While technical expertise remains essential, the accelerating pace of AI and automation in nearly every field means that adaptability, creativity, and collaboration will be even more critical by the time they graduate.

At a time when the shelf life of skills is becoming shorter, meta skills, the deeper and transferable capabilities that enable us to learn, unlearn and relearn are timeless.

As Tom Peters put it,

    “The number one premise of business is that it is changing, and unless you are devoted to learning, you have no chance of staying on top.”

With an intent of providing a useful and memorable model for students to use, I focused on three meta-skills for lifelong learning – here in form of a mindmapped sketchnote. 

• You can read the full post in the latest edition of Clarity Canvas Newsletter
• Check out Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes covering 90+ timeless ideas on leadership, learning, and change.  

The post Thriving in the Age of AI: Head, Hands, and Heart first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

In the latest edition of my latest newsletter Clarity Canvas Weekly, I share my experience with Journaling as a tool for personal growth, mindfulness and sense-making as a leader. 

While you can enjoy the full post on Substack, here is the sketchnote summary of the key ideas:

• Read more: Journaling for Leaders and Learners
• Check out Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes covering 90+ timeless ideas on leadership, learning, and change.  

The post Journaling for Leaders and Learners first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

Handy had a remarkable ability to anticipate shifts long before they unfolded. His Shamrock Organization model, introduced in the early 1990s, predicted the rise of flexible work structures—dividing organizations into a core team, outsourced specialists, and temporary workers. Decades later, this vision materialized as what we now recognize as the gig economy.

Another of his transformative ideas was the portfolio career—encouraging individuals to build diverse and meaningful work experiences rather than adhering to a single career path. It was a call to embrace agility and purpose in a changing world.

One concept that resonated deeply with me is Handy’s Sigmoid Curve—a model of learning and growth that starts with investment and struggle, peaks with success, and inevitably declines unless one reinvents in time. His wisdom was clear: to sustain relevance, individuals and organizations must begin a new learning curve before they reach their peak.

When I first encountered this idea, it empowered me to shape my own path—blending diverse yet connected skills to carve a niche that continues to evolve.

Here is a quick summary of Charles Handy’s ideas that shaped the world of work: 

(This post was originally shared on my newsletter “Clarity Canvas Weekly“)

In case you are new here:

• Subscribe to my weekly newsletter “Clarity Canvas Weekly” to receive new sketchnotes and insights every Thursday.
• Check out Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes covering 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game. Ideal for coaches, leaders and learners.

The post Charles Handy’s Big Ideas first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

2025 is a square year (45 x 45) – the only square year most of us will see in our lifetimes. The last was 1936 (44 x 44), the next is 2116 (46 x 46)

Go with the flow

has been my mantra ever since I moved out of corporate corridors in 2021 to be on my own. I wanted to express myself fully through all my skills (and combinations of skills) rather than being confined by a box of responsibilities.

For me, it has meant:

• Flexibility Over Rigidity: As a solopreneur, I have reasonable plans but what has been most worthwhile is ability to pivot when circumstances change. Cultivating an openness to detours has led me to unexpected and most rewarding opportunities. Learning how to be adaptive, agile and curious has been the work of a lifetime.

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

• Harnessing Energy: The joy of being a solo is to maximize work that taps into my energy and passion. I cultivated courage to say no to work that drags me. Instead of resisting any setbacks or overly trying to make things work, I focus on my circle of control and bring energy in things I do – leadership coaching, facilitation and visual storytelling.

• Trusting the Journey: Uncertainty is a feature, especially when you run your own business. When we trust the journey, we can focus on our next best steps (H.T Dave Gray) and let the journey evolve. It is about combining agency to act now with a sense of surrender to what happens as a result of it. A lot of what I offer to customers today started as small experiments that evolved and scaled. As the business grows, my challenge is to keep running small experiments while also working on serving customers.       

“Purpose may not always be the starting point of your journey. Sometimes, you start the journey and the purpose reveals itself.” – from my post Move and the way appears 

• Being Fully Present: Our presence and full attention is a gift for others, especially in a hyper-distracted world. When facilitating conversations, running workshops and creating visuals, my presence and ability to be in the moment makes all the difference. Going with the flow is about focusing on the here and now. That’s when we can synthesize what we consume, make meaning, spot opportunities and make meaningful decisions with our goals.

• Finding Joy in the Journey: When I reflect on 3+ years of being an independent professional, I am amazed at how things add up to create a body of work that we can be proud of. I have always believed that the journey is the destination and every step along the way counts – even the missteps. For me, the mindset shift from “have to to the work” to “get to do the work” has been the most significant one.

