All Entries Tagged With: "Management"

An oft repeated fault in many organisations, is to automatically attribute success to the brilliance of the manager concerned or the team. Failure conversely is attributed rather automatically to incompetence. This is a serious flaw. In the above instance the CEO could have requested the ‘star’ performer to make a presentation to all the sales staff and share his insights into the strategy and tactics that in fact led to his grand ‘success’.

One of the key differences between managers who manage up close and those that let go is how they react when their staff run into difficulties, whether over a piece of work that they can’t get right, a relationship in the team that isn’t quite working, or indeed something outside work that is affecting them.

What on earth are ‚ÄòBusiness Burps‚Äô you may be asking? It was a phrase I thought of whilst … burping. Can you remember as a child when you first let out a burp after gulping a fizzy drink? Wasn‚Äôt it a bit exciting (as well as a little bit rude)? Weren‚Äôt your parents just a tiny bit embarrassed?

Employee Engagement has always been a burning topic amongst HR people. It is generally viewed as managing discretionary effort, that is, when employees have choices, they will act in a way that furthers their organization’s interests. An engaged employee is a person who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work.

“There is no such thing as a ‘boss’,” he announced, leaning back with his cup of green tea. The three of us burst out laughing – together. We worked in the same department and had to meet a deadline in three days to keep his bossy highness in good humour.

Every human resources person worth his payroll has heard and used these clichés over and over again.

There is much talk of anger management nowadays. It is good that the negative import of anger is understood now and people have become ready to do something about it if they can.

In the last three decades of my work in the behavioral arena, I have met eminent personalities at the highest echelons of society as well as the unsung heroes at the grass-roots. In the process, my conviction has become stronger that leadership means being a ladder for others to rise.

We are always learning and will continue until dead. There is always something that could be improved and, to figure out, knowledge will facilitate the process.

Control freaks are always in a hurry and in their hurry end up destroying quite a lot of things around them that they themselves have built up. The trick is to let them rant but keep the control of the final action and pacing in one’s own hands

Research indicates interesting facts about HR professional’s career span – less than 1.5 years at the junior level, less than three years at the middle level and up to 5 years at the senior level. Few organizations can boast of HR longevity. Is that a boon or a curse?

I was on leave last week and spent a morning in the Festival City. While there I wandered into Shoe Citi. The salesman walked up and told me that if I purchased anything for Dhs 300, I would get a discount of Dhs 100.

Several organizations have launched initiatives to promote Diversity. Why do we need to build diversity in the workforce? If the consumer group is diverse, having the same diversity represented in the employee groups makes it easy to develop the product which is aligned to the consumers. This makes sense for consumer goods but how does his pan out in case of industrial goods. Taking the argument further, if the buyer group is not diverse, does it still make business sense to drive diversity in the organization?

In my opinion, the single reason to drive diversity is about providing a non discriminatory employment experience. Equal opportunity is the strongest reason. To be denied employment based on any criteria other than merit is discriminatory and illegal in many countries. How do we implement this in the workplace?

I hold this to be true: the best leaders are not famous. When I asked a class to talk about someone they considered a great leader, all of them identified leaders in history, or famous business personalities. Names like Gandhi, Trudeau, and Trump were mentioned. Then they asked me whom I considered a leader. I [...]

You will have the best results in business if you create your vision first.  Then you can take “inspired action” consistently and persistently.  Without vision you may find yourself in the same boat as many unsuccessful business owners who dash madly from one marketing effort to another – never giving any of their strategies time [...]

You are the rising star of the corporation. You are working at building a resume that will qualify you for the corner office in the next few years. You want to set the world record for being the youngest head of the corporation. In anticipation, you have started looking up models of corporate jets you could buy and the power suits you will need to order for the swearing in ceremony. In the midst of all this comes the email on the blackberry that your manager wants to know if you would be interested in a short term assignment to New Widgetovia, the country where your company has struck gold. You would need to be there for three months… maybe six… ummm … a little bit more perhaps but hopefully not.

Engaging for Success is a wonderfully promising report. It was commissioned by the then UK Secretary of State for Business in the autumn of 2008 to take an in-depth look at employee engagement. The report, in its introduction, sets itself out to report on the potential benefits of engagement for companies, organisations and individual employees, [...]

