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    Diverge, disagree, dissent

    In our world of complex challenges and complicated solutions, we need collaboration more than ever. It is hard to think of things we can accomplish on our own. Unfortunately, as soon as we need to work with other people, we introduce the possibility of conflict. While we might need the messy, back-and-forth, give and take, hash-it-out friction of conflict to spark innovation, we do not like the feeling. We bristle at conflict. We want to keep things neat and tidy, harmonious, and efficient so we do not...

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    Cost of avoidance

    Highly dysfunctional organisations are those in which conflict simmers below the surface but is not openly discussed. More than open conflict, fear of conflict breeds corporate failures. Bad ideas become new products or processes because employees and managers were afraid to ask difficult questions or offer alternative perspectives. Innovation is stymied, employee turnover or disengagement is high, and morale and mission achievement are low. At its worst, corporations with cultures of conflict avoidance...

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    Beyond definitions

    How to build a culture of healthy conflicts and dissent in an organisation? The answer begins with the question itself. What is a healthy conflict as opposed to an unhealthy one? The definition may actually surprise you. A healthy conflict is one that begins with the premise that there is ‘need to dissent over a thought, process, or action, in any business or professional environment’. Here is a list of unhealthy conflicts...

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    Blue Ocean Thinkers

    For more than a decade, W Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne have been a fixture in the top five of the Thinkers50 ranking. In 2011, they won the Thinkers50 Strategy Award for ‘the business book of the decade’, Blue Ocean Strategy. In 2013, they were shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Global Solutions Award and in 2015, for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award. In 2019, they topped the Thinkers50 ranking for the first time, joining an elite list of...

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    Walking a tight rope

    Traditionally, the world of business and the world of ethics were considered as being wide apart, with the overwhelming notion that the former is profit-driven whereas the latter addresses humane aspects—that one is growth-oriented and the other concerns the avenues of human happiness. Robust mechanisms of profit conventionally governed the world of business and, consequently, instilled a sense of hierarchy in the minds of managers and their co-workers. The manager exercised his authority over those low...

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    ‘Move fast, break things, proceed forward'

    Indian agriculture is on the cusp of a paradigm shift, moving away from centuries-old practices to cuttingedge technology. Siddharth Dialani and Sai Gole discuss how their farming technology platform is effecting a transformation by providing farmers the tools they need to succeed in the era of ‘smart farming’. Almost three years ago, when we were starting up, we talked to several experienced entrepreneurs. We asked them which area of running the business must take our significant time...

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    Power of many

    Let us start by asking a few questions: Is there a need for teams in organisations? Why does it matter that they succeed? Why must they be game-changers? A ‘team’, to a layman, is a group of players on either side in a competitive game or sport. In the corporate context, it refers to a group of individuals working in a competitive environment—motivated by the common goal to outlast competitors in the game of bagging client contracts, increasing market share, building the best products, harnessing innovation potential, and so on. We need teams because our collective...

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    The right approach

    The job of leading a sales team is one of the most challenging in any organisation. Yet, there are some pervasive myths that many managers buy into—myths that keep their teams from achieving their full potential. Below is my list of the five most damaging myths about being a sales manager, and the reality behind each.
    MYTH 1: I have arrived
    Most managers acknowledge the importance of professional development for the members of their team, but how many make developing themselves professionally a priority ...

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    Business as a brain

    I n an age of ambiguity and discomfort, the ripple effect of geopolitical and psycho-social events is unprecedented. Amid the US-China trade war, Brexit, and #MeToo movement, the need for organisations of all kinds to pivot is clear. But behind a change in product, output, service, culture, or principle is a massive amount of physical and psychological work. To pull this off, corporations need organisational plasticity, which I refer to as their ability to adapt and keep in line with the ever-changing milieu that we operate in. ...

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    Adapt and thrive, or deny and die

    W e have entered a new decade in which sustainable business and capital will develop and grow in an unprecedented way. Throughout the 2010s, technology proved to be the definite game-changer. This will continue in the 2020s, yet the perspective will be from society at large, as the shift to sustainable business and capital will no doubt be the most significant shift of the next decade. It is absolutely vital that business and capital in India use technological means to make this shift to sustainability. The numbers tell us that business will fail in a world that is falling apart due to climate change, resource scarcity, lack of drinking...

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    Keep the threads strong

    In 2005, Paul Laudicina (now chairman emeritus of management consultants A.T. Kearney) presented us with contrasting visions of the future. Writing in his book World Out of Balance, Laudicina described one future in which the world is a networked whole, with borders and boundaries being gradually replaced by a system in which we all move freely and companies collaborate on projects around the globe; and another in which barriers are raised, networks are broken, and borders are strengthened, turning countries and organisations into fortresses with their drawbridges pulled up, so that no one...

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    Stealing the show

    In the pre-liberalisation era, India’s steel industry was highly regulated. Due to heavy import duties, there was no competition in local markets. Licence Raj ensured that companies like TISCO (now Tata Steel) could not expand their production. As a result, demand was always more than supply, and steel would be rationed based on government directives on price and quantity. With no options for scaling up, Tata Steel ensured that it operated 100 per cent, and ensured efficient production through optimal utilisation of available infrastructure. The typical scene in the marketing offices of steel...

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    End of an era

    The recent passing away of Jack Welch, legendary chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE) for 20 years, has expectedly drawn tributes from across the world. He has many admirers, and is remembered as ‘Manager of the 20th Century’ (as voted by Fortune in 1999), ‘Gold Standard of Greatness, the icon of industrial imagination’, and so on. Besides US President Donald Trump’s tweet, “There was no corporate leader like Neutron Jack who will never be forgotten” and others, the best accolade perhaps has come from the present CEO of GE, Lawrence Culp: “Jack was larger than life and the heart of GE for half a century...

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    How to lead from the future back

     

    Everyone recognises a great, visionary business leader when they see one—at least in retrospect, after their prescient ideas have been borne out by time. Industrial Age titans like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Kiichiro Toyoda, and, in our own day, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, recognised the transformative power of new technologies, changing our whole economy and way of life. Where did their visions come from? By what alchemy, besides sheer force of intellect, personality, and determination, did they bring them to life? Visionary business leaders, we have been led to believe, are creatures we can only admire...

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    Poor Score?

    What denes corporate ethics? Why is it often being ignored in organisations? What is the role b-schools can play in creating an ethical mindset?Situations do inuence behaviour, but it is an individual’s ethical make-up that can make a bigger impact. There are many personal attributes that are considered to have an impact on ethics; however, it is spirituality that can best help to understand the fundamentals of workplace ethics. Ashmos and Duchon (2000) dened workplace spirituality as ‘recognition of an inner life that nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work that takes place in the context of community’...

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    Create and Control

    Over the last two decades, I have worked with scores of world-class organisations who, despite the differences in their size, nationality, purpose, industry, products, business models, legal entities, and ownership structures, share a foundational challenge: how to have an organisation that ts the fast-changing world and the intense evolutionary pressures it brings. I have come to believe that most, if not all, of an organisation’s major problems, whether decreasing margins or a disrupted operating model, whether disengaged employees or a lack of leadership agility, are actually symptoms...

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    Break free

    Break Paradigms to Build Competitive AdvantageBreaking paradigms is crucial for achieving breakthrough results. As a business unit general manager, I was taught this lesson by the CEO of our company, Paul Staley, who challenged the design of a new plant my business unit was trying to economically justify. The return on investment was initially below the hurdle rate for this type of project. Strategically, we wanted to build the plant because it would open a new geography in a growing market for the company and protect that market from the entry of a competitor, but we needed a higher return on investment...

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    The ‘Z’ code

    Aradio is buzzing in a corner; the transmission is unclear, and the signal seems to be wavering. I adjust the antennae and then the voice starts getting clearer. I repeat this ritual several times. However, the crackling cricket commentary makes up for all the hard work. Both my younger brother and I are glued to the radio the whole day. Our parents are not at home. My mother wanted to speak to our grandma and therefore she has gone to the post oce to book a trunk call. It would take her a few hours of waiting before her turn comes to speak over the public land phone. It took longer than expected for our parents to come back..

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    The human angle

    Dr Abhijit Banerjee’s 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics could put the final nail in the coffin in ‘rational actor’ economics. His work illustrating effective solutions for alleviating poverty emerge via observation, listening, and interaction with the local poor—piggybacking on Richard Thaler’s 2017 Nobel ‘nudging’ smarter human choices and Daniel Kahneman’s 2002 award for understanding real-world decision-making— demonstrates that the planet’s most quantitative thinkers—economists—are concluding that humans are not facts and figures, but rather flawed and often...

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    More data privacy, more value

    Forbes reports that Fortune 500 and FTSE 350 companies will spend almost $9 billion to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.1 Look at any conversation about GDPR, and this increased cost of doing business is guaranteed to be a talking point. It reminds me of other regulatory changes, like Basel and SOX. Analysts and consultants work overtime whenever there is a major change on the anvil, with naysayers predicting doom every time. I believe that data protection is actually a huge opportunity for the IT outsourcing industry...

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    Fight or flight?

    Shen to hold, when to fold, when it’s gold When does fearlessness become wild-eyed gambling or intransigent stubbornness? And when is “fearlessness” engaged in only issues about where to place the vending machines in the cafeteria but not about new product development or anything substantive? “Fearless” means “lacking fear.” As I’ve explainer earlier, it doesn’t mean being blind to issues that might cause one to fight, to have fright, or to engage in flight. Nor does it mean to fool yourself into thinking that fearlessness is sufficient to defeat any...

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    Co-opportunity knocks

    Since the publication of Michael Porter’s seminal work Competitive Strategy in 1980, the primary filter for defining market opportunities has been competitive advantage. Popular strategy frameworks such as Porter’s Generic Strategies recommend that opportunities be identified and assessed primarily through the filter of countering competitive threats. For example, Blue Ocean Strategy advises companies to only contest markets in which there are no existing competitors or customers. Clayton Christenson’s Disruptive Innovation Model advises companies to create...

