In 1997, after a(n) (un)successful attempt to run a company in Botswana, I joined a company called Wisdom Information Consultants, a now defunct company based out of a small town called Assen in the Netherlands. I was in their Bangalore office and a few things surprised (and spoiled me).

The first was their employee’s handbook. It was in the form of cartoons. I will revisit this handbook later, but will just add that it was based on common-sense rules. The second was a copy of Ricardo Semler’s Maverick. The significance of both is becoming more pronounced as I watch organizations falter in, ahem, organizing themselves.

That Phil and Peter, our founders attempted to implement some of Semler’s ideas were truly amazing. That the reason they failed (in my opinion) was their inability to stick to their principles made a deep impact to my ideas of organizations.

Apart from Agile, Lean and some of the common principles that flow through these ideas, I am deeply interested in organizations, their structure and their universal inability to be people-centric. While this blog looks at these ideas in general, my personal one, disingenuously titled Random Thoughts is here.