In finance, diversification means reducing the risk of a portfolio and maximizing its performance by investing in a variety of assets. Just as in finance, diversification is important in all other aspect of business like the types of products a company offers, its employees and geographic presence. What’s more interesting to me is that diversification …
I recently read the book 1984 by George Orwell about a hypothetical society where the government constantly monitors and controls people’s thoughts and actions. The term “big brother” was coined in this book. One prominent theme in the book is the concept of doublethink that refers to a person’s ability to hold two contradictory beliefs …
When I was just a few days old, you carried me in your arms on a long flight back home. You kept your arms extended, so I could sleep in peace while you watched me and others watched you. To this day, I sleep peacefully like a baby. When I was four, my little sister …
When I was young, I had memorized a Surat (chapter) in the Quran. Surat Ya-Seen is one of the most revered Surats considered as the heart of the Quran. It took me months to memorize the 89 verses since I could only read but not speak or understand Arabic. For many years afterwards, I held …
We often think of people in high power positions like VPs and CEO as being specially gifted and extraordinarily smart. While it’s true that it takes a certain amount of brains and personality to get to those positions, the reality is that they are just ordinary people like everyone else. They question themselves and have …
You sat there on a chair in the back office of our new business. I had not seen you so scared before. It was opening week and you had no idea what all this meant. You had never worked outside the house. Hell, you didn’t even know how to speak English back then. How were …
People often ask me if getting a MBA is worth it. Besides my belief that any kind of education is always worth it, I liked being back in an academic environment with smart and interesting people I could learn from. One memorable interaction I had was talking to a professor over lunch about his views …
Sometimes, it’s hard to go through life being “nice”. People tend to think of nice people as being dumb and easy to take advantage of. They associate niceness with weakness and pretty soon you start to wonder if it is in your best interest to be a nice person. What does it mean to be …
Everywhere I look, people are busy trying to prove themselves better than someone else. We are taught from a very early age to be competitive and measure our success by how well we compare to others. Part of it is human nature but part of it is all the institutions in our society that teach …
“I believe that it’s important to try everything in life.” Every time I say this, people are quick to respond with “well not everything” to which I say “almost everything”. Of course, we should not be doing things that might put us in extreme danger like attempting suicide. At the same time, most things we …