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    Open minds

    I was promoted to a management position at the age of 23, largely due to the fact that I was a good salesperson. I have no doubt that there were other contributing factors. But was I ready for management? Probably not. I did not know how to motivate people; I did not know how to lead without being in control; and I was far too focused on what people were doing wrong than what they were doing right. I did one management training course that was mainly focused on what to do when people underperformed, and then off I went, operating as an individual contributor, looking after...

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    The ‘disputed’ child

    Amy Joseph (name changed) works in an MNC in a senior position and is known to be a top performer. A millennial and single by choice, she lives with her two dogs. She is very much attached to her pets and considers them as her children—she would not even go to work if they are sick. One day, the HR department received a letter from her, requesting reimbursement for her dog’s treatment cost. They immediately rejected it, stating that medical reimbursement is only for the children of employees and not for animals. Amy held that her dogs were as important...

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    Be a peacebuilder

    We have become a tribal nation polarised by competing belief systems, where every day seems to take our fragile sense of reality to the next level of dysfunction. How does one quell the fires raging in our communities, country, and global world order? How do we find a level playing ground? As a conscious leader, my experiences have aptly shown that in order to find any degree of peace, I must look within my own psyche to quell the fires that burn. Let us face it: blaming external entities is much easier than looking in the mirror and exercising...

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    How to quit like a winner

    Have you ever wanted to call it quits on a goal for your team— or yourself? How do you know when the time is right?
    How do you know if an opportunity is keeping you tethered securely, or if it is choking the life out of you? Quitting is nothing more than weighing two variables and finding that one of them has stopped being worth it. These two variables are something that every human deals with on a daily basis: suffering and sacrifice.
    Humans have a knack for understanding...

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    Managing—with purpose

    “Sales manager.” These two words encompass what is arguably the most challenging role within any company. In my experience, it is also the most misunderstood role. What follows is a story about a sales manager who experienced and, by harnessing the power of intention, overcame some of the most common challenges faced by the managers I have worked with over the years. The causes of these challenges are many, but most of them, I have found, start with a fundamental confusion about the very role of a manager. A manager is not a salesperson. These are two totally...

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    More art than strategy?

    Professional and personal lives demand interaction with fellow humans, which underlines the need for interpersonal and intrapersonal relations, the vortex of which revolves around conflict management. We do not need to define the word ‘conflict’, as we have experienced it at some point in life, and perceive its cause, approach, and solution in different ways. A conflict arises, essentially, due to differences—be it in any domain—and seeks dialogue as the main tool for effective resolution; dialogue that rests on the following fulcra: listening, understanding...

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    The right fit

    Organisations often talk about hiring for cultural fit, yet very few of them know how to do it well. This is mostly because they have not taken the time to define their culture and, therefore, there is nothing to hire against or fit into. Instead, a standard set of questions, technical skills, qualifications, and psychometric testing are used in the hope that the right candidate lands in their lap. Where time, money, and effort have been invested to define the organisational culture, it is imperative to then use that definition to bring...

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    A role to play

    The corporate world today needs real leaders—those who can mobilise resources and help organisations deal with adaptive challenges to confront the new realities and succeed against competition. Leaders may not have answers to all the challenges of today, which are unique and different from the past. Their expertise may not be enough to deal with these problems, and they need to rely on the collective intelligence of the group. Having desirable leadership skills—ability to visualise, persuasively communicate, motivate the team—may...

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    Z quotient

    As Gen Z (born 19972010) enters the workforce, a new Korn Ferry survey of professionals of all ages conducted in August 2019 examines how the next generation in the workplace is bringing plenty of optimism, a lot of purpose, and less stress than millennials (born 1982-1996). Our recent survey indicates that, in contrast to their millennial predecessors, the newest generation in the workplace—those born between 1997 and 2010—are making a good impression on their colleagues. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (60 per cent)...

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    For collective results

    People often use mindset to refer to a core belief about oneself. But the biggest lever for change goes beyond self-belief to a fundamental shift in how people see and regard their connections and obligations to others. The mutual impact people have on one another turns on whether they have a self-focused inward mindset or an impact-focused outward mindset. Adopting an outward mindset unlocks a whole new level of collaboration, innovation, and responsiveness among individuals, teams, and the organization itself...

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    Culture drives performance

    Getting culture right is likely to be as critical to longterm success as anything a CEO does. But too often, talk of corporate culture is filled with empty platitudes, subjective buzzwords, and meaningless warm fuzzies. In contrast, an ownership culture fosters a result-oriented environment, where the pursuit of opportunity and acceptance of accountability rule the day. An ownership culture better aligns the motivations of employees and owners. An ownermanager would not say, ‘that is not my job’, ‘it is good enough’, or ‘we will...

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    The human touch

    Branding has changed. It is no longer about building a perception in your customer’s mind. In the age of smartphones and social media, customer experience is the new branding. Customers are defining the brand to the business and everyone else, and we can find out what a large percentage of them think about any brand within minutes by simply searching on Google. Companies put enormous amounts into boosting brand awareness, satisfaction, and loyalty, but they often overlook the most powerful driver...

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    Keep the pace

    In the Indian business scenario, which is constantly evolving, growth is essentially supported by latest technologies. Rapid technological advancements have given rise to new requirements, hence demanding a rapid change in skill sets too. Today, employees need to possess specialised skills in order to stay relevant in a constantly changing business environment. Businesses need to leverage relevant technology and invest in adequate reskilling programme to stay ahead in a competitive market...

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    Beyond the bend

    The realm of recruitment is truly an adventure riddled with challenges— the expectations-reality mismatch, talent war, hunt for the right match, evaluating candidate skills and competencies, presenting candidates adequately, scheduling interviews, negotiating offers, and preventing backouts. A recruitment job is not for the faint-hearted. And naturally, any help that comes along to ease the daily battles is more than welcome—for instance, candidate referrals. Technology holds immense...

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    Nurturing in action

    Years ago, a customer I’ll call Xenia purchased a rather expensive necklace from our jewelry store on a Friday afternoon, then promptly returned it on the following Monday morning. Of course, we were disappointed to see this necklace returned to us and to be asked to give the money back to the customer. Upon closer inspection, we noticed the necklace had been worn—because there was an abundant smell of perfume all around it. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do. Had we placed a label...

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    Recipes for digital transformation

    What unique traits or skills do leaders need to be successful in the digital age? This is a question that companies are increasingly asking themselves as the pace of digital transformation accelerates. And as companies focus more on innovation, many are also contemplating how employee performance development systems need to evolve. How useful, really, is the traditional yearend performance review in a world of agile development and dynamic goal-setting? More generally, the need to rethink people management...

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    A new lens

    There is actually just one reason your team needs a coach—to help deliver results. At the end of the day, it is all about results. The very reason your team exists is for the sake of generating results. The question then is: what does it take for a team to generate results? As someone who has worked with global organisations on ‘conversational leadership’ and shifting team and organisational conversations, I can tell you with a fair degree of understanding that the points shared below may seem...

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    No ‘real’ threat

    With all the excitement and angst over the onslaught of artificial intelligence (AI) in business, it is easy to lose confidence in the durable relevance of human resources. We seem so easy to replace with automated processes. We call it botsourcing, when a company substitutes human resources with machine resources, or in other words, uses machines to perform tasks previously carried out by people. This is the equivalent of outsourcing in the context of AI. How can humans avoid losing their jobs...

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    Who are you?

    You are doing a great job as a committed, accountable, talented individual. You perform. You make a positive impact on those around you. You have got a vision. So, who knows about you? Who needs to know? How are you communicating your story? How are you leveraging your impact? What is your exposure-barometer reading? Time to replace the story that doing a great job will get you the recognition, credit, or promotion you deserve. It is time to get noticed more and shine more. It is time to speak up...

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    Redefining UX

    E-commerce in India, unlike in markets such as the US and Europe, has been more price dependent and price is what drives sales. The low loyalty factor in the sector is what causes excessive price wars among competitors. Burning cash through promotions and big sales is what giants such as Amazon, Flipkart, and now Paytm Mall (backed by Alibaba), another deep discounting rival, are practising. As India becomes the fastest growing market in this sector, with companies across industries gearing up their...

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    Autonomy at stake?

    One of the most iconic scenes in the history of film depicts the Little Tramp, played by Charlie Chaplin, fixing products on an assembly line. Over time, Little Tramp himself becomes more and more machine-like, determined to accomplish one thing and one thing only: wrenching screws on gadgets that pass by on a conveyor belt, over and over again. In an attempt to increase efficiency, the factory supervisor turns a lever to speed up the assembly line. Little Tramp hastens to keep up and grows increasingly more desperate as he races to complete the task against the ever-faster tide of work.

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    Do not cross the line

    Psychological targeting has the potential to take marketing up a gear. Up until now, marketers have been able to target individuals based on their preferences, demographic, and behaviour patterns, but never before have marketers been able to target individuals based on their psychological profile. Psychological targeting enables organisations to interpret basic human drives and match their messaging to people’s personality traits—thus potentially enabling them to increase its effectiveness...

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    Catalyst for change

    Gen Y, Gen Z, and millennials have come to be the most commonly used jargons in the HR world to refer to employees of certain age groups. Such acronyms are too unclear and complex to understand. Hence, let us start by looking at the generation born between the early 1980s and 2000. The most interesting aspect about this generation is that they grew up in a strong economy, emboldening them to spend money freely...

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    Don’t advertise, demonstrate

    Advertising, has many a time, relied on innovation to catch the attention in this era of clutter. It does not just encompass the need to build awareness and increase revenues for the brand; it is also about showcasing how a product caters to the customer’s functional needs. This is where functional advertising puts a real feel to the customer as to how effective a brand can be in terms of its utility value...

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    Hard to come by

    The really expert riders of horses let the horse know immediately who is in control, but then guide the horse with loose reins and seldom use the spurs. - Sandra Day O’Connor The metaphor describing how jockeys steer their horses towards the finishing line appositely captures the importance of possessing soft skills for those in leadership positions...