Looking Back at 2024

More than two decades in leading teams/organizations and over 4 years building QAspire Consulting, I have learned that… 

1. …leadership development and change isn’t about frameworks – it is about creating conducive spaces where people can discover their authentic voice through coaching, facilitation and visual thinking tools. 
2. …large scale and complex change isn’t about top-down push – but about nurturing change carefully, paying full attention to what makes us human. It happens when people/teams converse to uncover their collective intelligence in a facilitated environment.
3. …shapes, metaphors and visual frameworks as tools to think are becoming indispensable when trying to impact any behavior change in a noisy world.

For me, the intersection of leadership development, change management and visual thinking continued to prove powerful in the past year, as organizations and thought leaders sought more engaging ways to clarify their ideas, build capability, develop leaders and nurture change. 

On the work front, the past year saw me:

Facilitating a large scale change for one of the largest IT services company

Running leadership development offsites for customers in IT and pharma space covering seasoned leaders, middle managers and emerging leaders (HiPo’s)

Conducting Quality Mindset workshops for multiple customers

Illustrating two best-selling books in a co-creative spirit

Graphically recording strategy sessions, culture communications and events globally

Conducting visual thinking and sketchnote workshops through monthly sessions, organizational workshops for teams and in academic environments

Curating, creating, sharing, and learning through sketchnotes, newsletter and blogs.

2024 was a good year as far as creating and sharing my work was concerned. LinkedIn tells me that my posts garnered over a million impressions, thousands of reactions/shares and hundreds of comments even when my posting was infrequent at best. 

Here are the posts I wrote on my blog:

• Measuring Right: Understanding Goodhart’s Law
• How to Turn Conflict Into a Constructive Negotiation
• Mindset of Leaders who are Friction Fixers
• Supercommunicators: The Art of a “Learning Conversation”
• How to be a Boldly Inclusive Leader
• Invisible Costs to Consider in Decision Making
• The Iceberg of Organizational Knowledge: How to Unlock Tacit Knowledge
• The Spotlight Effect
• Efficiency and Productivity: The Balance that Drives Success
• How to Use Digital Spaces for Personal Branding, Learning, and Business Growth
• 7 Deadly Sins of Psychological Safety
• Opening the (Johari) Window to Your Self-Awareness
• 8 Questions for Aligning Team on Strategy Execution

Newsletter

I am very excited to move my newsletter – Clarity Canvas Weekly – to Substack.com reaching more than 2700 people. I particularly love the community aspect of the platform. I write new posts each week on a Thursday and it goes out to more than 2700 people who have subscribed. There is also a paid subscription (that supports my work) where subscribers get exclusive sketchnotes and other resources through the year. 

Gratitude

I am grateful every single day for family, health, friends, online communities and clients – all of which makes my pursuit worthwhile.  

On the work front, I am looking forward to 2025 as a year when I expand impact through deeper integration of visual thinking tools in leadership development, change consulting and facilitative interventions – and do it in the spirit of curiosity, playfulness and co-creation.

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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The post Looking Forward to the Square Year first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

Strategic Clarity

Things move in the right direction when everyone knows the goal and their part in getting there. Clarity enables your team’s next steps, promotes right decision making and helps people be adaptable. 

When teams come together to make something happen, it is important to spend quality time upfront thinking about clarity. 

Simon Terry offers very useful set of questions that team members should ask early and often to arrive at clarity.

The questions are:

What does success look like?

Who is your customer?

How are you different?

Why does a customer choose you?

What proof points underpin your marketing?

What capabilities do you need to succeed?

What employee experience do you need to drive customer experience?

What won’t you do?

Here’s a hand-drawn visual checklist that you may find useful – whether you are running a large scale change program, executing a complex corporate strategy or building a new product/service. 

Execution is About Details

One thing I would add: Clarity alone isn’t enough, teams also need attention to details. The little things that you think don’t matter until they do – the typo in a proposal, a miscommunication that snowballs into an escalation, a relevant communication that was delayed. You get the point. 

Teams that care enough ask the right questions, get to clarity about the value they seek to deliver and customer they are serving. With that clarity, they go and sweat the details.

OVER TO YOU: What do you think about the checklist? What questions would you add?

A Counter View on Attention to Details from Jason Fried

Right after I posted this blog, I read this counter view on attention to details by Jason Fried, which beautifully complements ideas I shared. Here’s Jason’s take as shared on LinkedIn

There’s a lot of talk about how important details are. But what’s often left out of the discussion is timing. Details and timing are intimately related.

