THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Career

"Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career." - Abdul Kalam

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Disrupt Yourself

"Are you sure you aren't making a mistake?"

I had just announced to one of my dearest friends that I planned to walk away from Wall Street and my seven-figure salary.

"Yes, I'm sure." But was I?

Years earlier, I had moved to New York City with a degree in music and a husband who was beginning a Ph.D. program. My first job, and the best job I could get, had been as a secretary at a brokerage house. By working 70-80 hours a week, taking business courses at night, and doggedly pursuing a jump to the professional track, I finally got a break, and moved into investment banking. When I decided to leave Wall Street, I was the Senior Media and Telecom analyst for Latin America at Merrill Lynch, and the top-ranked analyst in my field.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Progressive fiscal policy in India / Praveen Jha

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Achievement

"Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career." - Abdul Kalam

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Disrupt Yourself

"Are you sure you aren't making a mistake?"

I had just announced to one of my dearest friends that I planned to walk away from Wall Street and my seven-figure salary.

"Yes, I'm sure." But was I?

Years earlier, I had moved to New York City with a degree in music and a husband who was beginning a Ph.D. program. My first job, and the best job I could get, had been as a secretary at a brokerage house. By working 70-80 hours a week, taking business courses at night, and doggedly pursuing a jump to the professional track, I finally got a break, and moved into investment banking. When I decided to leave Wall Street, I was the Senior Media and Telecom analyst for Latin America at Merrill Lynch, and the top-ranked analyst in my field.

Read on

LATEST ARRIVALS

Progressive fiscal policy in India / Praveen Jha

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Achievement

"Achievement comes from the person who dares." - Ellechim Adartse

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Customer relationship management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes— principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments. Measuring and valuing customer relationships is critical to implementing this strategy


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LATEST ARRIVALS

Progressive fiscal policy in India / Praveen Jha

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Innovation

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new." - Steve Jobs

TOPIC OF THE DAY

A Natural Kind of Innovation

“How to innovate? That’s a hot subject in company corridors, management schools and elsewhere, but that’s not the thrust of what I want to share today. Rather, I would like to shed some light on who innovation has taken place on different occasions – and in different ways – in the Tata group. The message I want to convey starts with the idea of innovation as it evolves in human beings.”

- R. Gopalakrishnan, Director, Tata Sons

The Transcripted and excerpted from the presentation delivered at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore published at Indore Management Journal, Vol 2(4), January-March 2011.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Employee Productivity
"Nothing makes me more productive than the last minute."— Denny Davis

TOPIC OF THE DAY
Engage Your People

Engaged employees are essential to a manager's success. Without subordinates who care about, participate in, and take ownership over the work, even the best boss will flounder. Here are three ways to win your employees' engagement:

• Be modest. Share both your mistakes and your successes. Subordinates will see that you're both human and don't have anything to prove.
• Show that you're listening. People tune in to body language. Manage where you look and what you do with your hands so that employees know you're paying attention.
• Don't have all the answers. Managers should catalyze problem solving. Be willing to admit that you don't know what the answer is and invite your team to toss around ideas.

Today's Thought is adopted from HBR’s “Today's Thought is adopted from "How to Cultivate Engaged Employees" by Charalambos A. Vlachoutsicos as cited by “Management Tip” published by HBR Blog

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Public Speaking

"What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
— Johann von Goethe, poet, novelist, playwright

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Effective Presentation

Delivering a successful presentation requires careful preparation. Next time you're getting ready to present, follow these three steps.

1. Create a clear narrative. Don't start by creating slides. First get your story down, and design slides or collect data to illustrate that compelling narrative.

2. Do a dry run. Read through the slides aloud. Do it seated in front of your computer screen so that you don't have to think about your body language.

3. Rehearse without slides. Finally, do a run-through while standing in a vacant conference room without your slides. This will allow you to concentrate on the story, as well as your eye contact, gestures, posture, and voice.

Today's Thought is adopted from HBR’s “Management Tip "Learning Presenting Skills by Learning to Swim" by Jerry Weissman posted on October 21, 2011

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Request

“An objection is not a rejection; it is simply a request for more information.” - Bo Bennett

TOPIC OF THE DAY

How to Handle a Raise Request

"Can I have a raise?"

