Step by Step is the compelling and insightful biography of Pemba Gelje Sherpa, one of his generation’s most accomplished Nepalese mountaineers. Having climbed twenty-one peaks over 8,000 metres, including eight ascents of Everest, Pemba reveals his remarkable journey from a humble village boy to a world-renowned guide and environmentalist. Through candid conversations along the trek to Everest Base Camp, the biographer captures the essence of Pemba’s character, values, and vision. Pemba belongs to the new breed of Sherpas who are passionate about preserving the Himalayas, empowering their communities, and carving their own path in life.
Catagory: Non Fiction
Why We Feel Blue When the Air is Grey
Unveil the obscured world of air pollution as you embark on a compelling journey with Ian. In this gripping book, each chapter uncovers a new layer of the crisis, leaving readers enlightened and impassioned.
From the very first chapter, the stark reality of polluted cities takes hold. Join Ian as he delves into the causes and solutions of air pollution in urban areas. Mobile and stationary sources, agricultural areas, and the menacing forces of wildfires and sandstorms converge, forming a suffocating cloud. As the curtain lifts on these sources of pollution, it becomes glaringly clear that the impacts on daily life have long been overlooked.
Venture further into the pages of this captivating narrative to unearth the profound repercussions of polluted air. Witness the connection between air pollution and disease, as empirical evidence reveals decreased life expectancy and increased hospitalizations. Discover how pollution engulfs workplaces, stifling productivity across sectors from agriculture to manufacturing and the service industry. The altered consumption patterns and diminished satisfaction of individuals trapped indoors during hazy days become vividly apparent. Through masterful storytelling, the author illuminates hidden threads linking air pollution to diverse facets of society. From the enthralling dynamics of the real estate market under smoggy skies to the clandestine practices of nighttime emissions, each chapter paints a vivid portrait of a world grappling with the consequences of pollution. Engage with this thought-provoking exploration, urging readers to confront the urgent need for change in the face of a crisis that permeates every aspect of life.
Embark on this essential journey and empower yourself to champion change. Ian as he navigates the fog of pollution, unmasking its perils and inspiring a collective determination to build a brighter future.
Collide
Creative conflict is the world’s most powerful ideation technique. It’s an essential requirement for breakthrough-thinking and the secret behind every invention and innovation ever made.
Are you overwhelmed by problems that need solving? Stuck looking for ideas? Pressured by deadlines and worried you don’t have a creative bone in your body? Then this is the book for you!
Collide demystifies the process of how to come up with effective, problem-solving ideas.
This book will help you discover how to unlock the transformative power of creative conflict. You will become an expert at sparking creativity. By the time you get to the end of this book, you will have all the tools to brainstorm like a champion.
But be warned. Smashing ideas together is messy. Things will be broken. There are dangers ahead and I can’t protect you from all of them. It’s time to put your safety goggles on. The ride’s about to begin.
One Stop
In the hustle-and-bustle of our world today, convenience and efficiency have become hallmark appeals, even essential factors, in many people’s lives. New applications are churned out every day to respond to this demand. But nothing says ‘hassle-free’ more than Super Apps; apps that allow users to access several services from one single application.
With Super Apps like Grab and WeChat gaining popularity, and tech giants and FinTechs looking to stake their claim in this digital revolution, many might be wondering: What exactly are Super Apps? What is their significance in our world today?Are they the future for all things digital?
In One Stop, award winning FinTech lawyer, former diplomat, and dedicated social entrepreneur Neha Mehta answers these questions by tracing the history of Super Apps and analyzing cultural differences in their adoption and popularity (or lack thereof) in the East and West. Through stories of well-known Super Apps and in-depth interviews with central banks, entrepreneurs, and FinTech industry experts, this book illustrates the Super App revolution—the way it disrupts, innovates and creates opportunity.
With the COVID-19 pandemic as a background highlighting the need to move to digital platforms, One Stop also examines how Super Apps can potentially create an inclusive and sustainable world for all, in a future that looks increasingly digital.
Rebels, Traitors, Peacemakers
‘You shouldn’t be with a Chinese girl…that should be my girl,’ a man in Singapore allegedly said this to a Chinese-Indian couple as he spat towards them. In a world brimming with such prejudice and cultural tensions, a remarkable phenomenon emerges: nearly one in five marriages in the USA and Singapore are now interracial. “Rebels, Traitors, Peacemakers,” explores this phenomenon through real stories of Indian-Chinese relationships, delving into the love and turmoil in such lives, where cultural boundaries are shattered and hearts are forged against all odds.
Spanning across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, these heartfelt accounts transcend borders, age, and sexual orientation to illuminate the unfiltered reality of cross-cultural unions. Families disown their own flesh and blood, individuals get locked and beaten up, and online trolls attack relentlessly. Married life offers no respite – cultural expectations breed misunderstandings, life seems hopeless in front of the unfamiliar letters on the washing machine, and differing parenting styles fuel frequent arguments over raising kids. The couples often ask themselves – why did I make my life so complicated?
And yet, the featured stories reveal the couple’s deep admiration for each other and a steely commitment to sustain their syncretic relationship. The Chinese father-in-law now dances Indian style. Strict vegetarians start cooking meat. While their love first appeared as treacherous rebellion, its endurance transforms lives and communities, forging a path towards unity in our fragmented world.
Journey alongside these bold protagonists, who through their triumphs and struggles, illuminate the intricacies of human nature and our universal yearning for connection.