God, the devil, beauty, perfection, precision – these aren’t the only things you’ll find in the details. You’ll also find stagnation, disagreement, meetings, and delays.

Ignore details early on.

How often have you found yourself stuck on a little thing for a whole day? How often have you realized that the progress you made today wasn’t real progress? This happens when you focus on details too early in the process. There’s plenty of time to be a perfectionist. Just do it later.

Just get the stuff on the screen for now. Then use it. Make sure it works. Later on you can adjust and perfect it.

Details reveal themselves as you use what you’re building. You’ll see what needs more attention. You’ll feel what’s missing. You’ll know which potholes to pave over because you’ll keep hitting them. That’s when you need to pay attention, not sooner.

My key takeaway:

• Once high level strategic direction is clear, run small experiments to validate your hypothesis.
• Attend to details when you learn while executing, and put the lessons back into your execution.
• Too much focus on details early on can paralyze execution. 

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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The post 8 Questions for Aligning Team on Strategy Execution first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

And yet, when you can tap into the hidden feedback others have, you are on the path to real growth.

The Johari Window

That’s where Johari Window comes in as a handy tool that helps us understand ourselves better by looking through four panes:

• Arena: Things you know about yourself and others also know about it.
• Blindspots: Things others know about you that you are not aware of.
• Facade: Things about yourself (beliefs, thoughts, aspirations, fears etc) that you know, but others don’t.
• Unknown: Things abut you that neither you are aware about nor others are.

But here’s the kicker: most of us tend to focus too much on what we think we know about outselves. Tasha Eurich’s  book Insight tells us that building external self-awareness (outsight) is as crucial as building internal self-awareness (insight). Understanding how others see us matters as much as how we see our own selves.

“There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” – Benjamin Franklin

Opening Your Window to Self-Awareness

Here’s how you can use this awareness:

• Expand your Arena: Work out loud. Share your process. Build network of relationships.
• Shrink your Blindspots: Seek continual feedback from peers, bosses and customers. Avail coaching. Act on the feedback.
• Minimize your Facade: Be integral in your thoughts, words and deeds. Open up about your aspirations, beliefs and fears. Vulnerability builds connections and establishes authenticity.
• Embrace the Unknown: as an emergent space to explore the self and discover your hidden talents.

In my career, Johari window has served me as an excellent tool to bridge the gaps. It helped me reframe some of my perceived weaknesses into strengths through active self-introspection and feedback. My biggest learning is: When we embrace the unknown and shrink our blindspots, we open the window to create more room for connection, empathy and leadership.

Because leadership isn’t about being perfect. It’s about using the compass of awareness to enable growth – for the self, for others around you, and for the context you work in.

Johari Window: A Sketchnote

Here is a sketchnote depicting Johari Window:

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

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Let me illustrate this by two contrasting examples. In one instance, a project manager failed to deliver on an agreed scope, and when senior leaders intervened, the manager was harshly asked, “Who’s standing on the fault line? Whose salary should we deduct for this?” This punitive language created a hostile environment, discouraging openness and learning.

In a different scenario, when a member of my product development team made an error affecting a client’s production database, the leader approached it differently. Instead of blaming, he reiterated his confidence in the team leader saying, “I know we’ve made a mistake, but I’m confident you can quickly fix this before it causes any financial damage.” This response boosted morale and led to a quick resolution. Later, during the retrospective, he asked, “What can we learn from this to prevent it from happening again?” This shift from blame to learning fostered reflection and improvement.

I read Tom Geraghty’s newsletter on Psychological Safety with great interest. In a latest edition, Tom outlines Seven deadly sins of pshchological safety. I highly recommend his newsletter if you are someone who is trying build a psychologically safe culture. (Full post here)

Learning to be mindful of our language is key to maturing as leaders. Our words shape workplace culture, either encouraging risk-taking and innovation or stifling initiative.

Here are seven deadly sins of psychological safety in a visual form.

Complement this reading with my earlier post on “Conversations that build psychological safety” by Amy Edmondson. 

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

Buy Now!

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My journey, which began with my first blog post in April 2006, followed by rise of social media has reaffirmed this time and again. These foundational principles are still as relevant and transcend beyond platform-specific tactics.

Last week, I had the privilege of sharing my journey and insights on using LinkedIn as a tool for building a personal brand at IIMA Ventures + eChai entures event. It was an inspiring conversation moderated by Kumar Manish and Jatin Chaudhary with fellow panelists Lipi Goyal, Syed Nadeem Jafri and Jaydip Parikh. 

