Q2. You work on organisational design. From your vantage point, what is modern work actually optimised for?
Modern work is optimised for speed and legibility, not depth or sustainability. Organisations want outputs that can be tracked, communicated, and justified upward. This creates systems that reward visible activity over meaningful contribution. If something is hard to measure—thinking, care, mentorship—it becomes invisible, even if it’s essential.
There’s also an unspoken preference for people who can absorb pressure quietly. Systems rarely break dramatically; they grind people down slowly. Those who survive are often not the healthiest, but the most adaptable to dysfunction. That becomes the template for success.
Organisational design today is less about enabling human capability and more about managing risk—reputational risk, performance risk, attrition risk. Humans become variables to be stabilised rather than individuals to be supported. When that happens, work starts to feel extractive. People give more than they receive, emotionally and psychologically, and eventually something gives.
Q3. Many employees feel constantly tired but can’t point to a single cause. How do you interpret this kind of exhaustion?
This exhaustion isn’t about workload alone. It’s about cognitive fragmentation. People are constantly switching contexts—meetings, messages, deadlines, expectations—without time to process or recover. The brain is always “on,” but rarely focused. That creates a background fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix.
There’s also emotional labour involved in modern workplaces: managing perceptions, calibrating tone, staying agreeable, appearing motivated. This kind of work is invisible but draining. When people say they’re tired “for no reason,” what they often mean is that they’re tired of managing themselves all day.
What makes it harder is that this exhaustion is normalised. If everyone around you is tired, you assume it’s just adulthood. You stop questioning whether work should feel this way. Over time, fatigue becomes a baseline rather than a signal.
Q4. How has the idea of ambition changed over the last decade?
Ambition used to be directional—you wanted to move somewhere specific. Today it’s more defensive. People are less driven by aspiration and more by fear of falling behind. The question is no longer “What do I want to build?” but “How do I stay relevant?”
This shift has psychological consequences. Defensive ambition is anxious. It keeps people in a constant state of alertness. There’s always another skill to learn, another benchmark to meet, another peer comparison to absorb. Ambition stops being energising and starts being exhausting.
What’s also changed is the moral weight attached to ambition. Being ambitious is seen as virtuous; slowing down is seen as a personal failure. That makes it hard for people to step back without shame. Even rest needs justification now.
Q5. Why do so many people feel disconnected from their work despite being “successful”?
Because success is externally defined. When your sense of achievement depends entirely on organisational validation—titles, ratings, recognition—you lose an internal compass. You’re doing well by someone else’s standards, not your own.
Disconnection also comes from misalignment between values and behaviour. People may believe in fairness, curiosity, or care, but find themselves participating in systems that reward speed, competition, and compliance. Over time, this creates internal friction. You function, but you don’t feel whole.
What’s dangerous is that success can delay reckoning. As long as things look good on paper, discomfort is easy to ignore. It’s only later, often after years, that people realise they’ve drifted far from what actually matters to them.
Q6. How do workplaces shape personal identity in subtle ways?
Workplaces provide language, norms, and rewards. Over time, these seep into how people see themselves. You start describing yourself in organisational terms—“high performer,” “low visibility,” “not strategic enough.” These labels quietly replace richer self-descriptions.
There’s also a narrowing effect. Work values certain traits—decisiveness, confidence, articulation—and downplays others. People adapt. They amplify what’s rewarded and suppress what isn’t. Over time, this adaptation becomes identity.
What’s rarely discussed is how difficult it is to reverse this. Leaving a role or organisation doesn’t immediately restore lost parts of the self. People often feel strangely empty after exits because so much of their identity was structured by work.
Q7. What role do cities play in shaping work culture and life after work?
Cities intensify work culture. In places like Gurgaon, Bengaluru, or Hyderabad, work doesn’t end when you leave the office. It spills into traffic, housing, social plans, even friendships. Your location becomes part of your professional identity.
Certain cities reward ambition visibly. Long hours, late nights, constant availability become social norms. Over time, this shapes what people consider “normal” adult life. Even leisure is scheduled around work fatigue.
What’s lost is slowness and unstructured time. Cities optimise for productivity, not restoration. That affects how people relate to evenings, weekends, and each other. Social life becomes thinner, more transactional, more tired.
Q8. Why is it so hard for people to articulate dissatisfaction with work?
Because dissatisfaction is often vague. It’s not tied to a single incident or injustice. It’s cumulative. Language struggles to capture that. People worry that if they can’t explain it clearly, it won’t be taken seriously.
There’s also fear. Expressing dissatisfaction risks being labelled ungrateful or negative. In competitive environments, people learn to minimise discomfort to protect their standing. Silence becomes a survival strategy.
Over time, this creates isolation. Everyone feels something is off, but no one names it. That makes people believe the problem is personal rather than systemic.
Q9. How does power operate quietly inside organisations?
Power shows up in who gets away with things. Who can speak bluntly. Who can afford to fail. These patterns are rarely written down, but everyone understands them.
There’s also agenda-setting power. The ability to decide what gets discussed and what doesn’t is more influential than formal authority. Silence, in many organisations, is carefully managed.
For most employees, power is experienced indirectly—through decisions that affect them without explanation. That creates a sense of helplessness, even in high-performing environments.
Q10. Why do organisations struggle to address burnout meaningfully?
Because burnout challenges the premise of the system. Addressing it seriously would require rethinking workloads, incentives, and leadership behaviour. That’s disruptive.
It’s easier to offer individual solutions—resilience workshops, wellness apps—than structural change. This subtly shifts responsibility back to employees: if you’re burnt out, you’re not coping well enough.
The irony is that most organisations already know what causes burnout. They just aren’t willing to slow down enough to fix it.
Q11. What does “good work” look like to you today?
Good work is work that doesn’t require you to betray yourself. It allows for competence without constant self-surveillance. It has clear expectations and humane limits.
Good work also leaves room for life. It doesn’t consume your best emotional energy or reduce your world to a single identity. You should be able to step away from work and still feel like a person.
This isn’t about comfort. It’s about dignity.
Q12. How should employees think about boundaries without jeopardising growth?
Boundaries are often misunderstood as withdrawal. In reality, they’re about clarity. When boundaries are explicit, work becomes more sustainable.
Growth doesn’t require self-erasure. It requires focus, learning, and challenge—not constant availability. Employees who burn out early don’t grow faster; they exit sooner.
The difficulty is that boundaries need organisational support. Individual boundary-setting in unsupportive systems is risky. That’s why leadership behaviour matters so much.
Q13. What role does silence play in modern workplaces?
Silence is both protective and corrosive. It protects individuals from immediate consequences, but corrodes trust and connection over time.
When people stop speaking honestly, organisations lose access to reality. Problems surface late, when they’re harder to fix.
Silence often masquerades as alignment. Leaders mistake quiet for agreement. That’s a dangerous illusion
Q14. What do people misunderstand about leaving jobs?
Leaving is often framed as bravery or escape. In reality, it’s usually exhaustion. People don’t leave because they want adventure; they leave because staying feels unbearable.
Exits are also emotionally complex. People grieve what work gave them—structure, identity, community—even when they know it was unhealthy.
We don’t talk enough about this ambivalence. Leaving isn’t liberation; it’s transition.
Q15. What question should working people ask themselves more often?
“Who am I becoming because of this work?”
Not “Is this impressive?” or “Is this secure?” but “What is this shaping in me?” Work is not neutral. It leaves traces. Paying attention to those traces is an act of self-respect.
If more people asked this question early, not just at breaking points, work culture would change—not overnight, but meaningfully.
