The Battle Cry in the Boardroom
What looks like motivation—war footage, heroic narratives, calls to crush the competition—is often something else entirely: a system of thinking that rewires how organisations see markets, customers, and themselves
Leadership And Organisation
336 results
·Diversity & Inclusion
The Blind Spots of India Inc
Disability inclusion, leadership imagination, and the limits of intent
·Leadership Practice and Development
When AI Raises the Average, Who Protects the Breakthrough?
Artificial intelligence is superb at optimisation. But transformation still comes from the deviations leaders choose to back.
·Organisational Culture, Transformation and Change
The Quiet Work of Branding
Five shifts shaping how organisations build clarity, continuity and trust in 2025
·Behavioural Science,
When Stories Move Faster Than Systems
Why AI-accelerated narratives are exposing leadership and capability gaps across organisations
·Crisis Leadership, Reputation and Trust
When A Leader Stumbles
How an airline’s crisis became an industry’s test. The concluding part of a two part special series
·Organisational Culture, Transformation and Change
The Paradox of Excellence
How IndiGo’s greatest strengths created the conditions for the December 2025 crisis — and what it reveals about the limits of high-performance systems. Part One of a two part special series
·Leadership Practice and Development
The One Leadership Skill We Forgot to Teach
In an age of noise, overload and drifting meetings, facilitation is no longer a “tool”, it’s a core leadership discipline
·Leadership Practice and Development
Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: How to Escape the Halfpinion Trap
In a world of echo chambers, courage and curiosity keep us honest
·Leadership Practice and Development
Terry Szuplat on the Art of Powerful Communication
Seven takeaways from a conversation with President Barack Obama’s speechwriter
·Leadership Practice and Development
From Cubs to Leaders
What the tiger’s journey through the wild teaches us about leadership growth
·Leadership Practice and Development
They Don't Make Them Like Tino Anymore
McKinsey’s first Indian hire. Mentor to generations. Architect of an enduring legacy
·Leadership Practice and Development
Zoho’s New CEO, Same Grounded Playbook
As Sridhar Vembu steps back to focus on AI, Shailesh Davey takes the lead, steering Zoho into the future, on its own terms
·Leadership Practice and Development
Character is about who we choose to be
Insights from General Stanley McChrystal’s new book ‘On Character: Choices That Define a Life’. The book is in Shivakumar’s list of best books of summer 2025
·Leadership Practice and Development
My 10 best business books of summer 2025
On what makes a leader, how to stop wasting energy on the wrong things, speaking well, the history of attention, understanding India’s economic planning, and more
·Crisis Leadership, Reputation and Trust
After the Crash: A Test of Leadership and Legacy
In the shadow of the Air India AI171 tragedy, the Tata Group faces a crucible moment—echoing a corporate crisis from four decades ago that still defines leadership under pressure
·Leadership Practice and Development
The checklist trap: How we turned leadership into a lifestyle product
Leadership conversations are increasingly about what can be measured and instant results. Yet, many of the most powerful shifts in leadership show up quietly
·Crisis Leadership, Reputation and Trust
FF Live: Managing Corporate Reputation in the Digital Age
18 takeaways on crisis management and trust-building
·Crisis Leadership, Reputation and Trust
How L&T completely muffed up a valuable teachable moment
Around the world, CEOs, even the smartest of the lot, are known to occasionally suffer from a foot-in-the-mouth disease. Yet there are playbooks in place on how to deal with such crises–something that L&T has chosen to ignore.
·Leadership Practice and Development
Leaders vs. bosses: What does it take to become a leader?
Fireside chat: Ajay Piramal, Nitin Paranjpe and Dr Anil Khandelwal, in conversation with Indrajit Gupta
·Leadership Practice and Development
Founding Fuel Live | The Best Business Books of 2024
A Founding Fuel Live conversation between D Shivakumar and Ramesh Srinivasan, co-author, ‘The Journey of Leadership’
·Leadership Practice and Development
Practice making mistakes
An extract from ‘The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out’ by Dana Maor, Hans-Werner Kaas, Kurt Strovink and Ramesh Srinivasan
·Leadership Practice and Development
The red flags in your team
An excerpt from Dr Dana Sinclair’s new book, ‘Dialed In: Do Your Best When It Matters Most’
·Leadership Practice and Development
Behind Crotonville’s demise
It is tempting to dismiss corporate universities as a relic of a bygone era. The reality may well be a bit more nuanced
·Leadership Practice and Development
Tales of transitions
Many competent leaders from different domains aspire to join public life. But the transition is never an easy one
·Leadership Practice and Development
Indian cricket’s moment of truth
BCCI faces a set of crucial decisions ahead that could set the pace for the future
·Organisational Culture, Transformation and Change
Why building corporate democracies still matter
In this age of AI, creating an employee-first culture may seem counter-intuitive. But not if you believe in the primacy of building human relationships at the workplace
·Leadership Practice and Development
Building leaders for and in India
What do we need more of: leaders who dominate global institutions or local leaders with a make-in-India mindset?