The session was a fantastic reminder that the digital space, when approached with authenticity and generosity, can create a powerful platform for learning and growth.

I created the 3C’s for Leading and Learning on Social Media back in 2015. Here is a revised version that serves as a useful checklist for leveraging digital spaces – and captures the essence of the panel discussion.

Related Reading at QAspire.com

In 2023, I compiled a list of lessons I learned on being social. The lessons broadly apply to our interactions in the digital spaces as well as in real life. Here is a sketchnote that sums it up.

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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Efficiency is about doing things right, while productivity is about doing the right things. Efficiency is the answer to “How do we optimize so that we can do same amount of work with less?” whereas Productivity is the answer to “How do we create more value with the same?” 

Both are crucial, yet I have seen business leaders either sacrificing one for the other OR focusing only on one of these. When leaders become overly obsessed with efficiency, they may streamline tasks that don’t even need to be done, missing the big picture (sub-optimisation). Being efficient requires focus on process and automation (reducing cost). Being productive requires focus on people and culture (increasing value).  This requires leaders to balance between the two, appreciate the difference and maximize both. 

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” – Peter Ducker

Haven’t we all seen cases where ambitious changes aimed at efficiency gains failed because of a poor culture? And the ones where talented and motivated individuals missing the mark due to poor systems and processes? In my view, this happens all too often in organizations. 

In her tweet, Helen Bevan writes,

“High efficiency does not mean high productivity. We can create highly efficient processes, but if people aren’t motivated to do the work or following procedures, they won’t produce results quickly.

High productivity does not mean high efficiency. We can have the most highly skilled & connected people, but if they are drowning in operational processes & red tape, they won’t produce results quickly.

If we understand the different approaches they require, we can maximise both efficiency and productivity”

If you are a member of Medium, you can read Avi Siegel’s full source article here. Here is a sketchnote summary based on distillation from Helen Bevan. 

Related Posts at QAspire.com

• On Simplifying Through Subtraction
• Productivity Reminders
• Getting Work Done: Flow versus Distractions

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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When I turn the needle of conversation towards the others, I relieve myself of the anxiety associated with being under the spotlight. I recently practiced this reframe more consciously in a Leadership Workshop after reading Sahil Bloom’s newsletter that offered useful guidance on overcoming the spotlight effect. 

The newsletter edition offered valuable insights on what is Spotlight effect, how it impacts us and what can we do to dim the spotlight on ourselves. Here’s a sketchnote summary of key ideas.

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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Everything that is found in documents, systems, process flows and tool kits is “explicit” knowledge that is useful to sustain the business and keep the “status quo”. That is the tip of the iceberg – visible and accessible. In fact, most of the content that AI repurposes from online resources is explicit knowledge. 

The hidden treasure of organizational knowledge is tacit knowledge that is deeply rooted in people, their experiences, skills, insights and judgements. Tacit knowledge doesn’t come to the fore easily because it resides in the minds of people. How to react to a specific situation? How to connect seemingly discrete dots? That’s all tacit and invaluable at the same time. Unlocking tacit knowledge is how organizations break past their internal barriers to improve and innovate.

Another key thing about tacit knowledge is that it is ever evolving. We learn through experience to gain tacit knowledge and when we document/codify it, it turns into explicit knowledge which spreads through sharing. The key is to constantly build connections between our understanding from different disciplines and gain new tacit knowledge (nuanced understanding) through experience. 

The Key to Unlock Tacit Knowledge

It starts with leadership commitment. When leaders across the board focus on cultivating the mindset of learning together, tacit knowledge precipitates through conversations. During my 6 years tenure as an organizational leader, I had reasonable success in building a culture of constant learning starting from one to one interactions, functional practices to cross-team learning forums. It was a long and arduous journey that led our R&D teams to build and support a truly world-class product that ranked amongst top 3 in the Gartner Magic Quadrant consistently over the years. Developing people and seeing them grow was even more gratifying.

