In 2011 I was a call-centre agent in Bangalore who couldn't read a newspaper out loud without stumbling. I had a notebook full of dreams and a life that hadn't moved an inch.
I called myself a thinker. A planner. Someone waiting for the right time. It felt like self-awareness. It was just a soft word for a man who blamed himself and never changed.
What I saw first in the morning. What was easy to reach. What was hard. I designed the environment around me — and the behaviour followed, without the war I'd been losing for years.
That call-centre agent went on to become a content designer for a global company, spend five years coaching behaviour, help over a thousand people change, build a presence method for rooms of eight hundred to a thousand, and win Frontline Leadership of the Year in 2022.
Not through motivation. Motivation runs out by evening. Through design. That's the whole thing I teach — because it's the whole thing that saved me.
I'm also a father of two. My three-year-old thinks I invented gravity. Some days that's the only room I care about designing well.