Leaders People Love
Silver Medal Winner (Company Culture) in the 2024 Axiom Business Book Awards
Post-pandemic, the whole world is being reset. With this unifying experience that challenges our identity, rules are broken; beliefs are corrected. Happiness and meaning in work and life are no longer optional. With success being redefined as we speak, what this means for leaders is they too, now need to reset their compasses urgently—for the real threat is obsolescence and irrelevance.
The time to act is now.
But with many management practices fading into irrelevance, how then, can leaders chart their paths in these complex and disruptive times?
While there is no one right way to lead and make an impact, for ‘right’ is subjective and contextual, the good news is that proven methods have been discovered—some of which will be shared in this book’s pages.
Leaders People Love features a host of accessible leadership lessons. Undergirded by a contemporary and relevant mindset, these strategies consistently yield excellent results and prove a point: becoming an effective and well-loved leader is possible if you know how.
Explore an authentic yet agile approach to discovering the best leader in you. Becoming a leader that people love to work with and for can, in turn, create meaningful workplaces where people love to come to collaborate, strive and succeed.
Little Drops
Little Drops: Cherished Children of Singapore’s Past is a compilation of biographies based on historical fact about the pain of separation and the lure of love, and how these themes constantly collide. These never-before-told stories chronicle how fourteen adoptees from the 1930s to the early 1970s in Singapore found a forever home when their own biological parents could not raise them. These stories recount the plight of families of that era; the strength of friendships and informal social networks; Singapore’s migrant heritage; how lives were thrown into turmoil during the Japanese Occupation; and the struggles individuals had borne during that period leading up to Singapore’s independence. Unfolding in these stories are the recurrent subthemes of poverty, superstition, how girl children were valued amongst the Chinese, how a family illness or death was culturally construed, and the magnanimous spirit of families taking in these abandoned children. What is most striking about many of these children is that they were sometimes not legally given away, seeming odd since children could be passed around so easily. And yet these children would almost always end up in safe, loving and caring homes of another culture. Grappling with who they are in terms of their ethnic identity is very much a common experience amongst all these adoptees. But rather than struggling between two cultural worlds, these adoptees almost always have a firm sense of longing and belonging to their families of adoption instead of their families of origin.
The Asian Maverick
Chris Lee had a cushy role. For a decade, he led the Asia Pacific division of Medtronic, a multibillion dollar business and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of medical devices, and consistently produced excellent business outcomes. Then, at fifty-six, he threw all of that away to start VentureBlick, an international fundraising platform matching healthcare startups and medical investors. Why did Lee do that?
Lee takes us through his journey as one of the youngest Asian leaders in an MNC (youngest director in Merck at age twenty-seven, youngest country manager at thirty, first Asia-Pacific leader reporting to Bayer HQ at thirty-nine), how he brought Asian leadership sensibilities into multiple global companies, and reveals why he believes it’s important for corporate leaders to adopt an Asian lens and think like a maverick.
You Don’t Suck
Let’s face it. Achieving what we set out to do can be one of life’s greatest challenges. From botched New Year’s resolutions to dreams and aspirations that never came to be, setbacks are a common albeit discouraging or disheartening occurrence in our lives. However, as many often say, the road to success is paved with failures. With the right knowledge and some inspiration, anyone can turn things around and savour success in a quicker and easier manner.
You Don’t Suck explores the realities of what it takes to achieve one’s goals and lead a more purposeful life. It introduces readers to three general phases in their journey to success—setting up, sustaining, and reflecting—and guides them through:
- timeless truths
- unconventional perspectives
- well-known studies
- light-hearted and serious examples
- personal and second-hand anecdotes
- practical approaches and advice
- simple wisdom for thought
In doing so, the book motivates readers to relearn the As to Zs of life, thereby renewing their mindset, recognizing their strength, and realizing their power of choice so they can see their ambitions through in their personal and professional pursuits.
Sustainable Sustainability
The good news is that everyone is talking about ESG.
The bad news is that everyone is talking about ESG.
The cry for a more inclusive form of capitalism is growing. But the irony is we are using the same tools that caused the excesses of shareholder capitalism—incentives and regulations—to drive responsible behaviour.
Eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith propagated profit maximization as the incentive for businesses to create goods and services that society needs. He argued that free-market competition would ensure consumers get the best quality product at the cheapest price.
200 years later, Milton Friedman agreed in his seminal 1970 New York Times op-ed that the sole responsibility of business is to maximize profits ‘so long as it stays within the rules of the game’. Incentives coupled with some regulations were to henceforth safeguard societal interests.
Instead, incentives created bad behaviour. Regulations were routinely bypassed with intelligent loopholes. Despite this—to encourage sustainability today—we are again using incentives and regulations. That’s predominantly what the ESG framework focuses on. And what do we see? Rampant greenwashing and box-ticking.
To address today’s existential challenges, we need innovation of the highest order. Innovation can neither be legislated nor driven by extrinsic incentives alone. We need a values-driven revolution. We need steward leadership—the ability to create a win-win-win future for stakeholders, society, and the environment. ESG must upgrade to ESL, where the ‘L’ stands for Steward Leadership. In ESL, ‘G’ is a subset of ‘L’.
Sustainable Sustainability lays out a practical, step-by-step playbook for any commercial entity that wants to succeed at marrying profit and purpose.
https://www.sustainable-sustainability.com