In my experience, building such a culture requires leaders to:

• Actively focus on building trust and collaboration
• Build collective learning rituals within and across teams enabling people to look back (retrospection) and look forward (ideation)
• Ask open ended questions that elicits deeper understanding and organic exchange of tacit knowledge
• Build a conducive and psychologically safe culture where people feel comfortable opening up with their ideas and insights, and learn from successes as well as failures.
• Build reflective and retrospective practices to enable continuous learning in the flow of work
• Invest in systems like enterprize social network where conversations can happen
• Create internal coaching and mentoring programs to guide (and be guided) through personalized interactions
• Create communities of practice for knowledge sharing and mutual learning
• Codify and plough back lessons into organizational knowledge databases, processes and toolkits. 
• Truly invest in learning and development initiatives exposing people to newer ideas from within and outside the organization enabling people to blend their experiences with needs of the new context.
• Position constant learning as a journey rather than “training as an event”

A facilitative mindset is about understanding that the real knowledge of organisation is in collective intelligence. A facilitative leader creates conversational spaces, remains curious about what people learn and bring that knowledge into improvements and innovative ideas. Such a mindset enables people to exercise their choice of sharing and contributing.

Being facilitative is about stepping aside, even if a few hours each week, from operational stuff and focus on conversations leading to learning. Building such a culture ultimately boils down to “commitment”. In this context, Microsoft’s story of embracing growth mindset, inclusivity and building a “learn-it-all” culture is very inspiring. 

Embracing a facilitative mindset of leadership unlocks the untapped potential of tacit knowledge while empowering people/teams to thrive in an ever-evolving world. 

As Nick Milton says in his wonderful post, “You cannot solve knowledge problems with information tools alone.” (Hat Tip to Helen Bevan for sharing Nick’s post)

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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The post The Iceberg of Organizational Knowledge: How to Unlock Tacit Knowledge first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

You only realize later that the project you took up ate all your team’s time and resources to the point of making losses and losing reputation. That free speaking gig meant hours spent preparing for it, away from your family and friends. That product that looked like great bargain ended up being a crappy product that felt like a waste.

Every “Yes” contains a “No” to something else, and vice versa. (Courtesy: Nicholas Bate) 

This happens all the time, in personal as well as business context. That’s because we take these decisions very lightly without doing critical thinking. But then, there are invisible costs that we can only feel, but cannot tangibly count. How would you measure loss of reputation because of that failed project, or lost productivity addressing something that could have been avoided completely?

Critical decisions are not binary but multifaceted. When stakes are high (personally, emotionally, and professionally), it helps to carefully consider different facets of it. This is not about discouraging quick decisions, but encouraging thoughtful decisions when it matters. I am a big fan of taking quick decisions, acting and adapting/learning our way into doing things right when stakes are low. That’s how we learn – through small experiments, reflection and putting that learning into our next step. 

In this context, I read this wonderful post from Frank Sonnenberg offering a useful checklist to consider when making decisions. He says,

When making decisions, most people view cost as an important consideration. While price is undoubtedly crucial, what about invisible costs that also come into play? For example, what are the long-term effects of your decision? Does your choice align with your beliefs and values? And of course, have you considered how your decision impacts your relationships? Simply put, hidden costs may be invisible to the naked eye, but they’re very visible to your wallet. Overlooking these factors can cost you a bundle.

Here is a #sketchnote summary of how Invisible costs can cost you a lot. 

Related Reading at QAspire.com

• Dealing With Analysis Paralysis Versus Death by Instinct
• The ‘Invisibles’ in Business Performance
• Five-Why Technique for Problem Solving and Decision Making
• Invisible Cost of “Toxic” Leadership

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 88+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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The post Invisible Costs to Consider in Decision Making first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

Practicing Inclusion is Transformative

When Satya Nadella took charge as Microsoft’s CEO, the company was struggling with fairly rigid culture and stagnation. Nadella emphasized the importance of being a learning leader, adopting a growth mindset and working collaboratively with empathy. He worked hard at breaking down silos, encouraged employees to learn from each other, be customer centric, embrace diverse perspectives and work as one team to accomplish common goals. He conducted regular town-halls, institutionalized mentoring programs, conducted open forums to elicit ideas and concerns.

“Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.”
– Jesse Jackson

The culture shifted over the years, so did the outcomes. Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform was accomplished through a rigorous cross-functional collaboration. Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft transformed into a dynamic and forward-thinking organization resulting in growth and innovation.

Nadella’s story underlines what research from McKinsey & Co. suggests: That companies with diverse leadership are 33% more likely to achieve above-average profitability. 

The Boldly Inclusive Leader

In this context, I read Minette Norman’s book “The Boldly Inclusive Leader” with great interest. The book is a compelling guide for leaders to foster a more inclusive workplace. Norman provides actionable strategies and insights to build an inclusive culture through foundations of continuous learning, active listening, authentic communication, and creating psychologically safe environment for people to thrive. For me, Norman’s insights on being self-aware and being willing to embrace discomfort stood out. She reframes difficult experiences as “learning opportunities” and encourages leaders to reflect on their biases when dealing with people.