We were just leaving a restaurant when we were stopped by an old friend and her husband who were taking the evening sun with a group of friends on the embankment by the river. We had a chat and talk turned to the latest book, how was it doing and for the benefit of the [...]

Looking at the pink papers for the past 9 months have left me depressed. The saving grace however is the economists and financial gurus  are now seeing bamboo shoots of recovery. The focus of this article is not about why or how it happened; there are many experts who can do a better job explaining [...]

Strategy in business, primarily marketing is derived from the military lexicon. Hence there is no better book that teaches strategy than The Art of War by Sun Tzu written 2500 years back. Yet today its contents still hold true in military. Since marketing is a war of the mind, the strategies hold true in marketing [...]

My two and a half year old Boston-born grand nephew was taken on his first visit to India. At Chennai, the highlight of the day for him was the evening at the beaches of the city He clearly enjoyed the sand, the water and the relief from the summer heat. This boy was curious to [...]

Last year, BA reported a sharp rise of operating profit to ￡883 million, which in view of the rising fuel price and their falling market share, seemed to be bucking the downward global trend. This year they reported a loss of ￡401 million. Somewhere between the two, reality probably lies, but when has reality ever [...]

When I do workshops on marketing and mention that speaking is one of the most effective strategies for building a list of contacts who can’t wait to buy from them, most people in the audience look at me with that “no way in hell am I gonna do that” look. What is it about speaking [...]

Amidst conflicting news of the downturn having bottomed out, while yet another company is sacking employees and the more optimistic of the lot talking about leveraging the turnaround – one point seems to be falling between the tables. What about the fallout from this downturn and how will it affect employers, employees and the overall [...]

Businesses today have to act and react faster than ever before as they are impacted by increased competition and global changes. Hence the need for enhanced effectiveness and productivity at work so as to help the business grow in this increasingly competitive and changing arena. Being productive is about achieving our goals while making optimal [...]

Businesses fail because of people, period. The effects of the failure can be observed, for example, on organization, processes, product or service, finances, marketing and sales. The causes can be related to strategic planning, implementation, management, control, human resources, absence of competitive intelligence and external factors like market dynamics or government regulations. If we are [...]

If you planted corn in two different fields, one with rich soil and the other which is less fertile, the differences in the height of the plants in the same field would be what people call Nature and the differences in the height of the plants which were planted in the field with rich soil would explain Nurture. Over the years the debate on intelligence has primarily been divided into these two schools. So when parents tell their child that our family always excelled at/ struggled with Science, they are voting for Nature. This view tells you that any number of after school tuitions or coaching classes will do little to improve Science grades. Those psychologists who vote in favor of Nurture will tell you that given the right environment, it is possible for an individual to go beyond the limits that Nature built in.

We recently watched the Welsh National Opera in Donizetti’s “Elixir of Love.” The story of the “Elixir of Love” is, like the story line of most operas, derived from an older folk tale. In this story we see a shy young man in love with a beautiful wealthy woman. He knows that he has no [...]

Organisations should tap into the whole system intelligence to take important decisions to cope with the economic crisis. The economic slow-down and the financial crisis in India has put CEOs and promoters under pressure. While a few segments of the industry would be more affected than others, the ripple effect is seen and felt everywhere. [...]

HR units and trainers are tumbling upon each other and doing great work to give yeoman’s advice to people so that they can improve themselves, execute their jobs better and fit in the working environment with success. I feel most of it goes down with no one and achieves very little. Especially all the writings [...]

 ”The heart of motivation is to give people what they really want most from work. The more you are able to provide what they want, the more you should expect what you really want, namely: productivity, quality, and service.” – Twyla Dell The topic motivation is extremely important for employers. Motivated employees can create a [...]

If at all you want to develop political will, go to the kids, learn from them! I have come across two kinds of people. First kind are the ones who want to get something done and they get it done no matter what (read as beg, borrow or steal). The second kind are those who [...]

Every now and again comes a book that changes the way we think or the assumptions that we make about our lives. One of the greatest assumptions that we make in almost every walk of life is that we can make others work harder by offering them rewards. There is a whole industry dedicated to [...]

