Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater? Maybe You Should.

May 30, 2025May 30, 2025 by Vik

We’ve all heard it: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” In business, this phrase is often deployed as a caution against overcorrection. It urges us to preserve the core while cleaning up the mess around it. Fair enough, except when the core itself is the problem. The phrase assumes there’s a precious “baby” worth saving. But what if there isn’t? Or what if the effort to preserve it is what’s anchoring your organization to outdated …

10 Things Cobra Kai Teaches Us About Leadership and Focus

May 23, 2025May 23, 2025 by Vik

Leadership lessons don’t always come from boardrooms or business books. Sometimes, they strike hardest from an unexpected place—like a karate dojo. Cobra Kai, the modern continuation of The Karate Kid saga, is packed with drama, action, and yes, deeply relevant insights on leadership and focus. Just as The Bear showed us what kitchen chaos reveals about team dynamics, Cobra Kai brings clarity on how leaders rise, fall, and evolve under pressure. Here are ten principles every leader can take from the mat …

Pushing Through: The Leadership Muscle No One Talks About (But Everyone Needs)

May 4, 2025May 2, 2025 by Vik

Every business hits friction. Sometimes that friction is healthy; it creates checks, balance, and rigor. But too often, friction becomes inertia—slowing progress through convoluted processes, outdated systems, unclear ownership, or quiet resistance from those who’ve grown comfortable. That’s when pushing through matters most. Pushing through is a leadership muscle. It’s not soft power. It’s not charisma. It’s not consensus-building. It’s the ability to get meaningful things done—especially when the odds are stacked against you. And let’s …

What The Bear Taught Me About Leadership, Teamwork, and Mastery

March 28, 2025March 28, 2025 by Vik

At first glance, The Bear might seem like just another gritty kitchen drama—but beneath the loudness, noise and stress is one of the best explorations of leadership, teamwork, and the pursuit of excellence I’ve seen on screen. Whether you’re running a fine-dining restaurant or leading a tech team, the same ingredients show up: relentless attention to detail, a culture of trust, and the unglamorous but vital effort behind every great outcome. As someone who works in a …

Enterprise Complexity / Ambiguity

January 18, 2023January 11, 2023 by Vik

I came across this visual just recently, and it has quickly become my favorite visual to depict organizational complexity and ambiguity. If you are like many of us, who have had to deal with that, then you know the countless hours spent debating about things. Everyone has their interpretation, and everyone has their opinions. Then one fine day someone says enough, and decides to dig deeper to really find out what the truth is. They …

Thinking and Doing

January 5, 2023January 5, 2023 by Vik

Steve Jobs on the intersection of thinking and doing: “My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, you know, did Leonardo have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years out in the future what he would paint or the technology he …

How did Will Power win 2022 IndyCar Championship

September 13, 2022September 12, 2022 by Vik

If you are like me who was still left with questions yesterday on how Will Power eventually ended up winning the 2022 IndyCar Championship, then I have some answers for you. Why is that even a question, you might ask, after all Will Power did drive superbly over the season. He did indeed, but with only 1 win out of 17 races, it rather looks quite odd, and especially that the most number of race …

Speed of Decision Making

January 3, 2023January 12, 2022 by Vik

I learned this at a former organization. It is a good framework for decision making, and to understand slow vs fast. Hopefully, it is beneficial.

Every Little Bit Matters

May 16, 2022January 6, 2022 by Vik

Many a times we believe there is a secret special sauce to being a leader, and to motivate people. Reality is that, there is no single sauce. In fact, there are many tiny droplets of flavor into play, and that many of those we already know/do. Take for example, a simple gesture of saying good morning to your team every single day, either in-person or on your company’s instant messaging tool. That simple gesture goes …