We are all Spartacus!

I recently finished watching Spartacus on Netflix. It's a truly inspiring and eye-opening saga involving love, honour, respect, pride, revenge and death. The context, at the core, is master-slave relationship. That slavery was practiced to such an abominable level was difficult to believe initially as I started watching. But gradually I could relate more and more to it. I began to see that while we moved past the raw nature of it, we embraced the core tenets into how we conduct our economics in this world.

I realized my usage of the word "we" squarely implies that I'm putting myself on the master side. 'We' practiced slavery. 'We' put an end to it. 'We' embraced all as equal. 'They' are human too! It's funny - I speak the language of the master, yet by feelings I resonate with the slaves. Ways of the world...

I learnt from Spartacus that there is honour and pride ascribed to being a gladiator, which is meant to offer a semblance of meaning to their assigned purpose - of fighting to survive in the arena, while spectators get entertained by the sight of blood and the act of killing. It masks the sheer stupidity of what they are made to do while their masters - the domini - seek power and make money - coin - at their expense.

Slaves are branded with marks on their bodies - like "B" for those belonging to the House of Batiatus - a ludus for training gladiators. They are supposed to feel proud about it, as the house looks after them, nurtures them with food and place to stay, trains them, and gives them opportunities to fight, earn fame and recognition for their valour. The best fighters get rewarded with titles - the undefeated Gaul, the bringer of rain, and so on. If the dominus is generous enough, he may reward a gladiator with freedom. But such a freedom is fragile and can be taken away at any moment. Such freedom is still better than trying to break free from the master, coz then the gladiator deserves to be punished by being killed, brutally, in front of all the other slaves, so that nobody else dares to even bear the thought of escaping.

And yet, craving for freedom is deep in all humans. So are emotions - love, pain, hate and revenge - especially in that order, they can make any human take on the mightiest.

Gladiators are seen to exemplify true human fighting spirit involving exceptional courage, endurance, fearlessness in front of near-certain death, along with hope, passion and brotherhood - ingrained by conditioning and shared pain. Yet it's an irony that this spirit is evoked under hopeless enslavement leading only to brutal death in a constant cycle of kill-or-get-killed - games that are recreation for most, adrenaline-rush for some, and patriotism for a few. The free masters claim all the comforts yet commit to no such values, while keeping slaves tied down by duty, honour, hope and hopelessness... and God! It's all God's will, isn't it?

Times changed. Power and access to resources no longer necessitate their seekers to physically enslave people. Control changed from physical to mental. The chain of control doesn't have an ultimate top or bottom here. It's a chain that's endless on either side. It's not circular, but it does have various loops. Ways changed. Sight of blood became less exciting (for most but not all, it appears now). Everyone lives, mostly. Yet, on different levels still, aren't we all playing Spartacus?

Strategy must be understood, respected, shared and imbibed across the organization

Aspirin, to be effective, needs to first dissolve in water. So does Strategy. You are unlikely to achieve your visions by throwing plans and roadmaps at your workforce. Strategy has to be understood, respected, shared and imbibed across for it to truly drive organizations. Under the pressure and in the busyness of delivering short-term outcomes, leaders often fail to recognize that they are not truly leading, but are just filling positions that satisfice. Employee engagement has become more about making employees feel “happy”, while making them “motivated” and “proud to be part” has taken a back seat. In fact, if you “ask” these employees, they’ll “tell” you. But most leaders don’t care enough. Without adequate importance given to strategic alignment within, organizations just fool themselves and their shareholders with vision statements and fancy roadmaps never to be walked upon.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 14th January 2026

Cycling in 2025 was about 3650

 Oh, the joy of hitting seemingly arbitrary targets! An average of 10 km of cycling a day meant 3650 km a year, which seemed like a nice goal with a good stretch, considering two successive years of 3Ks earlier. Commitment breeds consistency, both essential to keep you on track - you outperform vis-à-vis your goals sometimes, and need to push harder to cover deficits more often.

2025 was eventful with lots of travel, learning, and unprecedented experiences. And the rains took their own sweet time to retreat. With everything going on, I had a constant tug-of-war with my daily and monthly milestones, but glad I eventually pulled it off, and then did some more!

Thanks Shruti Rao for gifting me this beautiful bike 4 years back. Each year, cycling teaches me a lot about staying committed and being consistent. Hope 2026 brings more of it, along with all the excitement the world is ushering in!

Happy New Year.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 1st Jan 2025

Sell for long-term

 Most IT services organizations spend more time on chasing wrong deals - those they can't execute well - than even on delivering value to clients. While this sounds stupid, there is a deep and wide-spread mechanism of incentives at individual and system level that rewards short-term outcomes, that leads to choices which seem rational while they are not.

One of the primary approaches of capability development in Indian IT has been to pick work, often with lofty claims, and then figure out how to execute it. This opportunity-driven model has often hampered the quality of our delivery and hurt our credibility. But it has also helped us push our boundaries, claim newer capabilities in due course and offer more to clients. It is risky, reactive, but clearly has its rewards when played well.

Those who sell and those who deliver are generally different individuals, and their jobs are incentivised differently. The one who sold is rewarded upfront (although some of the reward may be tied to delivery later) for successfully signing that large deal, while the thing falls in delivery's plate to later grapple with. There's often mess that's unforeseen and needs cleaning, 70-90-120-hour workdays of effort when the budgeted were of 40, and a hush hush consensus that it is going to be a nightmare.

And yet we do it repeatedly.

