MAKING DISCREET DECISIONS
“Leadership can be a heavy burden. It is also a compelling, crucial challenge. In grey areas, your job isn’t finding solutions; it’s creating them based on your judgement.” Every leader has to make tough decisions, and that’s part and parcel of his job. The toughest of them comes in ‘grey areas’ or situations in which one isn’t sure what to do, despite gathering all facts or having incisive analyses to go by. It’s not unusual for the finest of leaders to occasionally experience such […]
NEGOTIATING UNDER THE INFLUENCE
“Emotional hangovers – strong feelings unrelated to the negotiation at hand – can distort your judgement and lead to bad decisions.” Imagine you are about to sit on the negotiation table – but you’re in a terrible mood – your car on the way was hit by a distracted driver talking on his cell phone. As you begin […]
FRAMING ELEMENTS OF VALUE
“Products and services deliver fundamental elements of value that address four kinds of needs: functional, emotional, life changing and social impact. In general, the more elements provided, the greater customers’ loyalty and the higher the company’s sustained revenue growth” Customers evaluate a product or service by weighing its perceived value against the asking price. Though marketers focus on managing the […]
Does Your Team Measure Up?
More and more challenging work gets done in a team setting, yet the context in which teamwork takes place is becoming more challenging by the day. Collaboration is the cornerstone 0f team success. In today’s complex business environment, despite the newer hurdles and tougher battles, effectiveness of teams still hinge on a core set of fundamental norms and values of group collaboration. And this is true in spite of the changing face and composition of today’s teams – more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic. […]
THE UNTOLD TRUTHS OF THE 24X7 WORKPLACE
“The pressure to be an ideal worker is at an all time high, but so are the costs to both individuals and their employers.” Time-hungry organizations abound the world over, with managers overloading their teams and expecting them to be at the organization’s beck and call, remaining tied to their electronic devices 24X7. While some employees log in early, clock […]
SHIFTING THE INNOVATION PARADIGM
“Innovation isn’t worth much if you don’t get paid for it.” Businesses innovate to create value and generate new revenue streams. That’s routine. What’s not common, though potentially promising and powerful, is capturing new value in existing businesses. It might also be the only way to revive a wobbling and declining venture, or reinventing it altogether. Switzerland-based Vastergaard’s ‘LifeStraw’ technology, which can remove 99.99999% of bacteria and 99.9% of protozoan cysts from contaminated water, became popular with […]
THE STRATEGY BEHIND DECISION-MAKING
“You have to know what kind of decision you’re making in order to make it well.” The past few decades have generated a treasure trove of research on decision-making. However, business leaders seem to be impervious to the lessons they teach. Neither are they in denial about their propensity for error, nor are they indisposed to making sound decisions. It emerges that all advancements in our understanding of decision-making have not really been matched […]
ORGANIZATIONS WITH POTENTIAL
What was fairly routine not so long ago, ceases to be the norm today. In the business world too, this holds true for many a practice, including recruitment protocol. Earlier hiring, especially for senior/critical positions required carefully pinpointing the relevant competencies for the job, seeking out and assessing suitability of candidatures, and finally selecting the […]
THE HIDDEN TRUTH OF AN EMOTIONALLY SOUND ORGANIZATION
Emotional impact of a leader is almost never discussed in the workplace, even less on literature on leadership. Yet we all know the rewarding experience of working for an authentic, optimistic, inspirational leader, and the drowning feeling of working with an insensitive, ruthless, and discourteous person. In a major research that identified the key elements impacting an organization’s bottomline performance, […]
TO BE LOVED OR FEARED?
Is it better to be loved or feared? It’s a question people pondered over centuries in myriad forms and contexts. And that included Machiavelli too, who opined, “It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved.” Behavioral scientists say Machiavelli had […]
THE WALK AND TALK OF GAME-CHANGING ORGANIZATIONS
At a time when the world’s leading financial institutions were stumbling and retrenching during recession last decade, some organizations continued to chart out their growth path. Game-changing asset management giant BlackRock, especially hailed for its technology platform Aladdin (Asset Liability and Debt & Derivative Investment Network), was one such firm. Turns out game-changing organizations like […]
WHAT REALLY MATTERS!
As yet another eventful year draws to a close and we’re on the threshold of a brand new one, it is time to look at the years behind us to craft our paths ahead, looking to a more wholesome phase that harmoniously integrates professional and personal spheres. While some senior executives tell us work/life balance is at best […]