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    For a lasting impact

    Aconsistent picture emerges from lists of top CEOs. In HBR’s Best-Performing CEOs ranking, Pablo Isla of Inditex, the parent company of Zara, Ajay Banga of Mastercard and Bernard Arnault of LVMH stand out for both performance and longevity. Between the three of them, these CEOs have served for 50 years marked by strong performance...

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    Laws of attraction

    Candidates who already know the work they want to do face a simple choice: which workplace will have that magnetic ability to stir them from sleep and make them want to return to the job every day? The answer is ‘not the enterprise with the flashiest ‘stuff’, but the one that produces the kind of satisfaction you cannot see’. It is a place where you can feel an appreciation for the unique ‘gifts’ people bring to the table, where a shared, positive spirit circumvents challenges...

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    Draw the contours

    The prevailing practices and ever-increasing acceptance across modern businesses have established and validated the credit due to the potential of customer relationship management (CRM) in ensuring growth, profitability, and competitive success of businesses at modern marketplace. The cliché of ‘customer is the king’ has long lost its solemnity with companies moving from market share model to wallet share model and mastering the art of manoeuvering customer consumption behaviours...

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    Making it big

    C K arrived a few minutes early. A stickler for time, he was annoyed as the chatter wouldn't end and people were still ambling in. As they were settling down, in his baritone voice, CK said, “You all have gotten used to people carrying your bags and you walk with a sense of entitlement. All that could soon end.” Even before he completed his sentence, a senior ITC executive walked in with his assistant carrying his bag. The room burst into loud laughter...

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    The era of social office

    Workplaces have moved far beyond the traditional model, where employees only had to clock in the required time and then head home. The scope for a workplace has increased manifold over the past few years. How well employees perform is often related to how comfortable the workplace is and how it allows them to grow. With the advent of technology, the workplace has become a sort of a hybrid nest where one can connect with others for work and collaborate using the digital medium...

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    The future might surprise you

    Do you really know who your competitors are? I mean, not just the obvious ones who have direct substitutional products, but also the ones who indirectly affect usage of your offerings today and who might have a massive impact on your value offerings in a near future? A way to investigate this is through a simple game I call ‘6 degrees of competition’. The answers you will find may surprise you and not only illuminate the threats out there but also unveil massive opportunity...

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    Creating synergy

    Arranging ‘personal development’ days can have far-reaching benefits for your company and staff. Enriched relationships, deeper friendships, greater efficiency, and raised morale can all be achieved through well-organised training which equips staff not only for work, but for life in general, leading to powerful transformations to attitudes and performance in the workplace...

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    The best gesture

    Performance management is an important human resource and managerial tool that provides employees with clear objectives vis-à-vis work, and offers them an opportunity for feedback. It involves an ongoing stream of communication between the employees and their managers, which helps to accomplish the company’s strategic goals; it also serves as a tool for employee engagement, encouraging them to achieve their maximum potential...

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    Redefining contours

    A few of years ago, while working on a project with a giant Indian MNC, we, as designers, were surprised to hear from the young managers (from the client’s side) that they follow design thinking to innovate and they have been trained to do so. It was a pleasant surprise because 22 years ago, when I started design practice, it was more of a design evangelist’s job rather than a designer’s!...

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    Sensing risk

    I the decade before I led the creation of NGS, Procter & Gamble’s GBS had religiously driven constant change cycles between 2002 and 2015. The organization design was proactively tweaked every twenty-four months. Over time, the early model of saving costs via offshore services centers evolved to a mostly outsourced model. That was followed by the evolution to a fully value-driven model to provide business growth services, in addition to cost savings...

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    Perfect symphony

    My business purpose: To help organisations become stronger by increasing the integration of systems that enhance human understanding and create positive interaction. I could count on one hand the business people I have known over the last 40 years who have a written ‘business purpose’...

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    Improv magic

    Coming up with dazzling and novel ideas is not an innate ability, but can be a learned skill that you and your team develop. It is actually possible to train your mental radar to repeatedly sweep back and forth in search of those blips of inspiration that have a possibility of turning into something exciting and concrete. With this acquired mindset, it is possible to begin seeing possibilities for everywhere...

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    Readying for the future

    The Fourth Industrial Revolution is in the reckoning. Automation, one of its key components, has picked up pace across sectors, even as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and virtual reality (VR) transform the manner in which job roles and functions are carried out on a day-to-day basis...

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    Creating an engaged organisation

    Employee engagement refers to the strength of the mental and emotional connection that an employee feels towards his/ her place of work. In 1990, Professor William Kahn of Boston University pro posed the definition of engagement as ‘the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles’...

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    Wake-up call

    Why do good companies go bad? Why do corporate scandals happen so often? Is misconduct in business inevitable? And what can business leaders do about it? What can they do to save their companies when scandal strikes or, better yet, how can they spot the warning signs and avoid scandal in the first place?...

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    Taking charge

    Our bodies are amazing examples of intelligent design and function, performing trillions of operations every second. Over 400 neurotransmitters and hormones influence how we think, feel, speak, and behave. Physiology drives performance, and yet most of us experience physical reactions, emotions, and thoughts without realising that we can transform them...

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    The driving force

    The digital revolution has launched a new era of business—society and technology. We have never seen such influence on human behaviour than the combined effect of digital technology. The technological advancement is enhancing the nature of businesses and the nature of consumers. User experience is one of the driving forces of technology, which can make or break your digital business...

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    The AI leap

    AI-driven platforms will completely overturn the way consumers interact with brands in the coming years. Connected appliances and devices like Google Home and Amazon Alexa will automate a lot of buying actions—especially when it comes to everyday products like soap, salt, or toilet paper—which means that they will make a lot of the decisions on brands on behalf of customers...

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    Not just react

    If you are a business owner, the vast majority of the problems that you face in your business are your own fault. A business is a complex human system that you oversee—and you are the answer to the why and how of problem development. You started the business, set it in motion, and created the goals. Then you failed along the way to establish and maintain your business’ systems. You are the moving force behind why potential problems blossom into real-time failures, because you neglected to appropriately prepare for or manage them...

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    Power of the unconscious mind

    We all carry around with us something of infinite power and creativity. Few of us realise that we do or tap into its power. I am talking about the unconscious mind—also called the subconscious. In this article, I give some examples of how it works, and then turn our attention to the key condition for using this fabulous and neglected asset...

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    Digital leadership

    What unique traits or skills do leaders need to be successful in the digital age? This is a question that companies are increasingly asking themselves as the pace of digital transformation accelerates. And as companies focus more on innovation, many are also contemplating how employee performance development systems need to evolve..

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    Adding ‘real’ value

    When Steve Jobs paced the stage in January 2007 introducing the world to his latest creation, the iPhone, not a single observer reacted by saying, “Well, it’s curtains for the taxi industry!” Fast forward to 2018 and that appears to be precisely the case. Smartphones evolved from a music-browsing-communication device to an indispensable platform for tools that are fundamentally altering all manner of industries...

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    What’s the lifeline?

    The dead bodies keep on mounting. It started with the secretary, she was the first to be killed. Then came the postman and the travel agent, they too were murdered mercilessly. After this, there was an avalanche of professions that were found dead in cold blood. The serial killer in each case was the same—technology. It is gigantic, omnipotent, and ruthless. It is coming over for you, me, and everybody!...

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    The manager’s sustainability muscle

    You were hired based upon faith. Your employer certainly used screening tools based on science. Your résumé was reviewed. Your previous employers were contacted for references. You were interviewed to see how you both presented yourself and responded to questions. At the end of the process, some one person made a go/no-go decision on your behalf. Your track record was based on patience. Almost no one steps into a new role, especially as a manager, and is completely at ease, able to handle any situation that arises, or be superman and leap tall buildings in a single bound!...

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    Productivity at stake

    According to a major study published on telegraph. co.uk, as humans, our attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds since 2000. This study was published in 2015. Now, let me fast forward only three years, and look at the following insights by Udemy (Mind you, this is only 150 weeks post the above stats): Millennials and Gen Z are the most likely age group to describe themselves as distracted at work. 74 per cent of them report being distracted, and of those, 46 per cent say it makes them feel unmotivated, and 41 per cent say it stresses them out...

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    Measuring the intangible

    In the era of new economic development, knowledge is considered to be the pillar of economic success of any organisation in a competitive market place. Therefore, it is critical that we develop a systematic evaluation of intellectual capital along with the conventional reporting format. Knowledge management is the process through which organisations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Hence, in a new knowledge economy, conventional financial accounting information appears to be rapidly becoming less relevant...

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    Driving force

    The greatest challenge in developing teams is having a sustainable or durable impact. The three-week to three-month honeymoon period of positive effect from training and education is probably lower for teams. In teams, there are more people, more interactions, and more entropy bringing teams back to however they were acting...

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    Why we can’t innovate

    “A d Hoc, slow, shortterm, insular.” That’s the overall characterization of corporate innovation processes that appears in a recent “State of Innovation” report by CB Insights, based on a survey of 677 Corporate Strategy executives. While a lot about the identity of the firms in the sample remains unknown, the conclusions appear reasonable...

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    Take a call

    India is inching closer to becoming a trillion-dollar digital economy. Digital infrastructure and accessibility to technology are both rapidly expanding in the country. And with unprecedented data explosion powered by 4G and the availability of cheaper smartphones, it comes as no surprise that mobile is the primary driver of digital adoption...

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    A stitch in time

    Old people in India face a peculiar problem when it comes to buying insurance cover for hospitalisation and other medical emergencies. On the one hand, entry of private players in the domain has resulted in attractive schemes to cover hospitalisation, domiciliary treatment, consultations, diagnostics, and even preventive health check-ups—of course...

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    The age of AI

    In one corner of the BMW assembly plant in Dingolfing, Germany, a worker and robot are collaborating to build a transmission. The worker prepares a gear casing, while a lightweight robot arm, sensitive to and aware of its surroundings, picks up a twelve-pound gear. The worker moves on to her next task, while the robot precisely puts...

