‘Employee or employer, entrepreneurial mindset essential to success’ (IANS Interview)

By Vishnu Makhijani New Delhi, Dec 19 : What happens when a business strategist and out-of-the-box-thinker distils the lessons learnt from cinema, sports, music, poetry, politics, the corporate world to offer an alternative view of everything around us? “Fetch Your Own Coffee” (Penguin), is where Kaustubh Sonalkar expands on his mantra: “We do our best thinking when our minds are free to wander, and our minds are most free when we do routine tasks like fetching a cup of coffee or watering the plants”.
“Over the years, I have realized that management doesn’t come with a playbook. Even though one can find several books in the market that lay down invaluable principles for good management, I believe those are not the only ones. This is why I have penned down ‘Fetch Your Own Coffee’, to share my disruptive views of being a top manager and a great human being — based on lessons learnt from cinema, sports, music, poetry, politics, the corporate world and more,” Sonalkar, with two decades of experience across geographies and industry sectors, told IANS in an interview.
“Until now, I have travelled and worked across 78 countries, interacted with people across cultures including communities in sub-Saharan regions with no access and massive language barriers. This has exposed me to diverse conversations as well as helped me understand non-verbal cues and how to identify core human traits. I have tried to pen down the lessons I have learnt throughout my journey in this book, Sonalkar, added.
Subtitled “Lessons from Everyday for Everyone”, the book, to his mind, offers five principal takeaways though he “respects that the readers may have different ones”: * Leadership is learnt more from life experiences than reference texts.
* Inclusive growth – across genders, geographies, age and language – is the most sustainable growth.