Five little words cause a lot of stress and frustration. In many smaller organizations — and even some larger ones — there's no formal compensation policy. There may not even be an HR professional available to consult on merit increases and other pay issues. In these companies, you are likely to encounter direct requests from your staff members for a raise. Absent a policy, people assume that if they want a raise the only way they can get one is to ask for it.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Progressive fiscal policy in India / Praveen Jha

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Mentoring

“Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.” - John C. Crosby

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Keeping Great People with Three Kinds of Mentors

To attract and retain great people, several things need to coalesce. From the extrinsic reward of a salary to the more nuanced (and more important) intrinsic reward of people feeling that they have a meaningful role, it requires thought and a proactive approach to keep talent once you've got it.

One of the most critical elements in retaining great people is effective mentoring. But what does that really mean? The word "mentoring" is too general to capture the specifics of what people need through the different stages of a career. It is akin to saying that people need to be educated — and then implementing a teaching curriculum that is the same every year for everyone. Like education, mentorship requires different things at different stages, including different types of skills and advice, and different types of teachers and learning styles.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Progressive fiscal policy in India / Praveen Jha

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Mistakes

“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. ” - John Powell

TOPIC OF THE DAY

When Hiring Graduates, Avoid These Mistakes

It's that time of year again, and many a manager's inbox has become flooded with the résumés of (very) soon-to-be college graduates. And while most hiring managers are well-versed in best practices for recruiting Millennials, it's amazing to us — as somewhat recent graduates ourselves — how many firms still make the same mistakes when hiring "the best" of Gen Y.

Take this example from our experience of one old-school hiring process, in which an IT firm disheartened several qualified candidates with an overly formal and invasive first-round interview. After a three-hour initial meeting, the firm had mentally drained the young candidates with surprise skill assessment tests and a last-minute decision to have them re-screened by multiple executives. To make matters worse, the candidates were confined to just a couple of rooms — and the company failed to give any insight, spoken or demonstrated, into the office environment. The group left exhausted, without any idea of the company's culture or values. One candidate, believing two hours worth of quarters would suffice for parking, returned from the interview to find a parking ticket on her windshield.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Progressive fiscal policy in India / Praveen Jha

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Competition

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Learning not to Compete

Most of us have grown up in a competitive society. We compete with our siblings for the attention of our parents. We compete with other kids in sports. We compete with fellow students for the best grades to get into the best universities and later to get the best jobs. This sense of competition then carries over into our work life, where we try to outperform our colleagues so that we can get bigger bonuses, faster promotions, and more opportunities.

But what if beating the competition was no longer the most significant key to success? How could we turn off our competitive nature, or use it only at the right times? And how would we know that we are on the right track if we couldn't define ourselves largely in terms of being better than others?

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Progressive fiscal policy in India / Praveen Jha

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Idea

“An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe it.” - Don Marquis

TOPIC OF THE DAY

How Iteration-itis Kills Good Ideas

"We never see any good ideas," lamented a senior executive. "People bring us ideas. But they just don't have any . . . magic."

At first, I found the comment surprising. I had just begun to get to know the company, and it seemed to me to be brimming with innovation energy, particularly among young employees who would regularly throw out creative "What if's" during casual conversations.

A month later, it was clear that the problem — as is almost always the case — wasn't a lack of raw ideas. Instead, there was a problem with the process that an idea generator had to go through before they stood in front of senior leadership. The company, it turned out, had a deep case of iteration-itis.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Progressive fiscal policy in India / Praveen Jha

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Dream

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream.A dream you dream together is reality.” - John Lennon

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Employee Values = Stakeholder Value

The recent ups and downs of the global financial markets have placed a lot of scrutiny on CEOs, corporate boards and executive teams to deliver stakeholder value that can withstand the fluctuations. As a CEO leading a global U.S.-based software company that went public just last year, I know this well. And as a former CFO I also understand the preoccupation with numbers, but during my time as a CEO it has become clearer to me than ever, that numbers don't tell the whole story.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Business transformation strategies : the strategic leader as innovation manager / Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Success

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ” - Bill Cosby

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Customers Attitude towards Debit Cards - A Study

INTRODUCTION

Banks are playing vital role in the economic development of a country. A sound and effective banking system is the backbone of an economy. The emergence of private/new generation banks has been changed the entire banking operations drastically by the use of sophisticated new technologies like internet banking, ATMs (Automated Teller Machines), EFT (Electronic Fund Transfer), Debit cards, Credit cards, Mobile banking, etc., are accessible to customers on a 24x7 basis across the world. These modern technologies enable the bankers to overcome the barriers of time and space in extending their customer services.

DEBIT CARD

A debit card is also called as 'plastic money'. Physically, it resembles a credit card. It is a better alternative way of carrying cash or cheque book. It is an electronic card serving as a convenient payment mechanism. Debit card allows the customers to spend only upto the limit of balance available in their account.