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    Leading into the future

    Leadership has been the subject of prestige, envy, and enigma since the time life came into existence. From tribal chiefs to kings, from missionaries to gurus, and from ministers to corporate leaders, good leadership has always been sought after and rewarded. The quality of leadership determines the success and the future of any organisation...

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    A poor ‘reflection'

    Deepak Sharma, an area manager with India Telecom, was trying to assess the reason for the dismal rating given by his senior, Pradeep Gupta, who had joined the company as regional manager three years ago. Prior to joining the telecom industry, Gupta was procurement head for northern region at Only Mart, a leading grocery store chain with branches across India...

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    Learning the ropes

    When a country like India has strong GDP growth rate, organisations— large or small—also enjoy hyper growth. And that is what the country has been witnessing for many years. In the early ‘70s and ‘80s, a person had to spend considerable time in a role before he/she moved on to the next role. That gave people exposure and the time to develop themselves. But since the mid-90s different sectors in India grew at unprecedented rates not in any particular order...

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    The emergence of projects

    The emergence of projects as the economic engine of our times is silent but incredibly disruptive and powerful. My prediction is that by 2025, regardless of the industry or sector, senior leaders and managers will spend at least 60% of their time selecting, prioritizing and driving the execution of projects. We will all become project leaders—despite never having been trained to be so!...

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    Shifting gears

    The importance of human resources (HR) in an NGO, as a means of ensuring sustainable growth, cannot be overemphasised; it is the fundamental strength upon which people, strategies, processes, and operations are based. Effective employee management should be on top of the list of priorities for organisational improvement. An NGO must strive to attract, develop, and retain qualified and enthusiastic employees as they are key to its success...

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    The leaner the meaner

    Of the approximately 500 startup founders I have spoken to in the last two years, several have dreamt of coming up with a tech solution that will change the world. However, did they seriously contemplate about what they thought people needed? Too many entrepreneurs launch into designing and developing a technical product that no one is willing to spend on...

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    Decode it right

    According to Accenture’s Digital Economic Value Index, 25 per cent of the world economy will be digital by 2020, which was 22 per cent in 2015, and accounted for 15 per cent in 2005. In a similar vein, according to a joint study conducted by Microsoft and IDC, impact on the combined GDP of AsiaPacific derived from digital products or services (created through the use of digital technologies) will reach to 60 per cent in the year 2021 as compared to 6 per cent in 2017. For 2019, the forecast is 25 percent...

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    Future of well-being at work

    There is a science to wellbeing. It must be made accessible to all. Just like the vaccines. The capacity to zestfully and rationally live life is everyone’s birthright to pursue. This good life is not about removal of every misery, misfortune, and discomfort. They may be worthwhile goals. For us, well-being is the most rational reaction to these miseries, misfortunes, and discomforts...

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    Leading to innovate

    Competition in every industry is increasing at an exponential rate and each organisation is trying its best to gain competitive advantage. One of the ways to sustain in the present times is through innovation; it is also a tool used also to meet the ever-growing demands of the market. Organisations must strive to build something different from that of their competitors...

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    Towards intelligent learning

    Organisations, leaders, and employees must be prepared to face the ‘unknown unknowns’. In this context, the role of technology in management should be examined. Our education system, especially business schools, should equip graduates with the technology needed to survive and grow. So, it is imperative to understand if our educational institutions are prepared on the VUCA front? Are they buffered, hedged?...

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    Look Beyond the Valley

    The Silicon Valley, as we know it today, was a rural economy. It was Fred Terman, the Stanford provost—also known as ‘Father of Silicon Valley’— who built the base for the hi-tech industry in the West. He was 10 years old when he moved to Stanford with his parents. The stage was set as the young man received his degree in electrical engineering from Stanford. He then headed east to MIT...

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    A Big Draw

    The non-government sector has come of age in India over the last decade or so. Studies have shown that there has been a significant rise in the number of NGOs in the recent past. In 2015, the CBI’s exercise to map registered NGOs had disclosed that India had at least 31 lakh NGOs. This was the first-ever such exercise undertaken in the country...

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    The What and Who of Culture

    Culture is a high-frequency term in everyday parlance as well as research. Around thousands of research articles are written each year on culture across many countries, in academic and practitioner journals. Academically, one could define culture as a phenomenon that manifests as a common behaviour of employees while they attempt to perform various tasks to accomplish business or work objectives...

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    Not an Isolated Approach

    Organisations spend considerable resources on training their workforce. Such programmes fall broadly into two categories: functional/ technical and behavioural. Training of the first category aims to impart to employees specific technical knowledge/skills (for example, operating a new software or learning about changes in taxation or accounting procedures)...

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    Best Step Forward

    There is no manager in the world who does not possibly know that bringing about change is difficult. The fact that people resist change and it is difficult to persuade others to do what you want is also well known. Research on change planning and implementation shows that changes attempted by managers are more often a failure than success...

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    Startup DNA

    The government defines a startup as an entity ‘which is less than five years old, and is working towards innovation, development, deployment, and commercialisation of new products, processes, or services driven by technology or intellectual property’. The main aim of a start-up is to tackle a certain problem society faces, be it logistical, technological, or social...

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    Beyond Constraints

    Successful managers who have grown up from the ranks know that they are dependent on their team members to achieve targets. In doing so, they understand that interdependence is key for collaborative ventures. Synergies of this interdependence cannot be harnessed in the absence of a conducive work environment, which is also referred to as organisational culture, work context, or climate...

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    Change with the times

    According to the Economist.com, India is the world’s fastestgrowing large economy, with a brisk projected increase in GDP of 7.8 per cent. In addition, India, for the first time in history, jumped 30 spots in a single year to be ranked among the top 100 nations in the Ease of Doing Business index. Further, NIFTY has risen almost by 3,000 points in the last 125 weeks. So, the economy is not the reason why companies are facing losses now...

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    Power of the narrative

    Among the various subjects on which I have searched for books on amazon. com, the largest result has always been for those on change management. This is clearly an area of struggle and concern for most leaders. In 1995, John Kotter, the guru of organisational change, published a paper on the eight largest errors that can doom a change exercise...

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    Digital dividend

    Since the late ‘90s, the way we shop has been transforming constantly. From humble mom and pop stores, we transitioned to all-encompassing malls. Once the mall culture was in full swing, the internet took over the shopping scene, bringing about the ecommerce revolution. Today, products ranging from everyday FMCG essentials to heavy electronics are all simply bought online and delivered to the customer’s doorstep....

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    Forces of Change

    The relationship between the workforce and technology is at the crossroads. They are now more digital, with a greater infusion of technology, and are more global. At the same time, business expectations and their needs and demands are evolving faster than ever before. The future of work signifies an opportunity to evolve our workforces and workplaces. This evolution is being shaped primarily by the growing adoption of artificial intelligence …

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    Change our language!

    The new imperative in business is not just speed. It is not just innovation. To succeed in keeping pace with industry leaders in today’s world, the imperative is innovation with speed. Most of us thought speed was a tough challenge: simplifying the supply chain, maintaining a just-in-time inventory, getting products delivered to customers more quickly. We found innovation to be a challenge: finding the next new blockbuster, getting employees …

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    Path to future

    An organisation is a group of people working together for a common purpose. Corporate culture may be visualised as a dynamic mix of its purpose, shared values of its team members, nature of work, and the creative use of technologies to create as well as deliver products and services to customers. It is also influenced by the external environment in which it operates. In the present context, ‘ethics’ in an organisation is not about analytical ...

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    It’s the Age of Platforms

    According to Accenture’s Digital Economic Value Index, 25 per cent of the world’s economy will be digital by 2020—which was 22 per cent in 2015 and accounted for 15 per cent in 2005. Over the last decade, this avalanche has come as a ‘digital culture shock’ for many, be it organisations (of different nature and sizes), governments, society, or individuals. Primarily, this is because of the disruptive technologies that have come in many waves post ...

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    The Right Turn

    Amit Jatia was only 28 years old when he was entrusted by the world’s largest restaurant company with the task of building its business from the ground up, in the world’s second largest country. “I had no idea that I was going to leave my family business and get into food,” he recalls, “I had absolutely no formal training in food. That is why I say that you never know where you will end up!” It was all a coincidence. After graduating, Amit was working ...

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    Partnering it right

    As a channel manager, you have two critical responsibilities: recruit the best partners and get the best out of them. That is it. That is the sum total of your job. If your partner programme is failing, then it is probably your fault. Take a good, hard look in the mirror. What did you do wrong? Did you recruit the right partners? Did you establish a clear, specific, and certain upfront contract with the executive leadership team of your partners ...

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    Bridging differences

    One of the phrases we have all been hearing since a long time is: the world is getting smaller. Regardless of how clichéd this statement is, its impact is clearly evident. Consider a multicultural setting and how global participation affects its performance. With the boundaries of workplaces practically non-existing, global teams are essentially working round the clock. They have the potential to take any business to ...

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    Force multiplier

    Living in this world of network marketing for more than a decade now, I strongly believe it is one of the most democratic, socially uplifting, and economically sustainable ways to be an entrepreneur and fulfil one’s dreams. The most incredible virtue of network marketing is its foundational principle that you cannot grow big without helping your partners grow big. Your only job in this business is to help other people fulfil their ...

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    Aggressive negotiation

    Given the Indian’s penchant for bargaining hard, are Indians aggressive while negotiating? I spoke to some experts, who have played an active part in negotiations, and asked them for their views. This is what they had to say: Gaurav says, ‘From what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t say that we are too pushy. We may appear to be so as we are not well coordinated. So, different people asking for different terms in the same deal sounds pushy...

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    The new alchemy

    A few years back, while working on a project with a giant Indian MNC, we, as designers, were surprised to hear from the young managers (from the client’s side) that they follow design thinking to innovate and they have been trained to do so. It was a pleasant surprise, because 22 years back when I started design practice, it was more of a design evangelist’s job rather than a designer’s...

