My Best Is Still Ahead

Friends & colleagues often talk about retiring early .. maybe at 45. A retired life filled with “not for money” activities – is what many of us aspire for. With this in context, it was a surprise when I stumbled upon a story & a fact involving a couple of luminaries – Mahatma Gandhi & Peter Drucker.


Brushing up on my history a couple of weeks ago during a visit to Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, I discovered that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned from South Africa when he was 45 years old. This was reinforced when helping my son through his 8th grade history lessons today again. MK Gandhi started tormenting the Britishers in India only after that.


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In his interview with Tim Ferris, Jim Collins narrates the story of his first meeting with  Peter Drucker – his mentor. Jim asks the management guru, who at the time was 86 years old, which amongst his 26 published books was he most fond of. Drucker simply says “the next one”. He went on to publish 10 more books after this incident.


It’s never too late! The mindset required to keep looking ahead & maximising the impact you can have is admirable. Reminds me of my grand mom – an avid reader through her life, she found herself struggling to hold heavy books in her late 80s. She restricted herself to light & small books. Imagine her thrill when she discovered Kindle! No fear of gadgets, new things to learn .. just the joy of reading into her 90s.

Criticism In Corporate Culture

Today, I came across two seperate reputed opinions about corporate culture. Unfortunately, both are negative.

The first one from a Bridgewater Associates (considered the most successful hedge fund in the world) manager:

In general hierarchical structures, you don’t tell people what you actually think.

You’re always managing other people’s perceptions of you and what they think of you, and trying to butter people up above, trying to make sure they don’t think anything is going wrong, that you have all the answers.

Radical transparency is designed to solve for a deadly sin of work life: office politics. In too many places, what happens in the meeting doesn’t matter nearly as much as secret alliances and conversations after the meeting.

And the second one (paraphrased) from Malcom Gladwell:

When I think back about my time in a large organization, the thing that was most frustrating to me was the extent to which people over time in organizations, put the needs & desires of the people on the inside ahead of the needs & desires of the people they are serving.

Sometimes people get so immersed in their envronment, that the people you are supposed to be serving sort of falls away. And you just think about what would make your life better.

One way to avoid this is to keep reminding yourself & the people around you the point of your organization & who you are serving.

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Incidentally, both of these were heard in the TED original podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant. The episode How to Love Criticism delves into how Ray Dalio addresses these in Bridgewater Associates with a corporate culture based on radical transparency & constantly getting better (kaizen).