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LATEST ARRIVALS

101 Things I Learned in Business School by Michael W. Preis

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Self Management

“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” - Francis Bacon

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Managing Yourself: A Smarter Way to Network

One of the happiest, most successful executives we know is a woman named Deb. She works at a major technology company and runs a global business unit that has more than 7,000 employees. When you ask her how she rose to the top and why she enjoys her job, her answer is simple: people. She points to her boss, the CEO, a mentor who “always has her back”; Steve, the head of a complementary business, with whom she has monthly brainstorming lunches and occasional gripe sessions; and Tom, a protégé to whom she has delegated responsibility for a large portion of her division. Outside the company, Deb’s circle includes her counterparts in three strategic partnerships, who inspire her with new ideas; Sheila, a former colleague, now in a different industry, who gives her candid feedback; and her husband, Bob, an executive at a philanthropic organization. She also has close relationships with her fellow volunteers in a program for at-risk high school students and the members of her tennis group and book club.

Read on

LATEST ARRIVALS

Business transformation strategies : the strategic leader as innovation manager / Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Business

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” - Bill Gates

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Secrets of a Successful Business Pitch

In my time as an investor on the BBC television show Dragons' Den, I've heard hundreds of business pitches over the years — and given plenty myself in my own experience as an entrepreneur. I've learned that being able to sell your business offerings under acceptable conditions is vital for any business, especially when it's in the embryonic phase.

Often the way you present yourself and your business will greatly affect who will invest in your venture. As an investor — and not just on television — I've found that I'm more likely to invest in an entrepreneur who's professional, well prepared, and knows his numbers in great detail.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Business transformation strategies : the strategic leader as innovation manager / Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Business Networking

“It isn't just what you know, and it isn't just who you know. It's actually who you know, who knows you, and what you do for a living.” - Bob Burg

TOPIC OF THE DAY

What the Heck Are We Doing on Twitter?

One of the main reasons we updated our book Groundswell in a new paperback edition was to provide some advice on corporate uses of Twitter. Two things we said in the original Groundswell (2008) were (1) pick a corporate objective before implementing a social technology strategy and (2) keep an eye on this Twitter thing, it's going to be big.

Obviously we were right about Twitter, which has now reached 200 million accounts. The average Tweeter is well worth influencing: an educated 32-year old, more likely male than female, with a household income of $91,000 per year and a high likelihood to influence choices made by friends and family.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Business transformation strategies : the strategic leader as innovation manager / Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Confidence

“Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.” - Peter T. Mcintyre

TOPIC OF THE DAY

The Dangers of Deference

Not long ago I sat in on a meeting of the executive leadership team for a global technology company. At the beginning of the session, the CEO quickly flashed a couple of slides on the screen that summarized key aspects of the firm's strategy, saying, "You've all seen these charts before, so we don't have to dwell on them." The meeting then proceeded from there. There was only one problem: None of the other executives had seen those slides before; they had been created by the CEO's strategy director only a couple of days prior to the meeting. Yet not a single person in the room spoke up.

The fact that executive team hadn't seen these charts before doesn't matter. But what matters greatly is the behavior in the room: If senior executives can't correct the CEO on a relatively trivial issue, will they speak up on something more substantial? Moreover, if the C-suite executives defer to their boss to this extent, it is likely that many of them have replicated the pattern with their people. In fact, later that same day one of my colleagues tried to encourage a project leader to clarify the goals for a critical initiative with her C-suite sponsor and was told: "He's a very busy person, and I'm sure he would prefer that we figure this out ourselves."

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Business transformation strategies : the strategic leader as innovation manager / Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Failures

“There are no failures - just experiences and your reactions to them.” - Tom Krause

TOPIC OF THE DAY

The Simple Way to Avoid Social Media Failures

With each new technology, there are always a great many mistakes made, at least until we get the hang of it. Richard Nixon, who had great radio appeal, lost the first televised Presidential debate (and subsequently the election) in 1960 to John F. Kennedy because he looked like a train wreck on the small screen. Many of us have fallen prey to the more mundane mistakes that come from accidental emails, texts, and tweets.

The good news is that many of us learn from our mistakes, but only if and when we own up to them. One embarrassing email is usually all it takes for you to triple check your outgoing messages for years. On a larger scale, the death rate from automobiles was 90% higher in 1925 than it is today, because we've learned from our mistakes and have figured out myriad ways to make car travel safer. Even Nixon learned quickly and cleaned up for the remaining debates against Kennedy and eventually won a Presidency (of course another technology — the telephone recorder — ultimately brought him down again).

