Management & Leadership Insights

Recently, on hbr.org, I listened to Professor Gary Hamel speaking about a company called Morning Star, the world’s largest tomato processor headquartered in Woodland, California, near Sacramento and handling about 25% to 30% of tomatoes processed each year in the United States. Amazingly enough, the tomato-processing giant with $700 million annual revenue has no managers at all. Let me repeat it: Morning Star is a company without managers. The traditional management hierarchy is both cumbersome and costly. First, the more layers of management an organization has, the more overhead it adds. Any way we cut it, management is expensive. Also, it increases the risk of big, disastrous decisions. “Give someone monarchlike authority”, writes Gary Hamel in the Harvard Business Review December 2011 issue in an article titled, ‘First, Let’s Fire All the Managers’, “sooner or later there will be a royal screwup.” And a multi-layered management structure means more approval layers and slower resp

Just recently, I finished reading ‘Different Thinking: Creative strategies for developing the innovative business’ by Anja Foerster & Peter Kreuz, two European-based management thinkers. I would like to share with our readers a few insights from this illuminating book. “At dusk on Friday, 13 December 1907 the sailing ship Thomas W Lawson sank off the Scilly Isles in the English Channel…” goes the opening line of The Attacker`s Advantage by Richard N. Foster. What happened? The owners of the colossal seven-masted schooner wanted to make a splash in the commercial shipping in a bid to eclipse the steamers which were becoming popular fast. But, it never worked out. According to Foster, “The age of commercial sailing vessels ended with the Thomas Lawson, and from that moment on, the steamers ruled the seas.” Obviously, the owners of Thomas W Lawson did not bother to question the status quo and were completely blind to all signs of technological progress. And the cost of fai

When Tony Hayward, a former CEO of British Petroleum (BP), was called before Congress following the infamous oil spill, he denied blame. Similarly, Richard Fuld, then CEO of Lehman Brothers’ disavowed responsibility for the financial crisis. It’s interesting to note that even before the oil spill Tony Hayward’s nickname was Teflon Tony. Also, both had been notorious for mismanaging blame long before they had been summoned to the hot seat. Apparently, every time CEOs testify before Congress, they seem to lay blame on any organizations excepting theirs. They do so because they tend to be what psychologist Saul Rosenzweig called ‘extrapunitive’, that is, they blame others without acknowledging their faults. In an enlightening article titled ‘Can You Handle Failure?’ published in Harvard Business Review  April 2011 issue, Ben Dattner and Robert Hogan write that they have identified, by using data on thousands of managers from every industry, 11 personality types that are likely to have r

DRIs, STEVE REQUESTS, Death March and so on… Synonymous with innovation, Apple Inc. is one of the world’s most valuable companies by market capitalization. It’s the birthplace of revolutionary products such as Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad, known throughout the world. Steve Jobs, the former CEO, who passed away on October 5 2011, is widely believed to be the spirit of Apple Inc. that recorded $156.5 billion in sales revenue in 2012. A Productive Narcissist as Michael Maccoby called his ilk in his classic HBR article, Steve Jobs is a visionary, a genius and a legend. But his leadership style and the way he and his executive team runs the company go right against the best management practices dished out by business pundits. Still, Apple has prospered. It’s intriguing to peer into Apple and see what drives their extraordinary success. Writes Adam Lashinsky in his book ‘Inside Apple: The Secrets Behind the Past and Future Success of Steve Jobs’s Iconic Brand’, “Apple employees know som

It was a busy day on the famous Times Square in New York. The spectators gathered had their eyes wide open and mouths agape on Sir Richard Branson and the cast of Broadway’s The Full Monty dangling, virtually naked on some 100 ft above the Square from a crane. In fact, they were not naked but were clothed in nude bodysuits with their creative parts covered by a Virgin cell-phone. The outrageous Bransonian stunt was performed to mark the launch of Virgin Mobile in the USA. As usual, Sir Richard was the cynosure, the very conspicuous public face of the brand. The bold stunt made a fantastic talking point in the media and put the brand Virgin Mobile right on the map. Certainly, it was a madcap exploit, but it was thematically perfectly consistent with Virgin Mobile’s motto ‘Nothing to hide’ meaning that they had no hidden service costs. With the competition growing stiffer and stiffer, it’s more necessary today than ever for entrepreneurs to be bold and innovative in presenting their br

“ Never underestimate the power of a small dedicated group of people to change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. ”- Margaret Mead For years since the F.W. Taylor introduced the Principles of Management, tradition has been to make key decisions at the top level and communicate it down the hierarchy to those who execute them. But, now, Gary Hamel, ranked by The Wall Street Journal as the world’s most influential management thinker argues that the traditional hierarchy no longer fits into today`s organizations. Advocating new management principles like ‘reverse accountability’, he makes a clarion call for management innovation where, I believe, collaborative leadership plays a central role. In an interview with hbr.org on leading collaborative groups, John Abele, Cofounder of Boston Scientific narrates a great story about a guy who led a skunk-works group at a famous Massachusetts company called Data General.  At the time, this company vied with Digital Equipment. In

All businesses today are on the look-out for leaders with the innovation instincts of Steve Jobs, the political skills of Lee Kuan Yew, and the emotional intelligence of Desmond Tutu. But, should the truth be told, such people are rare, if they’re at all. When it comes to innovation, a business enterprise may be lucky to have a leader of Steve’s caliber; but, I’d like to argue that they can innovate just as well even without such a leader at the helm. In one of his HBR articles-The Innovation Catalysts-Professor Roger Martin, a former Dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and the man who is credited for coining the much popular phrase today – ‘Design Thinking’ tells us how the software giant Intuit catalyzed innovation on the frontlines. One day in 2007, as he wrapped up of his five hour-long PowerPoint presentation on the merits of design at the Design for Delight (D4D) workshop, Scott Cook, Co-founder of Intuit had an epiphany. Much to his disappointment