A Sketchnote on What Boldy Inclusive Leaders Do

The book is a must read if you are looking for a powerful and actionable guide to being more inclusive. Here is a sketchnote synthesizing some of the key ideas that truly stood out for me:

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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The post How to be a Boldly Inclusive Leader first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

I picked up Charles Duhigg’s new book “Supercommunicators – How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection” and read it with great interest. It is a fantastic book that offers anecdotes and tactics on establishing connection. The book delves into what makes conversations work and how we can all become better communicators in our professional and personal lives.

Supercommunication is about synchronization and alignment with the other person at the level of intent, content and emotions.

Here are 4 Big Ideas from the book:

1) All conversations fall in one of the three types: Conversations can be analytical (What’s this really all about?), emotional (How do we feel?) or identity based (Who are we?). Miscommunication happens when people are having different kinds of conversations. In my own experience, I have seen team leaders getting to tasks (analytical) where as team needs a discussion on “How do we feel?” (emotional).

2) The Matching Principle: Effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring, and then matching each other. Synchronization with others is also about listening carefully to what’s said and unsaid, asking right questions, assessing feelings of others (and matching it) and making our own feelings easier to perceive.

3) 4 Rules of a Learning Conversation: When you try to turn any conversation into a “learning conversation”, you will get better at assessing the type of conversation happening and matching your own communication with that. The 4 Rules are:

• Pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening
• Share your goals, and ask others for theirs
• Ask others about their feelings, and share your own.
• Consider if identities might be important to this discussion

4) The power of questions: Duhigg offers a cyclic model where asking right questions creates vulnerability which triggers emotional contagion leading to connection. Questions about facts often lead to conversational dead end. To draw out experiences, values or vulnerability, we need to ask open ended questions. Questions like “What is it that you dream of doing and why?” can bring out so much more nuance and emotion than asking “Where do you live?”.

There’s a lot more packed in the book, which I highly recommend to anyone trying to improve their ability to truly connect with others.

Here is a #sketchnote summary of my key learning from the book.

A Question to Charles Duhigg

I had a wonderful opportunity to ask a question to Charles Duhigg on This Working Life on ABC Radio National. My question was about building the bridge of connection with someone who is not intentionally aligned to the purpose of team or organization. That’s always tricky, but Charles offered excellent insights on how to connect in such situations. Thanks to Lisa Leong for the opportunity to interact with Charles.

You can listen to the episode here.

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 88+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

Buy Now!

The post Supercommunicators: The Art of a “Learning Conversation” first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

Throughout my career, I have consistently seen increasing level of internal pushback as an organization scales and grows. I have also seen leaders at both ends of the spectrum – ones who worked their way through complexity to create alignment and the ones whose grand strategies failed because of internal forces holding back. 

This complexity creates what Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao call Friction – forces that hamper workplace efficiency. In their new book, The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make The Right Things Easier and The Wrong Things Harder, the authors explore what creates these operational obstacles in the workplace end what leaders can do about it.

The book delves into “friction fixing” and how leaders can eliminate bad friction that makes doing the right things easy and use good friction to make the wrong things harder to do. The book underlines the role of leader as a “friction fixers” and offers useful strategies for leaders to create and less miserable and more productive workplace.

Here is a short visual summary of how leaders can approach friction fixing:

Related Reading at QAspire.com

• On Simplifying through Subtraction
• The Quest of Better Outcomes: Hierarchy And Process
• Clearing the Fog in Communication
• A Steve Jobs Story on Simplicity and Focus
• Six Rules to Simplify Work
• Making Work More Effective

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

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The post Mindset of Leaders who are Friction Fixers first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

I learned this from an amazing, short and insightful podcast episode between Lisa Leong and William Ury. William is the Co-Founder Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation and author of Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict (Disclaimer: I have not read the book but this podcase episode has encouraged me to pick it up soon.)

In the podcase, William suggests three specific strategies to turn any workplace conflict into a constructive negotiation.