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Business transformation strategies : the strategic leader as innovation manager / Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Happiness and sadness

“Happiness and sadness run parallel to each other. When one takes a rest, the other one tends to take up the slack.” - Hazelmarie “Mattie” Elliott

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Steve Jobs and Management by Meaning

Steve Jobs has always been considered an anomaly in management; his leadership style was something to admire or to criticize, but definitely not to replicate. He did not fit into the frameworks of business textbooks: there was orthodox management, and then there was Steve Jobs.

The reason why institutional management theories have always looked at his style as an exception is that he was navigating a territory that is often obscure to management: the creation of meaning, both for customers and employees.

He put people at the center. Which does not imply that he gave users what they wanted, nor that he created a flat playful organization where ideas flew from the bottom up. Apple's approach to innovation is definitely not user-driven: it does not
listen to users, but makes proposals to them. And narrations on Jobs's leadership style tells of a vertical, top-down approach, often harsh. At new product launches, he, not the team, was the protagonist.

Read on

LATEST ARRIVALS

Exorbitant privilege : the rise and fall of the dollar / Barry J. Eichengreen

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Innovation

“The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results” - Edward de Bono.

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Steve Jobs's Ultimate Lesson for Companies

In a rare reflective moment Steve Jobs, after the launch of the iPad, mentioned Apple's DNA. He said:

"Technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that makes our hearts sing.

Nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices...that need to be even easier to use than a PC, that need to be even more intuitive than a PC; and where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way than they do on a PC.

We think we are on the right track with this. We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon but in the organization to build these kinds of products."

This post originally appeared on Asymco.com, Cited in HBR Blog

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Feedback

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” - Ken Blanchard

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Getting Feedback You Need

No leader improves without feedback. But getting people to be honest about your performance isn't always easy. Give your team a way to supply you with the candid information you need to change by asking them these three questions:
• What should I stop doing? - Ask which behaviors stand in your way of success.
• What should I keep doing? - Inquire about what you do right, and should continue to do.
• What should I start doing? - Once you've stopped unproductive behaviors, you'll have more time and energy for new behaviors.

Today's Thought is adopted from "Three Questions for Effective Feedback" by Thomas J. DeLong of cited in Management Tip by Harvard Business Blog.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Networking

“More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.” - Peter Drucker

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Managing Yourself: A Smarter Way to Network

One of the happiest, most successful executives we know is a woman named Deb. She works at a major technology company and runs a global business unit that has more than 7,000 employees. When you ask her how she rose to the top and why she enjoys her job, her answer is simple: people. She points to her boss, the CEO, a mentor who “always has her back”; Steve, the head of a complementary business, with whom she has monthly brainstorming lunches and occasional gripe sessions; and Tom, a protégé to whom she has delegated responsibility for a large portion of her division. Outside the company, Deb’s circle includes her counterparts in three strategic partnerships, who inspire her with new ideas; Sheila, a former colleague, now in a different industry, who gives her candid feedback; and her husband, Bob, an executive at a philanthropic organization. She also has close relationships with her fellow volunteers in a program for at-risk high school students and the members of her tennis group and book club.

Read on

LATEST ARRIVALS

Exorbitant privilege : the rise and fall of the dollar / Barry J. Eichengreen

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Risk Management

“The fact that people are full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.” - Warren Buffett

TOPIC OF THE DAY

Risk Management

Risk Management is the process of measuring, or assessing risk and developing strategies to manage it. Strategies include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk. Traditional risk management focuses on risks stemming from physical or legal causes.

Financial risk management, on the other hand, focuses on risks that can be managed using traded financial instruments. Regardless of the type of risk management, all large corporations have risk management teams and small groups and corporations practice informal, if not formal, risk management.

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LATEST ARRIVALS

Toyota Under Fire: Lessons for turning crisis into opportunity by Jeffrey Liker, Timothy N. Ogden

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Success

“Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.” - Malcolm Forbes

TOPIC OF THE DAY

7 Habits of Business Success

The elusive dream of business success captures the imagination of aspiring and existing business owners everywhere. A vision of flowing profits, industry respect, thrilled customers, and a balanced life. This vision is only possible by developing habits that drive business success. Take the time to learn the 7 habits of business success.

The 7 Habits of Business Success

Habit 1. Cultivate Inner Networks: Entrepreneurs practicing the art of business success know the power of networks. They take the time to identify and build relationships with key peers, mentors, and advisors. This inner network provides support, direction, and an increased number of people to assist. Having an inner network of five people who have a network of five more, grows the network exponentially.

Read on

LATEST ARRIVALS

Toyota Under Fire: Lessons for turning crisis into opportunity by Jeffrey Liker, Timothy N. Ogden