks with friends, working from home, no team or client meetings, etc. almost no social engagement in any form has created unbearable pressure on our minds. Homo Sapiens, the social animal, has been confined to the four walls and is prog...

What are the chances that an extreme tail event like a pandemic is followed by another outlier? asked my senior colleague and further nudged, pretty low, right? wanting to engage all of us and stir up a conversation amongst colleagues and global fora. Before I dive into sharing my views please allow me to indulge in a bit of mathematics – what are the chances of another outlier post an extreme tail event? Contrarian, as my response may seem to be, I would argue its ‘High’. The world loves simplification because that is what a human mind can absorb and fit into its logical neural circuits. But that’s precisely where the problem lies. More or less all analytics, economic, financial, geopolitical, or otherwise assumes Normal distribution of outcomes. The number of studies done, starting from Mandelbrot and Fama, proves otherwise but still, we choose to regress, consciously or unconsciously, to this convenient simplification. This convenient relapse, an amenity, allows one to limit the pro...

The head of the division of the bank which I work for posted a discussion note on an internal discussion site ( and also on LinkedIn) - Quote Imagine it is 2040 and the exam question at school is "#Solidarity during the Corona crisis in 2020" - What will the next generation with the massive benefit of hindsight, assess as successful, and what might we have missed? especially on multiple aspects of #solidarity for e.g.  - was our #solidarity national / continental / global  - economic #solidarity with Italy  - was there any money left for climate change or was it just fashionable topic at summer conferences  - #solidarity with people suffering from mental illness due to the ubiquitous fear  - #solidarity with people getting laid off and prevention of stigma  - #solidarity with people more worried about livelihood than life  - were we given unbiased facts or fed worst-case scenarios and sensationalistic headlines  - #solidarity with pe...

Two great bards from two different time periods, language and civilizations, left an impression on the culture of the times and for years to come. Even today, the world continues to be in awe and admiration of them. Both of them enriched the language by their writings, so much so that the language looks incomplete without them. This post is to celebrate the greatness of these two literary masters. Taj Mahal is not the only marvel Agra has produced. But Alas! the city has been very unkind to its other Gems, foremost amongst them being Mirza Ghalib. Dec 27, happened to be his birthday. 2014 also happened to be 450 years of Shakespeare. Fortunately, he didn’t meet the same fate. History and times have been more kind to him. Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan, known to the world as Ghalib, a non-de-plume he adopted, was born in Agra on Dec 27, 1797. With his marriage at the age of 13, he moved to Delhi. That was a defining moment for him. His initial years were very comfortable and the late...

A recent event prompted me to ask this question. What is the nature of the relationship between the firm and the employee - is it of Performance or is it of Loyalty? Well, I asked this question to my peer groups within the industry. The answers I got were equally polarised with a bias towards loyalty [well the sample size consisted of senior folks doing fairly well]. I wonder what it would be if I extended this question to the entire spectrum of employees. Will the answer be different at two different time periods, junior vs senior, retained vs fired or at-risk, geography to geography, expanding or contracting economy, etc., etc.? Thinking through this prompted another question, Is Loyalty a fallacy? Or the earlier clamor when professionals saw large-scale retrenchment in the US, that ’Loyalty is dead’? Let me put forth some scenarios … 1.        You have been in the firm for years. Toiled hard. Sweat. Have done fairly well. You hav...