Humour is often seen as a lighthearted and playful aspect of our lives, but it can also be an indicator of our intellectual abilities. The ability to understand and create jokes requires a unique combination of cognitive skills, including verbal and nonverbal communication, social awareness, and creativity. As a result, researchers have explored the relationship between humour and intelligence, with some studies suggesting that those who excel in humour tend to have higher IQs and better overall cognitive functioning.

The concept of aukat, or status, is an important one in many cultures and industries. In my Pictor days, I had many encounters with executives turned investors, and it always amazed me how they operated from a presumption of expertise and success because of their past. The skills and knowledge gained in one domain can often be transferred to another, and can be valuable assets in building credibility and reputation in a new industry.

As the world of business has evolved over the past few decades, so too have the cultures of different types of organizations. Corporations often talk about adopting the startup mindset and culture, while every young startup gradually slides to a more corporate mindset. Following points are a checklist of things to assess how a unit’s culture regardless of their perceived status. Importance of Titles vs Ideas In a corporation, job titles and hierarchies are often highly valued, while in a startup, ideas and results are more important, even if they dont necessarily come from the designated team.

People are the startup, period. Hiring is the important part of building a successful business, but it is also one of the most challenging. Despite the best efforts mistakes are always made and the wrong person is hired for the job. While these situations can be frustrating, there are some silver linings: Anti-fragilityA bad hire is a major stressor to an otherwise functional unit. The reaction of the unit to the stressor is a test of the system’s immunity and eventually leads to improved bonding and resilience.

As a people manager, my primary focus is on leading and guiding my team to achieve our common goals. But, I never expected that my experience with coding would have such a profound impact on my ability to lead and manage others. From building software applications to learning about systems thinking and abstraction, coding has taught me valuable lessons about leadership. In this blog, I want to share some of the key insights I gained and how they have helped me to become a better leader.

Humans, like all the other living systems are a result of small transformations over millions of years. But, at some point of time we crossed a threshold of intelligence and learned to build products (tools). This accelerated our rate of transformation exponentially. We have used this ability to will into existence rather than just wish for the changes we wanted to bring to our surroundings and now our bodies. From farming and agriculture to silicon and nano-materials of today, technology driven transformations have improved longevity and quality of human life.

Starting this blog has been insanely hard for me. I have been collating ideas for blog posts for years now, some just headings some well researched articles, but none published ever. Tried by creating a medium account, then a substack account, then thought of publishing snippets on LinkedIn, but never posted a word. Like all things in nature I too am caught in a duality. I’m both an introvert and an extrovert.