By Manish Sabharwal, Chairman, TeamLease Services
Poet Maya Angelou captures a wonderful truth when she says that the universe is not made of atoms but stories. Narratives are powerful not only because they capture the human condition in ways that facts, figures and logic cannot but they influence us in ways that become obvious only in retrospect. Here are five stories from books and movies that have shaped my view of the world.
The story of Gandhi
There is something for everybody in life of Mohandas K. Gandhi; his innovations of satyagraaha and hyphenated identities, his imagination in using the symbolism of salt, his experiments with personal self-control, his high command style that denied Bose the congress leadership, his ability of establish diverse friendships, his choice of Nehru over Patel, his choice of peanut butter rotis for lunch, and so much else.
Team of Rivals
We have done a better job with our second venture because every entrepreneur learns the hard way that the team you create is the company you create. We learnt that companies who do great things have different skill sets around the table but it is hard to avoid the cognitive bias of humans wanting to work with people who are like them (race, language, schools, discipline).
The story of India's independence struggle
The story of how 200,000 white people came to rule over 220 million brown ones is interesting but understandable; the British had superior technology and the raj was a joint venture with many Indians (662 Maharajas, the Zamindars of West Bengal, the Talukdars of United Provinces, the Gurkhas, etc).
But the more fascinating story is about how independence was won from an empire on which the sun never set. This struggle ..
The Shawshank Redemption
The hardest part of building a company is working silently over long periods of time and keep the faith in goals that are faraway. Sanskrit has a wonderful word called Mantragupti that means the strength in silence.
The story of Amazon.com
One of entrepreneurship's most difficult challenges is balancing the long and short term. We entrepreneurs write business plans in poetry but execute them in prose and almost everything takes more time and money than you think.
For me the story of amazon.com and its founder Jeff Bezos is an inspiring example of being able to convince stakeholders to overlook short term metrics (profits) in pursuit of an ambitious and wonderful long term ..
Poet Maya Angelou captures a wonderful truth when she says that the universe is not made of atoms but stories. Narratives are powerful not only because they capture the human condition in ways that facts, figures and logic cannot but they influence us in ways that become obvious only in retrospect. Here are five stories from books and movies that have shaped my view of the world.
The story of Gandhi
There is something for everybody in life of Mohandas K. Gandhi; his innovations of satyagraaha and hyphenated identities, his imagination in using the symbolism of salt, his experiments with personal self-control, his high command style that denied Bose the congress leadership, his ability of establish diverse friendships, his choice of Nehru over Patel, his choice of peanut butter rotis for lunch, and so much else.
Team of Rivals
We have done a better job with our second venture because every entrepreneur learns the hard way that the team you create is the company you create. We learnt that companies who do great things have different skill sets around the table but it is hard to avoid the cognitive bias of humans wanting to work with people who are like them (race, language, schools, discipline).
The story of India's independence struggle
The story of how 200,000 white people came to rule over 220 million brown ones is interesting but understandable; the British had superior technology and the raj was a joint venture with many Indians (662 Maharajas, the Zamindars of West Bengal, the Talukdars of United Provinces, the Gurkhas, etc).
But the more fascinating story is about how independence was won from an empire on which the sun never set. This struggle ..
The Shawshank Redemption
The hardest part of building a company is working silently over long periods of time and keep the faith in goals that are faraway. Sanskrit has a wonderful word called Mantragupti that means the strength in silence.
The story of Amazon.com
One of entrepreneurship's most difficult challenges is balancing the long and short term. We entrepreneurs write business plans in poetry but execute them in prose and almost everything takes more time and money than you think.
For me the story of amazon.com and its founder Jeff Bezos is an inspiring example of being able to convince stakeholders to overlook short term metrics (profits) in pursuit of an ambitious and wonderful long term ..
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