• Leadership,  Success Strategy

    The False Dichotomy Between Success and Failure – They Are Not Opposite of Each Other

    “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Author and Harvard professor Sarah Lewis mentioned this famous Churchill quote in her book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery while making a case for mastery and continuous improvement over those milestones we revere so greatly.  Recently Stacy Abrams gave us a masterclass on turning failure into powerful learning. After her highly contested, narrow-margin defeat in the 2018 gubernatorial race, she focused on organizing at the grassroots level. Two years later, it resulted in Joe Biden’s historic win in Georgia. Abrams captured the process in her book (After the loss) “I’ve made myself…

  • Career satisfaction,  EQ,  Happiness,  Leadership,  Success Strategy

    What A Car Can Teach Us About A Successful Career

    I was talking to Andrea, a leader in a big corporate here in the Seattle area. Brilliant and hardworking she was; her resume spoke for itself. As a senior director role in this new job, she was facing some challenges. The main feedback was, others didn’t know what value she was bringing to the organization; they were not aware of her contribution. The solution in her mind was simple – only if she had the skill of being vocal in meetings and prolific enough to blow her own horn. Deep inside, though, she was not feeling confident about her contribution either. All her time was spent getting the team settled…

  • Image by Gillian Callison from Pixabay
    Happiness,  Success Strategy

    Overnight Success – How Realistic is that Assumption?

    I sometimes wished one fine morning I will get the results I always wanted; I will get the solution to my problems. But alas it never happened that easily!  My grandma used to say, our luck is buried under a rock, and it requires lots of effort to get it out; whereas “others” have it under a leaf, a wind blows and they find their fortune! For many years I felt less fortunate as nothing came easy for me. As I grew older and learned a thing or two, I realized many of the cases of those “fortunate others” actually took plenty of failures, sacrifices, and extra efforts to get to where they are…