A famous advertisement for New York Fries that features a silicon beauty holding a cup of fries sports a clever slogan - REAL FRIES IN A FAKE WORLD….Whether their claim is valid or not, we know we’re living in a fake world. Honesty might still be the best policy, but few people seem to adopt it nowadays. It’s growing extinct even faster in the business world. Inside companies, people lie outright or withhold information and keep their bosses in the dark about unpleasant news. Also, companies deceive customers by offering low-quality products at exorbitant prices. Admittedly, it seems that the falsehood is more marketable than the truth. Against this background, building a culture of candour seems to be almost counter-intuitive. But, the truth is it isn’t.  In ‘A Culture of Candour’ (HBR June 2009), James O’Toole and Warren Bennis, two prominent leadership scholars, outline the vital steps for building a culture of candour. It all starts with encouraging people to tell the truth. But,

Think about the world in 2000. Fast-forward to 2015 and see where it’s now. Ponder all the destabilizing events that occurred during the intervening years.  Vivid in our collective memory are bursting of the Dotcom Bubble, 9/11 Attack on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, US invasion of Iraq and war on terrorism that ensued, US Credit Crunch and the subsequent Global Recession, and Arab Spring. Add to this all the changes in the science & technology landscape. No doubt, now it’s a mind-boggling mélange. All these massive changes in the Political, Economic, Social & Technological (PEST) Environments have affected both local and global businesses in innumerable ways. Amidst all this uncertainty and chaos some companies have found themselves out of their business while some have flourished against all odds. How come this happens? The reasons for this are the subject of an illuminating new book, titled ‘Great By Choice’ and co-authored by business pundit Jim Collins of ‘Good to

The war for talent is raging. In the knowledge economy today, it’s people who constitute the principal reason for success or failure of most businesses. But, on the flipside, it’s people or talent as some business pundits call them that’s hardest to manage in more cases than most business leaders may feel comfortable in admitting. At the heart of this problem is the fact that most businesses have talent management reduced to a mere HR function which the top management pays little attention to. While HR department is responsible for it to a certain extent, the talent management process should be a well co-ordinated, strategic imperative led by the top management team with passion and purpose and the long term ambitions of the company in mind. Where people are considered merely as cogs of a machine that are easily replaceable, very little happens in terms of leveraging its human capital to drive its performance and growth. In fact, when business leaders adopt such a nonchalant attitude t

Wrapping up his famous Stanford (2005) commencement address, the late Steve Jobs, the iconic creative entrepreneur wishes the new batch of graduates ‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish’ With over 22 million views on YouTube to date, Steve’s speech is hugely popular and has been widely talked about by a number of authors, inspirational speakers, etc. Quite a few people must have puzzled over the final wish he bids to the audience and googled it like I did when I listened to the speech in the first place. Quite a few must have felt as ashamed as I did when they found out what it meant and wondered why they couldn’t figure it out first. I know some of our readers who aren’t familiar with Steve’s speech are now getting curiouser and curiouser! Trust me it’s worth the wait. In his enlightening address on connecting dots, love & loss and death, Steve asks you to be hungry for new knowledge and not be complacent and decide that you know enough. In other words, his advice is to keep learning. Els

Beyond doubt, Sir Alex Ferguson is the world’s most successful and best known Football Manager and has played a central role in transforming the Manchester United into the iconic football club it’s today. Such is his influence on the club that David Gill, the club’s former chief executive says ‘Steve Jobs was Apple; Sir Alex Ferguson is Manchester United…’ By the time he retired in May 2013, he’d consecutively served for 26 Seasons as the Manager during which the Club won 13 English league titles along with 25 other domestic and international trophies. The next best English Football Manager may have but half of Sir Alex’s accomplishments under his belt. In this article, I intend to discuss a few crucial elements of his enormously successful management approach and how they can be applied to the world of business. When he joined the Manchester United in 1986, unlike most managers, he focused on building the club rather than a team. Firm in his belief that he could win with youn

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”- Peter Drucker Whether Peter Drucker was the author of the quote above is debatable, though, it’s amply demonstrative of the fact that even the soundest strategy fails to produce the desired results if the right culture isn’t in place. While establishing a healthy culture in your organization is tough enough, when it comes to Mergers & Acquisitions (M &A), integration of different organizational cultures may, sometimes, prove to be even harder than all other affairs combined. The greater the cultural differences, the harder it’s to reconcile them. In his storied memoir ‘Straight from the Gut’ Jack Welch, a former CEO of General Electric, narrates the harrowing events that led to the divestiture of the investment bank Kidder, Peabody & Co. from GE- a classic case of irreconcilable cultural differences. When, in early 1986, Welch first revealed his plans to buy Kidder, Peabody, one of the oldest investment banks in Wall Street, two

The Black Friday looked like the end of the road, but the Pixar team who worked on Toy Story wouldn’t just give up… When Pixar struck a US $26 million deal with Disney to make three movies, Toy Story was the first. Inspired by the ambition to create the world’s first computer-animated film, though, the Pixar team still had to rely on the support and expertise of The Walt Disney Studios. It was on Friday, the 19th of November, 1993 at Walt Disney Co., Burbank, California that they screened the first half of Toy Story for Disney Executives.  After viewing it, the consensus across the table was that the film was awful. As the novice film-makers from Pixar worked hard to please the intimidating head of the Walt Disney Studios, Jeff Katzenberg, who wanted to give the film an edge so that it’d appeal to children, teenagers and adults alike, the film had lost its cinematic bearings. Peter Schneider, President of Walt Disney Feature Animation orders a shutdown of the project, threatening