The Tehsil offices in Punjab do not move fast. Nothing is simple, everything takes time, and, of course, palms must be oiled. The professional working with us was doing what professionals in such situations often do: explaining to us why things were complicated, why delays were inevitable, why … [Read more...]
Leadership Is a Lonely Road, but That’s Not the Whole Story
A few days ago, I stood in front of a room filled with some of the brightest young minds in Punjab - students who see themselves as future entrepreneurs, innovators, and global business leaders. The energy in the room was electric. They weren’t just there to listen; they were hungry for real … [Read more...]
The Case for a Personal Portfolio of Initiatives: Why Betting on One Thing is Never Enough
I have never lived a year in which I wasn’t working on multiple things at once. Not because I couldn’t focus, not because I was unsure of my path, but because I have always understood that the world moves too fast to rely on a single plan. For the past 20+ years, no matter what my primary role … [Read more...]
The Paradox of Patience: How Slowing Down Often Gets You There Faster
As I travel through India and admire the massive improvement in infrastructure, especially when it comes to roads, I can’t help marvelling at how the drivers here navigate the traffic. I see myself as a good driver, solid and well trained, but I can’t dare to drive here. One attribute, or habit … [Read more...]
Rising Above the Mundane: A Call to Level Up Knowledge Work
To me, knowledge work has always felt like it held so much promise. A life spent solving problems, creating new ideas, shaping the future - what could be more fulfilling? But if I’m being honest, the reality hasn’t always lived up to that vision. For too long, knowledge work has been weighed … [Read more...]
Noticing is Faster Than Knowing
Breakthroughs don’t always come with a drumroll. More often than not, they slip in quietly, in the spaces between what we think we know. They do not always happen because of how much we’ve studied, researched, or analyzed, but because of what we notice - sometimes in a split second, before we … [Read more...]
The Risk Worth Taking: A Path Forward for Impact Investing
This is a follow-up to The Cost of Doing Good, where I challenged the social impact sector - particularly foundations - to pause and ask some uncomfortable questions about the prevailing push toward impact investing. The first article wasn’t a critique of the idea itself but an invitation to a … [Read more...]
Wake Up, Canada: The Future Won’t Wait for Us
There’s a quiet complacency that creeps in when a nation has known peace, prosperity, and relative stability for so long. It’s almost seductive. We start to assume that what worked before will somehow carry us forward. That the formulas we perfected in the twentieth century will continue to … [Read more...]
The Cost of Doing Good: Rethinking the Impact Investing Chorus
When it comes to the social impact sector, and especially philanthropy, everyone - or almost everyone - is now carrying the flag of impact investing. It’s the movement of our time, the banner under which finance is expected to find its moral compass. And you would think that cash-rich … [Read more...]