Leadership, AI Language Models & Reading Habits
Incite Your Month: April '25
For the first Incite Your Month of the fiscal year, Ramanand and Harish share their top monthly recommendations for curious minds. So without further ado..
Book of the Month:
John C. Maxwell's The 360° Leader is a transformative leadership book that challenges the traditional notion of leadership as a top-down hierarchy. Instead, Maxwell emphasizes that leadership is about influence, not position, and anyone, regardless of their role in an organization, can lead effectively.
In addition, the book highlights the unique struggles faced by leaders in the middle of an organization. These include managing tension, frustration with ineffective leaders, and championing a vision they didn’t create.
With the ongoing IPL, AB de Villiers, often referred to as "Mr. 360," gets an honorable mention, since he is celebrated as one of the most innovative and versatile cricketers in history. Beyond his unparalleled ability to play shots all around the ground, his career is a testament to leadership, resilience, and influence both on and off the field.
In summary, this book is a practical guide for anyone looking to grow as a leader without waiting for a promotion or title. Unlike many leadership books that focus on CEOs or high-level executives, this book encourages readers to embrace their current roles while working to expand their influence in every direction—upward to superiors, across to peers, and downward to subordinates.
Article of the Month:
It’s the New York Times article, by the serial author Steven Johnson, called “AI is Mastering Language. Should we trust what it says?” For those who don’t know the author, Steven has written close to 50 books with very interesting ones on innovation!
This article strikes a chord because he explores the advancements and implications of large language models like GPT-3, which have been trained on vast amounts of data. While their capabilities are transformative, questions arise about their reliability and ethical use, given their potential to reflect biases or misinformation learned from the internet.
You are probably familiar with “AI hallucination” also along with the whole fiasco of Sam Altman being ousted from Open AI in November 2023. Btw, there’s an “Inside Scoop” of the Open AI ouster in Business Today just last week, which certainly raises valid points in the article like instilling values and safeguards in AI systems to prevent harmful outcomes, which is even more important in 2025.
SmartCast of the Month:
In this episode, Harish interviews Krish Shankar, the Group HR Head of Infosys, about his career achievements, pride in fostering growth among colleagues, and the inspiration behind his new book, Catalyse. The book is about energizing the people ecosystem in an organization through different frameworks.
They discuss the evolution of HR, leadership strategies, the importance of collective emotions in organizations, and practical frameworks like 'Skills, Behaviors, Experience, and Mindset' for hiring the right talent. Krish also touches on his passion for sports writing and the impact of new technologies and emotional intelligence in HR. The conversation wraps up with thoughts on cultural integration in large companies and the future relevance of traditional practices and digital innovations.
If you haven’t seen this yet, this is a must-watch!
Smart Lever of the Month:
Continuing on the topic of people & organizations, this month’s SmartLever dives into the concept of a Culture Repository. Harish & Ramanand discuss why such a repository is essential for modern, distributed workplaces, and how it helps document, share, and sustain a company's unique culture.
As usual it has practical examples, such as recording the company's origin story and key milestones, and tips on how a culture repository serves as a strategic asset for onboarding, rewards, and recognition. If you want to understand how building this virtual home for your organization culture can help both new and long-term employees align with and contribute to your cultural values - this is an episode you can’t afford to miss!
Podcast Pick of the Month:
It’s an episode on EconTalk that features Tyler Cowen, well known for being a prolific reader. And in this episode, we have Tyler talking about his reading habits with the host, Russ Roberts. While they also discuss good reading habits to incorporate, they also interestingly discuss practices that would help you overcome some of the bad habits!
An example they cite of a bad habit is that “I must complete a book end to end.” And even if one gets really bored after 50 pages, they’ll make their way painfully to the end. Tyler’s advice is “Just drop the book if you don't like it!” In fact he even pushes for reading multiple books at the same time - for instance, reading multiple books around a topic at the same time. You would then see common themes emerging and that is good enough to build that context, rather than trying to remember a book.
Join us monthly for a curated collection of ideas, books, articles, and concepts to expand your curiosity diet!
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