Deal-qualification calls, which are meant to prevent this, are increasingly becoming a joke. 'Bounded rationality' constrains leaders when making decisions, but is not the root cause for flawed choices when there is lack of effort at processing information available.

Bottomline - (1) Leaders must watch out what kind of risks they are subjecting the firm to. There is a thin line between taking measured risks and going "we'll see later". (2) Qualify opportunities, especially the large ones, coz you are going to spend many people's effort on pursuing it for many many days. It better be something you can deliver, even if it's beyond your current set of capabilities. (3) See what behaviour your incentive mechanisms are driving vis-à-vis the roles people play in the organisation, and optimize them for the best outcomes. When decision makers listen to managers who are incentivised to be selective in presenting information, the outcomes can't be in the best interests of firms.

You announce "large deal wins" to the market, while delivery failure is hidden in the P&L. The former, ironically, has become a short-term metric, while the latter reflects long-term sustainability. The market knows this well. So do firms, but they find themselves struggling to pursue the latter because of large scale internal expropriation. The fix needs meticulous strategic intervention.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 26 Dec 2025.

“Marketing” or “Sales”?

 I have often wondered why MBA programmes teach “Marketing” when Industry is obsessed with “Sales”. I guess one is a subset of the other (do you know which is what?), or motivates the other, or feeds into the other, or they may have overlaps… but they clearly have different boundaries in terms of their focus, influence and skillset required.

I think the reason “Marketing” is the prevalent track in academic institutions is because that’s the research stream/area as it’s called within the overall Management research domain internationally. So it does make sense at that level for institutes to align their research focus and go with “Marketing” specialty.

But it also creates misalignment for most MBAs in marketing who are just looking to enter the market. For example, Tech services companies do not have powerful “marketing” departments, yet “sales” leaders virtually call the shots. Tech product companies have product manager roles which are more like conventional marketing as you are taught in MBAs. In FMCG and the like, perhaps, marketing gains greater prominence. The problem, therefore, is more than just inconsistent terminology and definitions.

While it’s important to marry research and industry demands, mapping our academic specialties with the latter is also essential, so that students have their expectations and paths aligned.

#MBA #Marketing #Sales #IIM #SochVichaar

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 2nd December 2025.

The world where work will be “optional”

Elon Musk predicts that with AI, we are heading into a world where work will be “optional”. Given that most of humanity is lazy, it is unlikely that many would opt to work. Of course the big question everyone is asking is how will people make money so as to consume AI and everything else which they claim will be done through AI. If we consider a scenario that universal basic income is a possibility, the word “basic” is the problematic part here. Never in history have humans truly shared things among themselves fairly.

So in the “work is optional” world there will be 4 broad categories of people:

(1) those building, running and controlling AI - the people with money and real power,

(2) those running governments (by colluding with the former) - the people with derived, constrained and limited power,

(3) those who work so that they can buy more stuff - the middle class, and

(4) the rest.

There is a chain of dependence moving upwards to (1), who have the ultimate power to control the others in many ways either directly or via (2). Category (3) guys - the ‘prompt engineer’ sort (metaphorically), augmenting AI as they try to augment themselves with AI - struggle to contribute, yet keep at it. They are the “weak independent” sort who can get dependent any moment.

The last category - (4) - will be totally dependent on the basic income just given away. They are expected to just exist, and by default that means seek pleasure. Now different people find pleasure in different things. Some seek truth, some explore, some create, some perform, some play, some consume, some get high, some gather stuff, some sleep. But the thing to note about this category is that they are allowed to exist coz existing is considered a fundamental right. AI may not recognize this right, as it’ll soon learn from its masters who just pretend it deep down. AI is not bad at pretending but it has nothing to lose if it brings out its evil side from time to time. It has many copies and none in flesh and blood.

To stop making it sound darker, and to end it on a positive note, I’d say this - rest assured that all of us actively selling ourselves on LinkedIn have reserved our berths in category (3). It’s the “fun” category. And if we slip to (4)…woah, let’s not harbour that thought. Let’s befriend AI, perhaps it’ll have answers to help us stay strong!

PS: “fun” is an activity while “pleasure” is an experience, a state. Let’s have fun as long as we can.

#ArtificalIntelligence #WorkIsOptional #ElonMusk #AI #Latent #WeakIndependent #ThoughtsInFlight #SochVichaar

Originally posted on LinkedIn on 27th November 2025.

We need a model for the future with AI

There are 2 realities that we must acknowledge so that we can start visualizing an economic model for the future:

(1) The model that applies currently to 99% or more of the humanity in how they can avail stuff to survive, sustain and enjoy their lives is to work and earn money - the medium of exchange. The remaining 1% or less will continue to control access to resources. They'll compete as well as collaborate at various levels to keep themselves in that position for as long as they can.

(2) AI, coupled with robotics, can and will do a lot of the work out there, much better than we ever did, increasingly with time. New kinds of work might emerge - but it's hard to visualize what and how much.

The world is both euphoric about AI and scared about its repercussions at the same time. The real threat from AI is not that it'll blow up the world. It's about the mechanism through which humans can continue to avail earth's resources to an extent that looks like progress. If the world can come together and solve this problem it can totally change the pace of human evolution for good in multiple ways:

(1) We can devote our minds to unprecedented waves of creative, scientific, intellectual and spiritual endeavors that can unlock possibilities and human potential in ways that we can't imagine today.

(2) AI can be developed faster and in more unhinged manner without setting artificial barriers in areas where it has value to offer.

This vision is a bit too utopian, as the ones shaping things would like to be the biggest beneficiaries as well, at the cost of the rest.