• Go to the balcony: Balcony here is a metaphor for stepping away to a place of calm and perspective so that you can see the bigger picture.. Having done this a few times in conflict situations, I can vouch for this approach. Conflict often drags us into “response” mode but it doesn’t have to be so. You can step away and take your time to think through, understand needs and frame a response that begins a constructive conversation. William says that you can step away to walk in the nature, have a coffee with a friend or take a few deep breaths. 
• Build the Bridge: Visibly, conflicts are often between people/groups but in reality, they are conflicts between opposite needs. Understanding the other’s perspective to uncover their real need requires asking right questions and then listening deeply. Listening is a way to respect the other perspective and it enables you to ask “What truly matters to me?” And “What is it that you truly want?”. 
• Engage the third side: William says that tend to reduce a conflict between two parties. The third side, often invisible, is the larger context in which the conflict is happening. It could be friends, family, organizational leadership, cross-functional leaders etc. Acknowledging and engaging with the third side becomes key in resolving conflict in a win-win manner.

Here is the link to the podcase and here is my hand-written visual notes covering big ideas. Creating this helped me internalise ideas. I am sure you’ll find it helpful as well.

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

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The post How to Turn Conflict Into a Constructive Negotiation first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

A bank executive once insisted that I do him a favor by getting a free credit card (even when I did not require it). He was one customer short of being eligible for a quarterly bonus. He suggested that get the card now, and as soon as I get it, I can block or cancel it. He was clearly focused on meeting his numbers at the cost of a customer.

Goodhart’s Law tells us that ‘when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’

We can see variations of this in all contexts – from people losing weight through crash diets only to become nutritionally deficient to politicians undertaking popular measures to win votes rather than solving real problems.

Narrowly defined targets can become proxy of the goal while ignoring several other factors that contribute to accomplishing the real and meaningful outcome.

In an organizational context, how do we manage this? A few things come to mind:

︎ Use holistic/systematic measures: Find and link measures that capture various interconnected aspects of the desired outcome.

︎ Use a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures to gain more comprehensive understanding.

︎ Reframe metrics as a tool to learn and adapt: Build team rituals to have a dialogue on leading indicators to learn, adapt and course correct.

︎ Assess impact of narrow measure on qualitative aspects – unintended consequences in things like delivering value, cross-functional collaboration, cultural precedence etc.

Over to you: How would you manage metrics so that they enable right behaviors?

Here’s a sketchnote summary on Goodhart’s Law.

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

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The post Measuring Right: Understanding Goodhart’s Law first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

In my career of 25+ years, I had several moments that required me to exhibit courage. I was a functional head in year 2008 when my growth had plateaued. I walked up to my boss and sought his able counsel. He was very clear, “If you want to grow further, you need to demonstrably contribute to topline growth or significantly increase your bottomline impact.” 

What felt a bit too direct at the time was actually a window of opportunity. I spent next 8 weeks thinking about ways to turn my function into a business unit. I went back to my boss with a detailed business plan to set up a Quality Consulting unit as an independent business unit. After much deliberation, the business unit was formed and I was given all the resources required to run it as an intrapreneur. I was subtly nudged towards acting courageously. When I demonstrated readiness to leap, I was provided with all the required support. That opportunity allowed me to travel across the globe, meet customers, understand their challenges, offer solutions, provide consulting support, sell services and contribute substantially to organization’s growth. It enabled my evolution and defined the trajectory of my career.

This experience shaped a lot of my thinking about how to be courageous and help my people be courageous. Subsequently, as a business leader, I helped many individuals in taking leap of faith in the direction of their dreams. People exhibit courage only when they are surrounded by a supportive environment that offers safety, inspiration and meaningful challenges.

Three Buckets of Courage

In December 2023 Edition of The Leadership Development Carnival hosted by the amazing Julie Winkle Giulioni, I came across a brilliant post titled The Three Buckets of Courage by Bill Treasurer. The post expands on the topic of courage and introduces three buckets of courage. Courage manifests itself in action, belief and words – or as Bill describes – Try Courage, Trust Courage and Tell Courage.

• TRY Courage is the courage of first attempts or as Seth Godin asks “When was the last time you did something for the first time?”. Trying new things in small bets is often a great way to see if it works.
• TRUST Courage is about letting go of formulas that worked in the past, our preconceptions about how things should be and our need to control. Trusting requires some degree of surrender and belief. In leadership context, ability to win trust of people when taking bold decisions as well as providing an environment of trust where people can take bold decisions in their domain of work is a critical precondition to lead others.
• TELL Courage is courage to express yourself authentically and fully. This has everything to do with creating Psychological Safety for people to express their true opinions without fear. According to Bill, this bucket needs the most filling in teams and organizations. 