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    Creating masters

    World leadership is an enviable accomplishment that comes with a great amount of responsibility. According to recent studies, millennials are crying out for mentors, and with the highest population of millennials—400-million-plus people who are in the prime of young adulthood and starting out in their careers—India is uniquely positioned to effect this critical area of leadership that will have a major impact...

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    HR’s moneyball

    In the context of any investment appears a simple question—what is the RoI? Employees hired by an organisation are also an investment—human capital. If an organisation invests in people, then it also looks after their well-being, career aspirations, and benefits. These investments are made to increase employee engagement, which in turn boosts business growth. There is a high degree of correlation between...

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    Know your numbers

    Financial literacy is the possession of a set of skills and knowledge that allows individuals to make informed and effective decisions with regard to their financial resources. It helps them become self-sufficient and achieve financial stability. Lack of proficiency in financial planning, profitable savings techniques, debt management, and the time value of money makes many people—across...

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    Leading change

    For all of us as human beings, being effective in our lives is the ultimate goal. Personal effectiveness includes many dimensions such as physical, emotional, social and spiritual effectiveness. It is about achieving our fullest potential and being all that we are capable of. At a more basic level, it is about coping effectively with the environmental stress and pressures while still upholding commitment...

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    The right balance

    There have always been two sides to a manager’s role— one is to drive efforts to boost productivity at all costs while the other is to take steps to increase employee engagement. Only a few managers have aced the art of managing both at the same time. Finding a balance between the two is generally rare but when a manager does find it, it surely leads to a team that is happy and satisfied but is still constantly...

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    A mould for the future

    Configuration management is a process for establishing and maintaining the consistency of a product’s performance, its functional and physical attributes, design, and operational information throughout its life. CM is mostly defined as a discipline to bring out transparency and control of a product’s functional and physical characteristics....

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    Unlocking potential

    Poonam Ahuja, CEO of Greenwood Systems, Inc., stared out of the window of her luxurious sixth-floor office, reflecting on her interaction with the COO of her company a little while ago. She felt puzzled and also a little remorseful. It had all started innocently enough when the COO had come to her office all excited about a plan he had made to streamline ...

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    Securing the future

    Workforce planning is a key component of talent management that makes optimum utilisation of human resources in an organisation, and is ideally expected to help gain sustainable competitive advantage. An organisation can generate the capability to achieve success even in dynamic business scenarios by leveraging human resources. Strategic workforce planning (SWP) helps forecast requirements—both quantitative and qualitative in the medium- to longterm...

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    Readying for transformation

    In the present business environment, firms seek quick turnaround by analytics organisations. The solutions sought generally comprises three phases of activity—IT personnel working with IT architects, IT architects working with business consultants, and business consultants then arriving at a holistic solution. Most often, these processes happen in a series which increases the turnaround time and amount of manpower required...

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    Changing the game

    Forced by government regulations across the world, private companies are increasingly focusing on protecting the data and privacy of their customers. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation, which came into effect on May 25, is a game changer for any company or organisation that deals with customer data, especially online....

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    Keeping pace with the times

    “If you have managed to become a successful leader, then you know that leadership development never stops. You cannot afford to stop investing in leadership. Disruption is all around you. New industries and markets emerge everywhere; a few of them disappear as suddenly as they emerged, whereas others survive and thrive. You know that organisations must reinvent themselves continuously...

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    People factor

    “In the past decade, we have observed the role of M&As in furthering the scope of startups and giving them a leg up to play in the big leagues. But more recently, all eyes have been on Walmart as it acquired Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart in one fell swoop, for a staggering $16 billion. M&As such as this compel us to consider the effects such colossal business decisions have on...

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    Breaking the mould

    &Workplaces are not the same anymore—flat hierarchy, creative freedom, and a sense of collaboration, as well as ownership, have taken over the structured and often constraining attributes that defined them about a decade ago. Today, employees are more conscious about choosing their job profiles and are boldly expressing their preferences for the role they want to play. Companies too...

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    Seize the future

    “Become the leader you wished you had so that you can build an organisation that puts people first. Togetherness is better under all circumstances for creating results. Results do not come from knowing; they come from motivated employees acting on what they feel is right. Knowledge is only other people’s findings. The future is wisdom, and wisdom is learning from and acting on what you...

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    Keeping hostile bids at bay

    Recent years have seen the return of hostile or unwelcome bids, which provides such great entertainment to the impartial observer and a chance for the financial public relations people to shine. They often go down to the wire and frequently fail, decided by government intervention, the courts, or the shareholders.

    Last year saw assaults on so-called national treasures such as Unilever, known for consumer packaged goods...

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    Winning the race

    “On your mark, get set, go!” I wonder if the Industrial Revolution was launched by a referee who uttered those words and then fired the starter’s pistol. Beginning with a bang more than 200 years ago, the Industrial Revolution spurred an era of production and innovation—as well as an unprecedented increase and subsequent conundrum of management and labour issues...

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    Have employee who belong

    Mrunal, who had just completed PGDM HR, received a campus placement offer from MYSTYLE, a company in the beauty and wellness sector. Initially, she was not too keen on it—the remuneration was lower than that of her batchmates and she would also have to relocate to a tier 2 city. However, after going through the job description, she was fascinated by the scope it offered...

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    Share for growth

    Like human beings, organisations too learn as they grow. As a company progresses along the trajectory of its life cycle, it gathers information on all fronts—business, technology, operations, human resources, the market, the industry, and the political and regulatory environment, to name a few.

    But what do they do with this plethora of information? It would do well for an organisation to know how to assimilate, manage, and disseminate knowledge...

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    An inclusive future

    Most of the population in metros and tier 1 and tier 2 cities altered their mode of payments and embraced the digital channel, post demonetisation. The adaptation was quick due to the easy availability of and access to technology. Numerous mobile wallets sprung up and the existing ones grew fourfold.

    On the other hand, the rural populace, especially those who did not have a bank account, were compelled to open one, and had to limit their spending for a while even if the need was absolutely important...

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    One step ahead

    Competitive Intelligence (CI) has emerged as a compelling force, with firms aggressively chasing scarce resources, territories, and targeted customers; and its impact has deepened with increased globalisation and advancements in technology.

    This makes it imperative for businesses, as in warfare, to comprehend the strategic moves of competitors...

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    Power of the collective

    "The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolise it."

    Although these words were uttered by a grand czar of advertising, it rightly applies to every industry when it comes to managing and leading a large team...

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    'White' benefits

    What amounts to happiness at work? Is it the opposite of the daily morning ‘not another day at the office’ to the Sunday-evening ‘yes...another week of opportunities’?

    Psychology tells us that happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being, with positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy...

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    Including the excluded

    India has an extensive history of producing excellent skilled workforce. Skills run like genes in this land, passing from generation to generation. Not until long ago, skilled artisans were treated with utmost respect in their local communities.

    However, with the intrusion of a colonial idea of education and the educated, we lost the recognition of our traditional skills prowess somewhere...

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    Not a smooth trip

    In October 2016, MakeMyTrip (MMT) and Goibibo agreed to merge in a stock transaction, representing the coming together of India’s two online travel booking majors. It also was a marked step in the consolidation of the sector.

    “Today’s announcement is a significant step forward for the rapidly growing travel industry in India,” MakeMyTrip Group CEO Deep Kalra said in a statement....

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    Employee, the building block

    Although many still fail to recognise it, people are the most fundamental building block of any organisation. We have heard for many years about how customer is king and that to have a business we must find a customer.

    But just as we need to attract the right customers, we need to attract the right people to work in and around that business because if there is nobody to serve the customer, there will be no business...

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    What’s in a sign?

    For several centuries, clothes have been used as symbols—to communicate social status. The message communicated relies on a number of factors including the social background of the communicator and the receiver.

    In the 2017 interbrand survey (Interbrand,2017), H&M was 23rd in the list of the world’s strongest brands. It was positioned ahead of the likes of IKEA, Zara, American Express, L'Oréal, Starbucks, Burberry, and Tesla...

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    Seize the moment

    Budget 2018-2019 can rightly be called a landmark budget for the MSME sector in more ways than one. The sector, which contributes up to 45% of the GDP, and provides employment to over 100 million, was recognised as a ‘major engine of growth’.

    The Finance Minister also announced a slew of measures to improve the ease of doing business quotient for MSMEs....

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    Discounting, not the answer

    Most executives, senior managers, and sales and marketing teams know that price discounting reduces profits. But they do not consider that price discounting reinforces customer’s false perceptions about the value of their products and services.

    Too many industries around the globe have one flawed way to try to grow market share: discount prices. Only a few successful industry leaders leverage value over price. ...

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    Boss is always right?

    Vipin Gupta, General Manager HR of National Bank, was reading yet another resignation letter of a middle management executive, Gaurav Jain, who wrote, “I joined the bank twelve years back, and after two months of my joining, attended the induction at the bank’s training institute in Bengaluru.

    I still remember our interaction with the then General Manager HR, Rajendra Sharma who motivated us by telling that an officer like me can become a General Manager within a span of 15 years. ...

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    Cognitive Edge

    With the use of smartphones today, most people don’t think about connectivity. They assume their smartphone is connected all the time and outside of traveling on a plane don’t even think about how it operates in disconnected mode.

    But for safety reasons, the AUTOmobile is unique with the requirement that it must function all the time in a disconnected state and being connected is only an option that has the ability to provide better services and data from the cloud. ...

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    Relocation Blues

    Moving your home just down the street or to another city can be quite stressful. For companies relocating their office to another city, the stress is as many times higher as the number of employees.

    The scale of planning and strategising is simply humongous as companies realise that retaining and nurturing talent is essential to sustain a competitive workforce. ...

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    New ideas for the new age

    Who is the most influential living management thinker? Published every two years, we like to think that the Thinkers50 is the essential guide to which business thinkers and ideas are in, and which have been consigned to business history.

    The ranking began life in 2001 and has been topped by Peter Drucker, Michael Porter, CK Prahalad and Clay Christensen. In 2017, a new name joined this pantheon of management greats: Roger L Martin. ...

