Sreyssha George

Sometime in the next five years, the decisions most organisations are making right now will either look prescient or embarrassingly narrow. I’ve been reading a BCG piece that maps four genuinely different versions of 2050. Not variations on a theme.

Four different worlds.
They call them scenarios. I keep thinking of them as bets. (Possibly says more about me than the research.)

Bet 1 — Tech and cooperation win. AI compounds, institutions hold, the world more or less figures it out.

Bet 2 — Fragmentation wins. Geopolitics pulls harder than economics. Blocs form. Supply chains shorten. Everyone optimises for their corner.

Bet 3 — Climate resets the board. Shocks arrive faster than models predicted. The agenda shifts whether organisations are ready or not.

Bet 4 — Inequality hardens. The gap between who benefits and who doesn’t becomes structural. Trust erodes. Markets get complicated.

What unsettles me isn’t the uncertainty. Leaders are used to that. It’s that most strategy conversations I’m in are still quietly assuming Bet 1. And building accordingly.

Which of these four feels most underweighted in how your organisation is planning right now?

About a decade ago, I gave one of my first large room presentations, to a room of 40+ senior bankers.
I also wore a saree for the first time. Someone made a joke and I was trying hard to not let them shake me.
The room was the biggest I’d stood in alone. Dim lighting, giant screens, very fancy. The kind of stage that either shrinks you or makes you stand taller.
So I did what anyone does when they’re terrified and also slightly stubborn — I prepared obsessively. And I copied shamelessly. I spent days watching TED talks, borrowing structure, stealing opening moves, walking in with someone else’s confidence until I could find my own.
It landed.
Afterwards the MD pulled me aside and asked if I’d coach his son on speaking.
I remember thinking — I am still figuring it out myself. But also, something about that moment made me realise how much communication actually matters. Not as a nice-to-have. As a real career lever.
That one good landing gave me the energy to make it a thing.
I still think it’s the most underrated career investment most people never make.

The thing I’d tell anyone starting out: copy the best speakers you can find. Shamelessly. Tell them you’re doing it if you can — it’s one of the most honest ways to find a mentor. Your own voice comes later. First you need raw material to work with.
What’s the communicator you’ve borrowed the most from — and do they know?

A colleague suggested I try something I hadn’t done before.
For three months, every day, I wrote down what gave me energy and what took it away. By hand. (I tried the phone version for a few weeks. Writing felt more natural.)
As a leader I spend a lot of time thinking about people’s energy. This was the first time I’d mapped my own. Seeing it week after week was clarifying.
Meeting new people was consistently at the top. The weeks I met someone new — a new team member, a complete stranger with an interesting story — had a completely different quality to them.
And the unexpected one: engaging with something completely unrelated to work. An episode of Cleo. Something with nothing to do with my to-do list.
I thought I needed more rest. Turns out I needed a different kind of stimulation.
Sharing one of the doodles from a week — boosters, leaks, and what I’d do more of next week.
What gives you energy that you probably don’t protect enough?

On June 11 I’ll be moderating a session at the AI Innovation Summit in Bangalore. The topic is redesigning the engineering organisation. And it feels like the right conversation to be having right now. Because the disruption isn’t coming. It’s already here.
If you’re working through this — I’d love to see you there.

I used to have a very consistent strategy in meetings.
Talk first. Talk often. Make sure everyone knew I’d done the reading.
(It was exhausting, honestly. For everyone involved.)

At some point I started paying more attention to the leaders I actually respected. Almost none of them operated that way. They asked more than they answered. They made space instead of filling it.

I’m not sure when I decided to try that instead. Curious to hear, whats your meeting strategy?

Spent the last few days in SFO exploring all things AI.
Humanoid robots. Waymos everywhere. Zoox making the future feel very real/ unreal? What once felt futuristic is quickly becoming part of everyday life.
Exciting to see AI move beyond screens and into the physical world around us.

Not all stress is equal. And reacting to the wrong one is what actually creates risk. I was reading the BCG CEO Insomnia Index, and one stat stood out:
More than 70% of CEOs report clinically high stress levels.
To be honest not surprising.

What was interesting to read was:
The stress that feels most urgent is often not what actually drives outcomes.
I’ve seen this play out more often than we admit.
The most visible pressure gets addressed.
The thing everyone is talking about gets prioritised.
And then, a few weeks later, you realise: that wasn’t the real problem.

Over time, I’ve learned this the hard way:
Not every fire needs putting out. And some of the biggest risks come from misaligned expectations, not execution gaps

The shift for me has been simple (not easy): pause and ask: what actually matters here? In leadership, pressure is constant. Curious — what’s one pressure you’ve learned to ignore over time?

Thanks Akshayita Saxena. What I’ve realised over time is that an abundance mindset isn’t just about generosity — it’s about confidence in your own growth.
The more I’ve shared — ideas, time, context — the more it’s sharpened my own thinking. Especially in fast-changing environments, I believe learning scales through sharing.

We’ve spent years debating online vs offline in India. That debate is starting to look… irrelevant.

BCG’s “Clicks and Bricks” piece makes a point many of us are seeing on the ground: Neither side is winning. The ones integrating both are.
And here’s the part that should make us pause:
Even today, ~90% of retail still happens offline. So all the “digital-first” narratives? They’re only half the story.

What’s actually happening is more interesting — and more uncomfortable.
Online is shaping demand. Offline is still closing it.
Which means:
– digital is influencing more than it captures
– physical is capturing more than it influences
– That tension is where the advantage sits.
– And it’s not easy to win there.
Because this isn’t about scaling a channel anymore. It’s about stitching together journeys across systems, teams, incentives, and data.

If you’re still thinking in terms of “our online strategy” and “our offline strategy,”
you’re probably solving yesterday’s problem.
The real question is: Where is your customer switching channels — and are you even designed to follow them?
Great piece from Nimisha Jain [she/her] Parul Bajaj, Kanika Sanghi, Aditi Swarup, Mahima Dighraskar, and Aditi Dalmia

Read more here, https://on.bcg.com/4d0FIm