If you and your organisation are facing large-scale change, you have a number of choices: run away and pretend it isn’t happening, get someone else to fix it, institute some diversionary activity, or cling to what you have in the hope that it will comfort you through the times ahead. Or, you can learn to [...]

A staff role in an organization helps in accelerating, helping, or rejuvenating line activities. If a general manager – customer support is in a line role, then the training manager has a staff role. If a marketing manager is in a line role, then the blog coordinator is in a staff role, helping the marketing [...]

On January 15th, 2009, Captain Chesley Sullenberger made an emergency landing of his 50-ton passenger aircraft, US Airlines Flight 1549 – softly gliding it onto the Hudson River in New York City, saving the lives of all 155 people on board. What he did was not only a feat, but also a testimony to his [...]

What is the difference between one dog owner and another? Well, it is rather difficult to say because, as you probably know, there are dog owners and dog owners. The attitude to their adopted pets differs considerably. Likewise, we have managers and managers. Before I embark full steam ahead, I would like to provide some [...]

A common sentence that we hear often is that leadership is given not taken, is it true? Another common sentence is that you are born a leader, that it is a natural gift. In some aspects it is. But, there are some attitudes that can be acquired to change that perception. A born leader – [...]

Most suggestion schemes consist of a box with a label on it that says “suggestions” and that is what the scheme consists of. Pretty soon the box fills up with banana skins but never any suggestions. The workforce are blamed for the failure of another scheme that could have helped the business and that is [...]

Nowadays companies are looking for competence in HR professionals. In the past, HR professionals were often viewed as systematizing or a policy making hands. Their role was more aligned with the administrative role and was limited to day-to-day personnel operations. Now the things have changed. The HR professional is required to play a significant role [...]

Newspapers and management books propagate employee engagement and its good effects on employees. Employee engagement seems simple to implement on the surface. To engage an employee, the management has to be transparent about its projects and plans and include its associates in a participative decision making process. However, there are a lot of psychological and [...]

Before we dwell on the subject of handling lateral hires, here is a layman’s definition of lateral hires. A lateral hire is one who joins a company as a fresher after having work experience in various fields and companies. The new hire maybe a fresher to the current company but may be an expert or [...]

If you are part of a couple in business, do you run it as a business, or is it an extension of your relationship? By that I mean, do you put up with a bad job because your partner did it and you don’t want to hurt their feelings? Does yesterday’s argument come into the [...]

When we talk about strategic planning sometimes we associate with paperwork, theories, old school works, a boring and endless task, and so on. But actually planning is a natural and embedded activity that we practice everyday. We plan the best route to go to the office.  We plan when we go shopping. We plan our [...]

There is a paradox at the heart of facilitation as there is at the heart of all people management; and that is, that to get people to do great things, we, the group leaders, need to allow things to happen, not by doing a lot but by doing as little as possible. When we get [...]

In a hilarious sequence in one of his immortal films Charlie Chaplin ambles into a shipyard and finds himself right next to a big ship with no one around. He cannot resist fiddling with the ship. He notices that the ship has been tethered with ropes. In his inimitable bumbling way Chaplin loosens just one [...]

Cash is God. Such was the mantra of Venture Capitalists at the TiE Summit 2008 Bangalore. Money has always been expensive, but since the economic meltdown, it has now become more of a rarity. The mechanisms for the financing of small-time start-ups are breaking down. The future looks bleak, if you are looking for funds. [...]

On a visit to India, internationally renowned creativity guru Dr. Edward de Bono was asked in what way the Indian mind was different from those he encountered elsewhere in the world. Dr Bono replied insightfully, “Elsewhere people could be accused of missing the woods for the trees. In India people miss the wood for the [...]

Jack Welch said this on performance management (ranking): “Ranking has been portrayed as a cruel system.  The cruel system is the one that doesn’t let anyone know where they stand.” And where they stand can be only clear, when each engaged employee/partner is communicated of how his contribution to the organizational goals and revenues will [...]

Business today is global and many executives must meet the challenge of delivering results through global teams spread over different geographies and time zones. Team members often speak different languages, have different mindsets, lifestyles, professional and personal values and expectations. And let’s not forget the tug-of-war between global and local objectives. Leading such teams is [...]