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    Management and my two laws of globalisation

    In the years leading up to the twin shocks of Brexit and the Trump presidency (which I refer to jointly as Brump), the common wisdom among managers was that global strategies could be predicated on the assumption that globalisation would continue to increase. That was never a safe assumption, but many business leaders were complacent because they believed globalisation had already advanced further than it really had. With false assumptions shattered, a reckoning with the real nature of globalisation is long overdue.

    Amidst the turbulence prevailing in the wake of Brump, managers instinctively look for predictions of how the shocks will play out. Will we end up with a ‘hard’ or a ‘soft’ Brexit? Will President Trump’s protectionist ...

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    How to build invincible companies

    It is more important than ever for companies to focus on inventing the future. Companies have to start giving more power and prestige to growth innovation, or risk becoming irrelevant. Yves Pigneur and I explain three crucial areas to address this challenge.

    Over the past 16 years, Yves Pigneur and I have been dedicated to a single mission: how to help companies continuously reinvent themselves. We created some of the tools and methods to deal with this challenge....

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    Embrace the change

    Unfortunately, a rather serious problem arose when the employee in question chose to tweet about his day off. No, he did not tweet about the wake, because there was no funeral. The employee had actually taken time off to...wait for it...build a treehouse.
    You just cannot make this stuff up! The wake story, it seems, was a bit of millennial subterfuge. The CEO, when he learned of the deception, was ‘sort of taken aback.’ ...

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    Big data, better decisions?

    Big data is instrumental in transforming brands through customer-centric strategies.

    With only a few exceptions, the bulk of brands’ efforts to date in leveraging ‘big’ digital data was confined to online reputation management.o do so, many brands started building impressive social media command centres able to detect and react to consumers’ online conversations in real time. ...

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    Mind and metrics

    Big data can be a big problem.

    In his book How to Create a Mind, technologist Ray Kurzweil estimates that a human brain can recognise 1,00,000 patterns. But consumers are producing a huge amount of information by the minute and our minds may just not be fast enough. ...

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    Chicken soup for the data soul

    The ‘Chicken Soup’ stories cut across age groups, gender, race, languages, and cultures. Each is about the warmth that touches the soul. Where lies the ‘soul’ of data?

    For eons, business and academic literature are have been full of stories of what data can do and how we are speeding into an Information Age on the bedrock of data.Each is about how data and AI are changing lives. ...

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    (Mis) leading numbers

    ata is critical for businesses; but it will be an advantage only when interpreted and used the right way.

    Over a period of time, the availability of computer resources, data storage, applications on the cloud, and introduction of mobile technology have led to tremendous growth in digital data. ...

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    Equal Balance

    Balance life and work, work smarter for success.

    You don’t have to make yourself miserable to be successful. It’s natural to look back and mythologise the long nights and manic moments of genius, but success isn’t about working hard, it’s about working smart. - Andrew Wilkinson (MetaLab)...

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    Seamless flow

    Work-life integration is definitely the new route for tomorrow, and it is high time everybody jumped on the bandwagon.

    n the Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index 2016, work-life balance statistics in India has been rated among the worst. ...

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    The right blend

    “Truly successful people do not forsake the other parts of their lives to achieve success in their professional and public lives; to the contrary, they find creative ways to embrace their family, community, and personal lives.”

    Too many people believe that to achieve great things we must make brutal sacrifices, to succeed in work we must focus single-mindedly, at the expense of everything else in life...

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    Shaping The Rural Future

    The rural consumer growth story presents one of the biggest opportunities for businesses to expand their footprint to new geographies and markets. While several corporates have established a firm footing, startups too are investing to claim a share of the pie—about three billion consumers.

    In this exclusive to Indian Management, Vijay Mahajan, John P Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas and author of Rise of Rural Consumers in Developing Countries, talks about the forces boosting rural prosperity, shifts in consumption patterns, and the need for marketers to understand that aspirations are same across markets, whether rural or urban...

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    Blurring lines

    A new rural reality is taking shape. Marketers have to recalibrate their strategies accordingly.

    different from the urban consumer. He was a lot less affluent, lot less literate and simplistic in his demands and looked up to his ‘city’ cousin...

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    Building on legacy

    First-generation entrepreneurs make for awe-inspiring stories.They spot an opportunity in the market, set up a company, and get onto building it, all the time fighting against odds.

    Take the case of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, founder of the Tata Group. It was his vision that got India its first steel manufacturer, power generator, and the first hotel to have electricity...

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    Is your business well tuned into new and powerful customer behaviours?

    Welcome to the tech generation of customers! Smartphones and access to web-enabled services have created new and interesting challenges for businesses today. Not sure why? Just consider a typical day in the life of today’s well-connected consumer...

    Jeff and Mira have had a long day. Their commute home was mostly silent. The long, hot summer day has sapped their energy and right now they can only think about finding a few minutes of rest and relaxation at home.

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    Living to Buy

    The Indian consumer has become an offbeat, mobile, and flexible ‘turbo-consumer’, greatly emancipated from old-class cultures, being unpredictable in his tastes and purchases, on the lookout for emotional experiences and wellness, quality of life and health, brands and authenticity, and immediacy and communication.

    The development of the modern consumption society has conditioned an environment that is heavily loaded with objects, signs, and interactions based on trade exchanges. The production of manufactured goods increases year after year and the provision of services continues to grow and diversify.

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    Data and machines hold the key to the customer insight process in the future

    The customer is alive. For now. Till machines become our customers. And they shall be more alive, I guess. Let us talk about human customers for now.

    Alive customers are rich in insights. They live, they breathe, they move around, they see, they touch, smell, taste, and are forever insight-dropping entities. Every move of theirs, and indeed every breath of theirs, leaves back clues. So many clues that one is unable to harvest all of it. Not that too many are keen to harvest them either. And that is a separate subject altogether

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    Serenading the empowered customer

    The digital age has ushered in an era of transparency in business.Today's customer is better informed about what is being bought and from whom; he or she has access to other customers, who increasingly influence the purchase decision.

    Rather than the brand telling the customer what he or she should want, it is now mostly the other way around.

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    Can agility be taught?

    The need for agility in corporate learning has become a catchphrase lately. Every business wants to be agile, but only a few are successful at being so. Achieving the required level of agility will help companies adapt rapidly and better manage the costs of a fast-changing environment and customer behaviour.

    Learning to be agile is an attitude. Agility is a group of practices that will help leaders continually improve, progress, and employ new tactics to face the increasingly complex situations in their organisations.

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    Smart Check

    As an employer, choosing the right candidate for a job from among several applicants is key to building a firm foundation for any business to function. From being able to manage a team efficiently and possessing exemplary conversational and problem-solving skills to having exceptional work ethics, employers have a list of requirements that need to be fulfilled.

    This results in recruitment being not only the most important task for an HR professional, but possibly one of the most challenging as well.

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    Mind Matters

    The current cynicism about humanity’s value within organisations is the result of the ‘no-emotions-allowed business culture’ that has been the global norm for generations. With so many companies treating people like instrumental (human) resources, is it any wonder we feel inferior to machines, which have no emotions to suppress?

    While managers have been increasingly exploring the impact of emotions upon performance, their attempts often betray a rudimentary understanding.For example, there has been far too much emphasis placed on the personae of top leaders, as if a pantomime of caring were enough.

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    Good leaders are always great managers

    It is important to have a plan and a roadmap at every stage of one’s career. One needs to set stretch targets for oneself if one is to go on the path of success. There are almost no short cuts so all the people who talk about luck are sadly mistaken. Good luck chases those who work hard. That is what is true and nothing else.

    Typically, one needs to constantly look at learning every day. There is so much to learn and so much to do. If you are not constantly new skills, you can be certain, you are going towards stagnation. I am also quite old-fashioned when it comes to job changes.

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    GST – Taking the rough with the smooth

    The GST is here, finally. It has been a long and winding journey with many an ambush along the way. The idea of GST was first mooted in 1994—and since recommended by the Asim Dasgupta Committee in 2000 and by the Vijay Kelkar Committee in 2004—in which I was privileged to be a member.

    The GST is easily India’s most daring and potentially impactful reform since Independence. It is expected to liberate industry and trade from the jumble of central, state, and local taxes and provide a simple, tax regime that will inject efficiency, widen the tax base, and turn India into a truly single market.

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    A New Beginning

    The challenges with the present tax assessment administration are unequivocal. For long, organisations have been loaded with twofold tax assessment, entangled standards, and uncompetitive expense rates and structures. Central and state governments have not been able to control leaks from the framework, and ultimately, general society has been bothered with higher costs on goods and services. However, once GST is implemented, the Indian economy will be set on course for record growth.

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    Mixed Bag

    The launch of GST from 1st of July 2017 is expected to herald a new era of simplified tax in the country. After its implementation in France in the fifties, over 150 countries have adopted the GST law in one form or the other. And its adoption will make India one unified common market. GST is essentially a tax only on value addition at each stage of production. Uniformity of tax rates and simplification of procedures will reduce compliance costs and phase out multiple central and local duties. And taxes should reduce the cost of locally manufactured goods and services and increase competitiveness in the international marketplace.

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    Macro Impact

    Goods and Services Tax (GST) will be a landmark change in the Indian tax structure after Independence. It is expected that it will simplify and harmonise the indirect tax regime in the country as it will do away with the multiplicity of taxes at the State and Central levels which has resulted in a complex indirect tax structure. Though MSMEs welcome and are looking forward to its roll-out, the GST regime has both positive and negative implications.

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    Boost for Brand India

    The long-awaited and much-speculated date of implementation of GST has finally arrived. The 1st of July 2017 will usher in one of the biggest reforms in the history of India’s tax system.

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    Embrace the Digital

    I ndia is on the threshold of major reforms in manufacturing, one of them being the digital transformation of supply chain. Presently, the nation is home to more than 51 million SMEs that perpetually seek conforming ways of doing business to make it big. A sector so dense cannot flourish on traditional ways of business and should rather adapt Embrace the digital to more agile, flexible, scalable, and smart manufacturing processes.

