"CEOs can't wait to read Sunny Bindra's articles every week."

Granddads’ hands are usually quite rough. Grandkids’ are mostly soft. And that’s the Buddenbrooks Effect. The label comes from Thomas Mann’s 1901 novel Buddenbrooks, which chronicled a merchant family’s decline across generations. Ever since, it has been shorthand for a familiar pattern in family enterprise: fortunes often thin out after about three generations. The founders […]

I wrote here recently about a close friend of my son offering him some real life counsel. That was Aiden: learn to accept difficulty without being defeated by it; accept impermanence without despair. Now another close buddy, Armaan, has added his own small truth: every life is a game of Snakes and Ladders. (Before I […]

John Lloyd was, by his own admission, useless at mathematics. He made it to university, tried to study Law. In a recent interview, he told James O’Brien he got a terrible degree, which he “passed by one mark or something like that.” He then decided to do something he enjoyed and thought he could be […]

I recently asked you to become more foolish. Today I’m asking you to be boring—all year long. The nudge came from this excellent tweet by Mark Manson: “The older I get, the more I realize that success at most things isn’t about finding the one trick or secret nobody knows about. It’s consistently doing the […]

I seem to work mostly as an advisor and teacher these days. I never set out to be; I fell into these roles by accident, and by request. It never escapes me that there is something more than faintly ridiculous about giving advice to others. Why should any one human be better than any other […]

Ever made a fool of yourself? I know I have. Many times. But I never wanted to. When I was growing up, being foolish was not at all desirable, or even tolerable. The world was divided into educated people and fools. The latter were illiterate, unprofessional, ignorant. They were not allowed to make any decisions […]

I listen for a living. Good counsel begins in the ear, not the mouth. All useful advice starts with deep listening. If an adviser, coach, or mentor rushes to tell you what to do without first understanding your world—how it looks and feels to you—they’ve missed the plot. If they lead with instructions rather than […]

What does it take to make a go of this life? Skills and smarts help. So do character, connections, timing, and health. But there’s a quieter edge that decides more than we admit: resilience—the ability to be knocked down, find your feet, and carry on with new clarity. Your “bounceability” as a human, in other […]

A and I. Two letters that are on everyone’s lips these days. Artificial intelligence, we are told, is the greatest opportunity in the history of humankind. It will free us all from drudge work and lead to an unprecedented productivity boom. Artificial intelligence, we are also told, is the greatest threat to the future of […]

Today I want to introduce you to a gentleman called Tancredi Falconeri. He’s not a real person, but he uttered one of life’s enduring wisdoms. Tancredi is a character in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard. The novel came out before I was born, but it has great modern relevance. I keep pointing this […]

I was attending my son’s university graduation ceremony recently, and amidst the pomp and parental joy of the great occasion, I caught a snippet of profundity in the air. The university’s chancellor, in giving his congratulatory words to the students, made this phrase his final piece of advice to those going out into the world: […]

Strategy is about advance thinking. I said so in my book on the subject, Up & Ahead—I even gave it that title because being strategic is about looking up from the details and ahead of the happenings. And yet, that book contains a counterpoint: strategy is also your next five minutes… That framing comes from […]

We all respect thinkers. Well, most of us, anyway. Thoughtful people are of immense value in a world running on shallowness and the absence of critical reasoning. They go deep, and they re-emerge with insights, wisdoms, and solutions that regular people cannot. Many folks like to hang out with proper thinkers, at least some of […]

The pause that saves us Creshonda Smith moved to Italy from America a while back, first to Rome and then to a remote town in the far south. She got a huge culture shock. Not about language, food, or fashion; but about attitudes towards rest. In her words: “For most of my life, being busy […]

I was very lucky when I was young to come across this concept: ACTIVATION ENERGY. I want to show it to you today. If you’re feeling stuck, stranded, unable to get going—this idea may just be the trigger you need. It certainly did wonders for me. In science, activation energy is the minimum energy needed […]

Do you know this word? ENSHITTIFICATION. It’s ugly and accurate. Cory Doctorow coined it. It describes what happens when tech platforms, once useful, go bad. Not all at once, but gradually—and then completely. The pattern is simple—and sadly predictable. When we start a great business, we try to be amazing for our customers. Then, we […]

I notice a disturbing trend in the favourite candies I have enjoyed since childhood. The quantities per piece or packet have been gradually shrinking. The packaging is often cheaper and more shoddy. And there is variation in quality depending on the target market: here in Africa, for example, there seems to be an assumption that […]

Richard Branson is dyslexic. The billionaire founder of the Virgin Group suffered at school because his brain was wired differently. Reading and writing was more difficult for him, and in those days dyslexia was not a known condition. He was dismissed as lazy or stupid by his teachers. But he now refers to dyslexia as […]

“The respect a person receives due to wealth is not their own; it is the respect for their wealth.” That was written by the writer Munshi Premchand, perhaps a century ago. A man draped in money is often showered with deference, but let him lose his fortune, and watch how quickly that reverence evaporates. What […]

Some football teams are all fire and fury—quick passing, relentless pressing, constant attacking. Others are patient, methodical, waiting for the right moment to strike. These are tactics—the specific ways a team plays in a given match. But behind the tactics lies something bigger: a strategy. A team’s strategy defines its long-term approach—whether it builds around […]

“In a perfect world…” How many times have you heard that, or said it yourself? The human yearning for things to be better, more conducive, more acceptable, seems to be insatiable. We bring our children up in the pretence that the world is far better than it really is; that life is manageable and addressable, […]

A New Year is the time to look ahead, to plan for the future, to make preparations. Right? And yet. Last week I closed the year urging you to be aware of the words of the wise since time immemorial. Be present. Be rooted in the here and now. Tomorrow is a dream, today is […]

I saw Phil Rosenthal attempt to learn dancing in Buenos Aires, in an episode of Netflix’s Somebody Feed Phil. When he later spoke to his parents back in the US on a video call, his father gave him this advice: “Your dancing was a little klutzy. Maybe leave that alone and stick to what you’re […]

Do you find it hard to say no? You’re not alone. We are conditioned to say yes to things. We find ourselves bounced into socials, meetups, one-on-ones and the like all the time. Many of those time-sinks we had no desire to say yes to, but social and peer pressures won the day. Professionally, there’s […]

We find ourselves in photographs all the time these days. Even diehard introverts like me can’t escape the lens and are constantly dragged into photos by family, friends, and even colleagues and clients. Ever since the smartphone camera landed in billions of hands, photography exploded. It’s as if every moment now needs its stamp. I […]

When was it clear that BlackBerry was on its last legs? Around 2013, when its top line had already halved. Yet it had clocked its record revenues just two years earlier. When Apple launched its first iPhone in 2007, quickly followed by the first Android phone in 2008, BlackBerry still had reason to feel secure. […]

Why is innovation so difficult? Is it because coming up with brilliant new ideas is so hard? Not really. Innovation is a team sport. Put some talented folks together under the right conditions, and the ideas will flow. The real problem with innovation comes well before the team gathers to generate ideas. Lech Walesa once […]

Most of the people reading this column right now are billionaires. Don’t believe me? That’s because you naturally assumed “billions” are about money. Jade Bonacolta, a writer on personal growth and productivity, has a different way of looking at it. One billion seconds equals 30 or so years. If you have that much time available […]