It is a common trend to notice how even really good business proposals do not get the due attention they deserve from the top executives. Most C- Suite members have been guilty of such misses. A lot of that is down to the language and pitch being used by the presenter. Corporate training and coaching modules are available for the same. The right metrics too need to be addressed in it. All this has been explained by Nancy Duarte, in her latest book titled Data Story: Explain Data and Inspire Action Through Story. Time- starved executives usually look for the six measures that are universally the tipping point for any business proposal to meet the support or not. The first of these is whether the idea will drive up the revenues and subsequent profits. Another goes the other way, in reducing the expenses. Upping the market share and reducing the lag time to market are two more measures. The firth one is about improving the talent management and improving retention of personnel at the firm. Lowering down the risks is the sixth such measure.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaearlemcleod/2019/11/15/selling-to-the-c-suite-why-executives-disengage/#5159d9ea4a22

Uploaded Date: 16th December 2019

While every single career path is going through significant change right now, none would have as much of the far- reaching changes, as would management. A decade on from now, it would be almost unrecognizable. This however, does not mean that an MBA degree would hold no relevance, or that the corner office would not be worth fighting for. The career ladders would remain, but will simply morph to newer forms. Management leaders will continue to excel as coaches or in the area of corporate training. The trickle- down, top- down decision- making structure is set to undergo rapid change. This new paradigm will also help to lessen the myth of management being a step up in career. Instead, most people simply move around over their careers. Several studies conducted, thus no longer place management as a desirable career. This stands true for USA, UK, France and Germany. In fact, only about a third of managers from such advanced economies remain confident of remaining, within managerial roles over the next decade.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/grantfreeland/2019/11/04/the-end-of-management-as-we-know-it/#14c5fa61acdf

Uploaded Date: 14th December 2019

Noted economist Mariana Mazzucato feels that among the biggest challenges that the broader human society faces, is how to incentivize the concept of business innovation. She has even written two books to explain this concept. The first of them, published in 2013, is The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths. In this, she remarked how the greatest of inventions took place when the government focused on and funded ground- breaking business research. The next book was published in 2018, and described as one of the best business books on economics, for the year. It was titled as The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. She also warns against over- glorifying capitalism, which she feels needs a major rethink. This especially applies to those who work the machinations at the stock market.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Mission-critical?gko=a9034

Uploaded Date: 12th December 2019

In the 1970s, Xerox pioneered a concept known as Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) where all the out-groups or historically excluded ones would get additional funding towards their efforts at greater equality. This included groups such as women, religious minorities, immigrants or the LGBTQ community. While most of these were successful to quite an extent, the overlying benefits could not be reached as even today the in-groups of white straight men tend to dominate the large corporate groups. That is why business consulting group Deloitte has taken on the initiative of educating the in-groups towards increasing diversity. As the talent pool in the US has changed, it is time for a rethink and the ERGs were seen as an anachronism. Increasing number of leaders are organically coming up who are women or immigrants, so the traditional majority is becoming a minority in some cases. The in-groups still remain in power and the future of more members of the out-group reaching the top echelons continues to be dictated by the latter. So the need to provide diversity lessons to the in-group as identified by Deloitte.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/08/deloittes-radical-attempt-to-reframe-diversity?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert&referral=00563&spMailingID=17792212&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1080216301&spReportId=MTA4MDIxNjMwMQS2

Uploaded Date: 27 October 2017

Liberal Arts or Humanities students often get asked about what they wish to pursue in their respective careers. It is often wrongly assumed there are very few career choices after this. Yet a cursory glance at today’s requirements clearly confirms that not only is it a highly sought after a vocation, indeed people with knowledge of such fields actually have an edge in the digital age. In the past it was assumed that to get a job in the tech industry, one had to be from one of the STEM fields. Now a lot of previously difficult tasks can be done using online tools such as programming from Git Hub. While economists often underestimate cultural factors behind decision making, humanities grads have deep insights on human nature and a resultant empathy. Reading literature helps people in understand specifics as opposed to others treating people as mere abstractions. A management consulting expert has written the book Sense-making where he has illustrated the importance of understanding people to gain a foothold in the market. That explains why a lot of organizations such as Airbnb, Facebook, Alibaba, Slack and YouTube were founded by Liberal Arts majors. Ultimately Inter-disciplinary studies can only be beneficial for businesses and larger human problems.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/07/liberal-arts-in-the-data-age

Uploaded Date:21 October 2017

There are certain character traits associated with leadership success. Yet a lot of these traits could prove to be deadly if not handled in the right manner or if available in too high dozes. Two decades back, a study conducted by psychologists established eleven such traits which were- bold, cautious, colourful, diligent, dutiful, excitable, imaginative, leisurely, mischievous, reserved and sceptical. For example, colourful could give way to being dramatic or attention-seeking, bold could mean entitled or overly self-confident and so on and so forth. Now a related business research carried out by the Hogan Development Assessments has divided these eleven traits into three broad categories. It has been noted that most managers display at least three such dark traits and about two-fifths score high enough in one or two to put their careers in potential peril. As leaders rise in their professional careers, they tend to make a less objective assessment on their own selves. The three categories are Distancing, Seductive and Ingratiating. Distancing involves cautious, excitable, leisurely, reserved and sceptical. Seductive includes Bold, colourful, imaginative and mischievous. The last category consists of diligent and dutiful. All of these in excess quantities can prove to be dangerous and managers must take care to navigate past their dark sides.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/09/could-your-personality-derail-your-career.

Uploaded Date: 21 October 2017

The city of Cleveland is proving to be one of the most fertile grounds for developing scalable business based around Virtual Reality (VR) or the related Augmented Reality (AR). Goldfarb Weber Creative Media for example put together a pilot run for one of its clients Lubrizol which took potential customers to a virtual walk around their plant overseeing the latest formulations. A Oculus Rift headset was used for this purpose. Cleveland based firms are experimenting with VR to be used extensively in education and corporate training. The Western Reserve University for example has been using Microsoft’s Holo Lens to train anatomy to medical students. A practical demonstration of VR and AR was provided at the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF). The event manager at Games Done Legit, a company specializing in conducting video game events, has confirmed that the obstacles facing VR will soon be addressed with upcoming processing improvements and an expected drop in prices.

Source:http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20170812/NEWS/170819961/virtual-reality-is-potentially-vital-engagement-tool

Uploaded Date:16 August 2017