I found out that Bill’s blog post is based on a fantastic book that he has written titled “Courage Goes to Work: How to Build Backbones, Boost Performance, and Get Results” which I recommend you to check out. In the book, Bill offers strategies to build a culture of Courage in teams and organizations. 

Bill’s work is fascinating and I took some visual notes while going through it all. I hope you find it useful in your context. 

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

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The post Three Buckets of Courage first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

To regain consumer trust, Nestlé initiated an aggressive and transparent consumer connect campaign even during the ban period. They communicated stringent quality checks, revamped packaging and engaged in open dialogue on food safety. In parallel, they also collaborated with food safety authorities who conducted extensive testing to obtain clearances to relaunch. Their proactive approach, succint communication and demonstrated commitment to quality enabled Maggi to regain consumer confidence and its status as a beloved household brand in India. 

Trust is at the heart of everything we do in life and in business. Trust is the currency of leadership. Leaders who invest in building trust create conditions for others to flourish and live up to their true potential. 

Building Trust as Leaders

What’s true for brand trust is also true for leaders within the organizations. Ancient Indian shlokas (spiritual texts) emphasize on importance of aligning Mann (Thoughts), Vachan (words) and Karma (Deeds). We may choose to name this alignment as authenticity or integrity. Any visible slippage in this alignment leads to withdrawl of trust, however small it may be. With each action that we undertake as leaders, we either deposit in the trust account or withdraw from it. Clarity of intent, alignment on methods, integrity in actions and transparent communication are some of the vital aspects of building trust with others.

In their article on HBR titled “Begin with Trust”, authors Anne Morriss and Frances Frei share very interesting stories and insights on how to build trust with others. The authors outline three core drivers of trust: authenticity, logic and empathy. They argue that people only trust you when they think they are interacting with the real you (authenticity), when they have faith in your judgement and competence (logic), and when they believe you care about them (empathy). 

Loss of trust in others can mostly be traced back to one of these three drivers. As a visual reminder of these drivers, I created a quick sketchnote illustrating the Trust Triangle. 

Related Reading at QAspire

• Leaders as Multipliers
• Three Levels of Trust in Relationships
• 5 Ways To Build Trust (Lessons from a Conversation)
• Leadership Starts With Trust
• Signs of a High-Trust Environment
• Leadership and Trust: 3 Elements

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 68+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

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The post How to Build Trust: The Trust Triangle first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.

Within 24 hours, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, offered Altman an independent leadership role for their new AI initiative, pledging full support. Altman’s move to Microsoft initially seemed to conclude the saga until 700 OpenAI employees threatened to join Microsoft. Under immense pressure from both internal and external stakeholders, OpenAI reversed its decision, reinstating Altman as CEO and restructuring the board. In either scenario, Microsoft emerged victorious as a company and investor.

Microsoft’s size did not hinder Satya Nadella’s swift decision-making in the company’s best interest, backed by trust from its people and stakeholders.

Satya Nadella moved fast and fixed things, and in doing so, earned trust and respect. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s motto “move fast and break things” was popularized by Meta’s success and went on to inspire entrepreneurs and leaders across the globe. In their latest book, authors Anne Morriss and Frances Frei challenge the idea of breaking things while moving fast. They recommend that leaders should “Move Fast and Fix Things” which is also the title of their newest book.

Moving fast and breaking things may work when businesses are in early experimentation phase . However, prioritizing only speed as an organization grows can lead to overlooked mistakes resulting in lack of trust. The authors say,

We observed a clear pattern among leaders who were most effective at fixing things fast, the ones who fought their way to Accelerating Excellence. At a foundational level, these leaders had a distinct relationship with speed and trust. They treated pace and momentum as mission critical, and they also focused relentlessly on gaining and keeping the trust of their stakehold-ers. They experienced all the same things that hold the rest of us back, the same fears and doubts, but they believed that the antidote to those fears and doubts was fast, trust-building action. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this hands-on playbook on accelerating change and transform organizations while also building a culture of trust, inclusion and collaborative problem solving. Move Fast and Fix Things is an essential read for any leader looking for inspiration to raise the bar of excellence with their teams.

I particularly loved the 2×2 matrix of speed and trust which outlines the concept very well. Here is a quick snapshot of a few ideas from the book in form of a #sketchnote summary.

Related Reading at QAspire Blog

• Leadership Starts With Trust
• Leaders as Multipliers
• Leadership and Trust: 3 Elements
• Three Levels of Trust in Relationships

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack of 70+ HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 70+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

The post Move Fast and Fix Things first appeared on QAspire Consulting - by Tanmay Vora.