Sunil Pentapati

Update 10/9/2018: Started writing this blog several years back during the peak of Occupy movements but could not complete. But several events in the last couple of months prompted me to start modifying the content and work towards completing this... For people across countries and societies freedom to exercise rights and contribute towards the betterment of the society is not at the same level. We have witnessed several occupy movements across the world over the past several years. Some peaceful, some violent, some deadly & beyond control and some are still in progress and don’t have an end in sight. Each of them began with a reason that is personal to the people living in those societies. I cannot even fathom or pretend that I completely understand the problems and/or reasons. It will be an insult to those people and societies if someone outside thinks otherwise. And most of these occupy movements happened in developing or underdeveloped countries. Suddenly things began to c

Thinking on this topic  for a while but what really prompted me to write the article is this piece of  baffling  story I read about GM. After the 2008 financial crisis when they were on the verge of going bankrupt GM was not only looking to shore up their North American operations but also find ways to get an olive branch for their Global Operations. US Lawmakers did not allow GM to use taxpayers money to bail out their Global Operations. Looking into that article and going thru the events that happened and how GM’s leadership took the decisions they took I was wondering about “Decision Making” and its process. Read more articles on this topic including this one from  HBR .  A lot of them talked about frameworks, others talked about complex leadership capabilities and while other talked about soft skills required.  According to Wikipedia though it is.. "In  psychology ,  decision-making  is regarded as the  cognitive process  resulting in the selection of a belief or a

I have been thinking about this odd feeling for some time and want to check if any one else share the same position. Competing in the Age of Digital Convergence many companies have been moving away from classic Waterfall process to Agile and Kanban. Product development teams are aiming for minimally viable products (MVP) to gain faster quantitative or qualitative feedback instead of the traditional model where companies used to spend longer time building and testing before making them available to their customers. Individual employees are part of teams led by different managers in any given year and they are being given feedback continuously. Amid all these changes on how we operate we still continue to have an yearly ritual for reviewing an employee. Did they take a different role with the same name? What are your thoughts?

I think for a lot of people around the world there is something that strikes when they hear 8 hours. It is a third of your time per day and a significant part of your life.  So did you guess what I am referring to here? That is the amount of time most of us work and we spend an equal amount of time sleeping leaving us with 8 hours for the rest. So if you are someone who works for more than 8 hours how do you balance the rest? Do you get paid? Are you recognized for these efforts? Is the company expecting you to do so? To put it differently are you a person who do not want to spend beyond 8 hours at any cost? Do you think companies should not force you too? That is the time organizations ask from us. That is the time different people use in different ways. Is this the time that separates the successful vs. the rest? Ok! I will stop here with questions. When I started the article I said "for a lot of people" for a reason. Because a large part of the g

This phrase was originated by Rene Dubos as an advisor to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. In 1979, Dubos suggested that ecological consciousness should begin at home. He believed that there needed to be a creation of a World Order in which "natural and social units maintain or recapture their identity, yet interplay with each other through a rich system of communications". In the 1980's, Dubos held to his thoughts on acting locally, and felt that issues involving the environment must be dealt with in their "unique physical, climatic, and cultural contexts." So coming out of the context of its usage at that time I think we are using or to that matter of fact over-using or misusing this principal in other disciplines. Every time we watch TV and see an ad for soap or shampoo or electronics what we notice is not the product but the lifestyle of the people using them. So gone are the days where you design onc

Comparison between leaders in the industry and leaders from different generations are not unusual in various professions.  In these comparisons we see how leaders from certain generations are revered for their leadership skills. However, the question arises, how many current leaders do you see in your list? If there are not that many, does that really mean that the current generation of leaders, for the most part are not on par, or is it something else? Here is my take: The context of Leadership changed over the decades, as has the context in which we are measuring it. According to the MIT Leadership Center "the history of leadership theory started with an emphasis on traits -- the notion that it is the make-up of the leader that makes all the difference." We all try to understand what makes a great leader and what leadership is, but the concept remains amorphous. Traits alone do not always predict the effectiv