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    The Game Changer

    The next time you visit Disneyland in Orlando, you may notice folks wearing a wristband. It is not a fashion accessory; rather it is a technology innovation involving finance, operations, and logistics. The wristband operates as your mobile wallet to pay for your rides in the amusement park, thus more convenient than carrying cash and cards in a crowded place and risk being pickpocketed. It operates as your entry ticket, helping you avoid long queues; as your hotel room key if you are staying in one of the hotels in the park, ensuring you do not carry the physical key and risk losing it; and as a location finder for your children, in case they get lost in the crowd.

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    Checks and Balances

    Fintech is starting to fill some of the traditional roles played by banks, and new mobile banking and payment technologies are making it easier to improve customer experience. The emergence of fintech startups and new disruptive technologies are changing how banking is being done and the way financial services are being delivered.
    Spurred by competition from such startups— who are introducing new consumer initiatives such as peer-to-peer and marketplace lending and crowdfunding—banks are increasingly turning to technology to improve their processes and business models in order to redefine customer experience.

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    Final Frontier

    In April 2016, during a Facebook earnings call, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to an investor’s query regarding the introduction of chat bots to its Messenger service. His response was, “...the biggest thing that we’re focused on with artificial intelligence is building computer services that have better perception than people.”1 The idea of having computers with a better sense of perception than human beings may seem like a far-fetched science-fiction dream, but in reality, we are possibly less than a decade away from achieving it.

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    Fintech versus banks: déjà vu?

    The recent dismissal of Lending Club CEO, the charismatic French entrepreneur Renaud Laplanche, for allegedly mis-selling loans to a Wall Street bank, caused a media circus about the future of fintech, raising concerns whether these ambitious startups had the right controls in place to keep up with their growth. But the fintech industry was already on shaky ground before this news broke. Initially dubbed peer-to-peer lending (individuals financing individuals), it has evolved into ‘marketplace funding’ with large institutional investors such as pension and hedge funds, and even banks, making the loans to individuals.

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    Communicate Strategically

    The caller, early Monday morning, identified herself as the CEO of a large commercial real estate firm. I listened as she introduced herself again, reminding me that we had met a year earlier when she had accompanied her daughter, who had just finished graduate school, to our training centre—to be groomed for her rise to executive management in the family business.
    “I need to meet with you today,” the caller said. “Preferably this morning. Can you come here? Or I can come there if I have to. . .”
    “What can I help you with? Can you tell me a little more about what the issue is?”

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    Winds of Change

    In ‘family business’, family is all about emotions and business about economics. They cannot be separated, but a slight skew towards one imbalances harmony. Tata, a legendary example of how a family business can grow strategically, recently faced a dispute regarding succession planning that challenged the company’s long-term sustainability as a family business. Finally, they chose someone capable from within.

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    CSR: Outcomes matter more than compliance

    In April 2014, India became the only country to fix the quantum of corporate social responsibility by law. Many countries practise compulsory reporting of CSR but not compulsory CSR spends.
    The stipulation of allocating 2% of corporate profits for CSR was predicated on the promise of inclusive and responsible growth. Yet, the rationale of compulsory charity was questioned, and some saw it as a tax by other means. The CSR law has been in force for three years, and the surrounding debate around its validity and effectiveness refuses to go away.
    The numbers suggest that the law is working. There has been significant increase in CSR spending in the first couple of years of the law being passed.

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    A catalyst for change

    India is the only major country in the world that, by law, requires firms above a specified threshold size to spend 2% of their net profits on CSR projects. This law came into effect in April 2014. For the latest fiscal year, Indian firms collectively are more than complying with the law.
    According to PRIME Database, India Inc spent R9,309 crore on CSR projects in 2015-16, which was R163 crore more than the amount required by law, and R703 crore more than the previous year.
    The general reaction in the Indian media has been positive and this suggests that the law has been a success. However, the law is only apparently successful—compliance with the law is not a good measure of its success. What matters is not the amount of money spent, but rather the outcomes achieved. In fact, the law mandating CSR expenditures is harmful to achieving the nation’s goal of inclusive development.

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    Beyond compliance

    India was the first country in the world to make CSR expenditure by companies mandatory—this was done via Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013.
    According to CII, 1,270 companies spent R8,185 crore on CSR in 2015-16 (up by over 25% since 2014-15), with a focus on health and sanitation, education and skills development, and rural development. Other countries are now looking to replicate elements of the Act based on the Indian experience.
    The world has set for itself 17 global sustainable development goals (and 169 targets) to be achieved by 2030. India’s performance on these goals will be critical for them to be achieved, within which the Indian corporate sector’s contribution to social development would be an important component...

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    Unequal balance

    The business community is an essential ingredient of our democratic society and it has a duty not only to create wealth but also to promote the ethical and social goals of the community. Unless it fulfils both these functions and there by plays its due role as a responsible section, it will not be able to ensure its own survival.” — Ramakrishna Bajaj.
    The Companies Act of 2013 has proved to be a landmark in India’s economic history. Social welfare, community development, and inclusive national development have been firmly reasserted as business responsibilities.
    Though discussions on the social obligation of business to contribute to the nation’s development have been going on since at least 1965, the Companies Act formalised and streamlined this obligation, putting it at the centre of corporate consciousness....

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    Break away from the traditional

    Has mandating CSR served as a catalyst for change?
    Mahindra’s core purpose is to challenge conventional thinking and innovatively use all our resources to drive positive change in the lives of our stakeholders and communities across the world to enable them to ‘RISE’! In line with our core purpose, our CSR vision is to focus our efforts on girl [children], youth, and ‘Break away from the traditional’ farmers by innovatively supporting them through programmes designed in the domains of education, health, and environment, while harnessing the power of technology. Hence for Mahindra, CSR goes beyond just adhering to statutory and legal compliances, it focuses on creating social and environmental value for our key stakeholders....
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    Risk management, a strategic imperative

    Risk management is becoming a key issue for CEOs and boards. Globally, companies are becoming familiar with the position of the Chief Risk Officer. CROs have direct access to the CEO and boards, and their influence is growing across the hierarchy and processes of the organisation.
    As companies become more globally connected and data dependent, risks have percolated across every aspect of businesses. Growing volatility in politics, policies, input availability and prices, demand, competition, supply chain, technology, finance, and other areas has exposed the limitations of leaving risk management in the hands of only a few.

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    Building Resilience

    I am a preferred flyer with Emirates and choose the airline for all my flights to the US and select parts of Europe. March 22, 2017, the UK and US governments imposed a ban on passengers carrying laptops in the cabin from six airports around the world. Dubai is one of them. This is an external risk. I will now fly through a ‘US and UK friendly’ airport. However, Emirates will be directly impacted. They have deployed their best assets on those sectors. If Emirates has not factored this risk, given its business model they will find it difficult to mitigate it. The impact will touch every bit of Emirates—financials, brand image, fleet management, customer loyalty programmes, employees, investors, and many more. This development is a clear indicator of how risk has changed in the last two decades and the speed of its change in the last five years. <

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    The best defence

    The cyber world never stands still. Emerging threats and new zero days makes it even more volatile and active. Adding to this volcano are over a million new IoT devices that are getting connected to the internet daily. Experts predict that as many as 25 to 50 billion IoT devices and sensors will be deployed by 2020, for an average of 4.3 internet-connected devices for every man, woman, and child on this planet. Adding more fire to this volcano, organisations have evolved from person-to-person transactions to a fully digital business model—the networks have evolved as well, become increasingly complex, and more difficult to defend.

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    Reputation on the line?

    I like what Jeff Bezos said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you are not in the room.” It takes a long time for an organisation to build a reputation and brand to become what they are known for and what they stand for in the eyes of the world. It takes time and effort for a company to sustain its reputation by engaging individuals through their diverse culture which is reflected in their day to day performance. While it takes a long time to build a reputation and brand image, it does not take too much time to destroy one. The fall is too steep and it takes a miracle or an extremely painful journey to rebuild lost reputation. And mostly, it will not be the same.

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    Shaping the Future

    In today’s service-led, cloud-centric, and API-connected business landscape, monolithic software struggles to keep up with the rapid development of new innovations, tools, and platforms. In this ‘always on’ and ‘always connected’ world, it is no longer feasible to release software products on a multi-month or multi- year development cycle. Microservices is the architecture of choice for companies seeking a highly scalable, costeffective, and resilient approach which helps them operate in a fast-moving business climate....

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    A Fresh Lease of Life

    An underperforming company is one in which return on investment drops below the cost of capital, and shareholders rightfully ask whether the enterprise should be wound up, assets sold, and the freed capital be invested in more lucrative opportunities. Recent amendments to bankruptcy laws in India to tackle NPAs suggest empowering asset reconstruction companies to act like receivers who focus on winding up operations...

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    Learning Curve

    The great Swiss clinical psychologist Jean Piaget once remarked that the principal goal of education should be to create people who are capable of doing new things, people who are creative, inventive, and discoverers, and not simply repeating what other generations have done. This approach has permeated various societies through the ages, and is finally also shaping the argument for Indian education moving away from rote learning.

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    Astep in the Right Direction

    Promotion Board (FIPB) is also a good sign which underlines the continued liberalisation intent of the government;it is good for both startups and established cornpanies on the lookout for growth capital.The only additional rnove this sector could have benefit from are some new tax benefits to further safeguard the interests of the IT industry,which is under tremendous pressure from anti-globalisation sentiments and new visa reforms being tabled by the US administration.

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    Tech Gains

    The IT sector can now be a true partner to new skills initiatives by enabling technology to provide support to trainers and mentors and address the gargantuan task of getting 300 million Indians ready for employment and entrepreneurship through compelling content served through technology platforms.

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    Budgetis Not taxing

    The budget reduced the personal income two rate from 10,0 to 5./0,on income in the,2.5-5 lakh slab.This is a Political & amp; good move since a majority of salari taxpayers in a middle-income nation like India fall in this slab.It increases disposable incorne by, 12,500 in the hands of all whose income is, 2.5 lakh and above.But those with income only up to 5 lakh will see an effective impact of 10,000 not 12,500.