·Leadership Practice and Development
Do leadership books matter?
Where do you go for leadership insights? What makes a good biography? Why does everyone seem to be talking about meaning and purpose? A discussion on books and some recommendations
·Leadership Practice and Development
The Top 10 business and leadership books of 2022
Books about a fearless industrialist, building a great culture, regret and fulfilment, building careers, world strategy, reinventing work, and becoming a strategist
·Leadership Practice and Development
The Musk-Alexander syndrome
Leaders like Elon Musk defy the normative leadership framework. They have strong critics, but also build institutions. How do we decode their success?
·Leadership Practice and Development
FF Life: Best leadership books—7 essential reads
On the myths of leadership and developing a questioning mind on the norms that are handed down to us
·Leadership Practice and Development
FF Insights #704: Leadership traits
July 28, 2022: Steve Jobs, Bill Campbell and Andy Grove, India’s unemployment problem Age? What age?; Changing times
·Leadership Practice and Development
FF Insights #702: Wise compassionate leadership
July 26, 2022: Rethinking smartwatches; Climate change and pandemics; Getting things done
·Leadership Practice and Development
FF Insights #694: The Freaky Friday management technique
July 14, 2022: Nilekani on the future; Indian English; The Uber Files
·Leadership Practice and Development
Building a Premier Leadership Cadre: The TAS Story
Lessons from India Inc’s replica of the IAS
·Leadership Practice and Development
A book that raises important questions on ‘servant leaders’
Book review: Tata’s Leadership Experiment: The Story of the Tata Administrative Service
·Leadership Practice and Development
The TAS experiment
The Tata Administrative Service was created by JRD Tata to find officers who would provide leadership for Tata companies. In this extract from their new book, ‘Tata’s Leadership Experiment’, Bharat Wakhlu, Mukund Rajan and Sonu Bhasin talk about the mixed success of that experiment
·Organisational Culture, Transformation and Change
FF Insights #679: Five habits that matter
June 23, 2022: TV debates versus real politics; Indian protest rap; Thursday thoughts
·Organisational Culture, Transformation and Change
FF Insights #676: Hero worship matters
June 20, 2022: Lessons from Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu; Amazon hits RESET; Rare pictures
·Behavioural Science, Mental Models and Decision Making
FF Insights #675: Mimetic desire
June 17, 2022: What cricket lost; The upside of negativity; #AllSleepMatters
·Leadership Practice and Development
FF Insights #669: A leader’s job
June 9, 2022: Birla versus Adani; Sheryl Sandberg’s legacy; Never judge a post
·Crisis Leadership, Reputation and Trust
FF Insights #666: How to clean up a scam
June 6, 2022: SoftBank’s underbelly; The worrisome legacy of Jack Welch; Procrastination explained
·Leadership Practice and Development
FF Insights #651: Three levels of empathy
May 16, 2022: Indian VCs’ IIT bias; Rajapaksas’ manœuvres; Heatwave - an infographic
·Leadership Practice and Development
FF Insights #645: Elon Musk and the art of asking the right questions
May 6, 2022: Life in Shanghai; The journey of reusable plastic; A literal mess
·Organisational Culture, Transformation and Change
FF Insights #631: People matter more
April 14, 2022: The rise and rise of Canva, Being digital, Design challenges
·Leadership Coaching and Mentoring
FF Insights #628: Taking people along
April 11, 2022: The Great Transition; The difficulty of being good; Role reversal
·Organisational Culture, Transformation and Change
Rushing back to office
There are signs of growing impatience among CEOs to abandon the hybrid work experiment and return to office permanently. What’s driving this sentiment? And could it scupper change?
·Organisational Culture, Transformation and Change
FF Insights #614: The nature of buildings
March 22, 2022: The rest of 2022; The outliers; The evolution of life
·Leadership Practice and Development
FF Insights #597: Playing it safe won’t save you
February 24, 2022: Debating the hijab; Academia and the media; How Putin thinks
📚 Curated Collections
Explore hand-picked article collections in this category
War in the Middle East: Global Faultlines
Stories that place the Middle East’s conflicts in a wider global, historical and cultural context.
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Journeys, Not Itineraries
Reflective travelogues on attention, place, and inner change.
8 articles112
Thinking Through India’s AI Moment
Essays and conversations on AI, institutions, and scale in India.
7 articles52
Leadership When Judgment Matters
A curated selection on leadership under uncertainty.
7 articles75
Best of FF Life 2025
Personal essays on work, learning, and the inner life.
11 articles161
Best of Founding Fuel 2025
A selection of our most enduring essays and conversations.
11 articles72