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    For a smooth glide

    in place, a family business can survive for many generations. In a family-owned business, the influence and control of the founder is usually considered indisputable and the whole business revolves around him or her, which should not be the case ideally. But there are times when such leaders have to step aside and let others carry on their legacy

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    Rising to the challenge of succession planning in family firms

    challenges that families and businesses across the world face during a succession process. These include cultural issues, the transferral of family assets and competency. The first three are:
    • The challenge of succession culture
    • The challenge of transferring family assets
    • The challenge of being competent

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    Managing leadership change

    Letting go is one of the most difficult and challenging aspects of leadership. Controlling and deciding what is to be done, when, how, and by whom—all of these become habit-forming and heady, and difficult to let go. It is particularly problematic in organisations where the CEO is also the dominant stakeholder, or belongs to the promoter family.

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    Back to the Future

    Business schools are facing an existential crisis. Their legitimacy as providers of management education and repositories of management wisdom are being challenged as never before. Worldwide, declining enrolments in MBA programmes—the traditional standard-bearer of management education—are one symptom; the increasing marginalisation of business school research and its divorce from the needs of industry is another

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    Breakout growth strategies

    I wanted to tape this lecture about the future of the MBA degree programmes. I believe MBA degree, as we know it today, is not sustainable. Like many good products, it may have probably run its course—unless somebody redesigns the programme, certification or accreditation is changed, and the financials are made much more attractive. I would suggest several ‘breakout strategies,’ non-traditional strategies to create growth in the future for the MBA programme

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    Beyond the classroom

    The education system today is designed to impart distinctions to students through the use of terminology/language and concepts, that allows them to see the nuances of the field of study which are not apparent to others. For example, a medical student gets equipped with language (and of course concepts) that allows him to see human body differently from someone who has not studied medicine.

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    Are you work-ready?

    Sydney D Harris famously said, “The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” He makes an important distinction—a mirror only reflects what is in front of it, while a window provides a vision to what is beyond.

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    Revamp, need of the hour

    In the past few decades, business school education in India has changed significantly. Though the number of schools has gone up, the quality of education provided by a large number of them remains questionable. Within the ambit of quality education, it is the curriculum, faculty, and the precise manner in which it is delivered that constitute the most important components.

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    Case Study

    Mozart Home Appliances Private Limited is a mediumsized home appliances company situated in Mumbai. It was founded by two school friends Ajay and Atul in the year 2005. Since childhood, Ajay was passionate about science and technology. He obtained an electrical engineering degree from a top-notch technology institute in India. Atul, on the other hand, always had a flair for business management and commerce.

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    A case for teaching more than just the class

    Over the decades, the case method has become entrenched and ingrained in the b-school ecosystem. It is the dominant religion of management teachers. Pioneered by Harvard School of Business in 1920, it now has universal following. It has become the default and de rigeur teaching method, as it is believed to engage students and teachers better than the lectures.

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    Innovation and design: From design to design thinking

    Design is the new alchemy. Some of the most valuable companies in the world, such as Apple, Samsung, IBM, and Nike, owe their wealth not to market dominance but their ability to conjure magic through design thinking and innovation. In fact, design thinking today is no longer restricted to products; it covers service offerings, operational process, and even policy-making.

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    Making India a Global Marketing hub

    while it is important for India to strive to become a global manufacturing hub like China, the country is perhaps more suited to become a global R&D hub.

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    The Future of Work

    It is the best of times and the worst of times for those who work for a living and even those who live to work.New technologies have made work less strenuous and employment less rigid than ever before.

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    The next wave

    When it comes to dealing with big data, it is not the amount of data that is necessarily important. It is what organisations are able to do with the data that matters. Understanding what big data can offer, and unlocking the potential benefits, will help propel organisations towards a more secure and efficient future.

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    Big Data and How it is Transforming Business

    Business managers have never known more about their businesses than they do now. Today's managers have unprecedented power to identify opportunities and tweak processes for greater efficiency and competitiveness. The presence of digital technology in every business action and transaction is producing extensive data on nearly everything. Importantly,the overwhelming volume, variety, and speed of data generation are beginning to be matched by the growth of computing power and the advancement of analytics tools.

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    Age of Marketing

    Reports of the marketing's death are greatly exaggerated.if anything, marketing is back in the saddle and directing bussiness after a decade of rule of the CFOc,thanks to the unprecedented changes in the market.

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    Creating Bonds that bind

    To quote Harry Paul, co-author of Fish!, "culture is like wind you really cannot see it but you can feel it...harnessed correctly, it create its own energy or has devastating consequences on your sorroundings that are noticeable. Same thing in an organisation where there is a culture."

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    Leadership Secrets

    Striking a balance between generating results and fastreing relationships is the key to long-term success.

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    Organisational Culture

    In the perenniel search for the secrets of success, it is easy to take the effect as the cause, Enterprise, leadership, or innovation often explain corporate success to the casual observer.

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    Cyber Security

    Digital technology and the hyperconnectivity it brings along have revolutionised businesses and modes of communication. However, a high digital quotient has a negative spin too: it exposes organisations to the complex challenge of cyber threats. A massive treasure trove of data—financial details, R&D records, customer information, and so on—is potentially at a high risk of pilferage, upsetting your operational stability and denting your brand image. How best can you grapple with these perils?

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    A Wake Up Call

    This year, my pre-Diwali shopping turned out to be a pleasant experience- considering that I did not have to wait in a long queue at the billing counter. I was in and out of a popular national department store in an upmarket Mumbai suburb in less than 45 minutes. While I was happy with the experience, it also set me thinking on the changes that were taking place, especially in retail in India. While the change is largely being driven by technology, the emergence of the 24/7 culture and a large youth population willing to spend have fuelled the demand for many products and services.

    The country has also witnessed a new breed of entrepreneurs, and startups which are garnering record venture capital investments and increased valuations. In an age of constant connectivity and social media influence, retail to say the least is being revolutionised and for once the consumer is actually emerging as the king.

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    Hand in hand

    Over the past half a decade, e-commerce in general has seen a dramatic growth in the Indian market. The success of Flipkart, Snapdeal, Myntra, Jabong, and several others in various product categories, from groceries (Bigbasket) to baby products (Babyoye), is a clear indicator of the gradual shift from brick-andmortar retail towards e-commerce—at least among those who were born in this era.

    Comparisons and contest between the two is not new. We saw the same debate when organised retail stepped in and one wondered if the days of the local mom and pop stores were numbered. We even witnessed similar promotional efforts by the spanking new malls dotting the city’s landscape. Big sales, special initiatives such as Big Bazaar’s purana do naya lo (give old and buy new), and a number of promotional campaigns helped drive traffic and inculcate the ‘mall’ culture we have come to know so well. E-tail is doing pretty much the same—trying to drive adoption and inculcate the habit of online shopping.

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    Levelling the playing field

    While everyone is talking about online stores and their lower price points, people who really do understand the e-commerce business already know that a lot of that price competitiveness comes due to VC money, which is being used to offer further discounts on the purchase price set by the e-tailers. What is hugely debatable is whether [this model of] e-tailing is fundamentally flawed.

    As per the current regulation, FDI investments in multi-channel retail cannot be more than 51%. This means that e-tailers cannot be retailers i.e., directly buying goods from the manufacturers and selling them to consumers. As a result, they have adopted a marketplace model wherein some wholesaler or retailer is the actual seller, using the e-tail portal to complete the transaction with the buyer. In the accounting books, the goods stay under the individual seller’s name, until the transaction is completed. The e-tailer usually provides logistic support in terms of warehousing, delivery, and collection of payments.

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    When faith meets consumerism

    Retailers in India, both offline and online, are at a crossroads. Initially massive discounts helped them garner customers and boost sales, but now they need to look further to build sustainable consumer loyalty. One of the aspects that play an important role in the way Indian consumers shop is their religiosity. For example, when a new car is bought, chances are the first trip the family takes is to the neighbourhood temple; priests also conduct new car-worthy special prayers. Marketers need to understand the Indian consumers’ religious proclivities and how it affects their day-to-day lives. Campaigns sensitive to these cultural differences will go a long way in building customer loyalty. In this exclusive with Indian Management, Ambi Parameswaran talks about the changing Indian consumer and how religion and rituals have become new avenues for seeking and spending cash.

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    The dark side of contemporary careers

    Researchers and the wider world tend to view pursuing a career as a positive thing. Success in the workplace is generally seen as a worthwhile and desirable goal both on a personal and social level. However, career experiences can also be negative, even devastating, can reflect failure, and may prompt feelings of indecision, stress, disappointment, and regret that we would rather avoid. They also possess a ‘dark side’ where notions like deviance, dysfunctionment, and counterproductivity find their place. While this dark side is not a new concept, there has been little coverage for it in established career concepts and theories, or even in contemporary approaches. This is not only naive, but carries a real risk.

    A purely positive view of careers may incur harmful outcomes on individuals and firms alike. The false hope produced by positively loaded career promises might transform to frustration and lower ambition, which in turn can lead to failure and missed opportunities.

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    Structuring teams for innovation

    “Team work behind success of Mangalyaan” stated an article in The Hindu, when India made history by successfully launching an indigenously built spacecraft to Mars in her first try. What surprised the world was that the cost of the launch—US$ 74 million, nearly one-tenth the cost of a comparable launch by NASA. The team behind Mangalyaan comprised scientists and administrators from different functional areas who were experts in several disciplines such as rocket propulsion, payloads, range operations, range safety, schedules, and others. Although Mangalyaan is an extreme example of a radical innovation executed through successful teamwork, innovation teams are common in organisations. Innovation teams— those entrusted with developing new products, processes, or services—routinely grapple with complex issues that take them into unchartered territories. Such teams are particularly commonplace in complex manufacturing industries such as aircraft, automobiles, electronics, petroleum refineries, and power plants. Projects in such industries involve extensive task complexity, necessitating exemplary team coordination for successful execution.

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