Mastering the art of spontaneous speaking is important for leaders. They must do more than just deliver a good prepared keynote-they need to nail the Q&A and small talk afterward, or crush off-the-cuff toasts and speeches. The author suggests that anyone can become proficient at this art using the right tactics and behaviors: Toasts, Q&As, and small talk don't require any specific personality traits. He offers key strategies that include avoiding conventional responses in favor of establishing genuine connections, and prioritizing brevity while delivering messages. He also highlights the need to speak authentically without the pressure to be perfect-which means daring to be dull. An equally important aspect is active listening to understand and respond effectively to others' needs. And structuring thoughts logically during impromptu conversations is a useful tactic. Fear or nervousness need not deter anyone from communicating effectively on the spot.
Shortly after the sudden death of her beloved husband, Priya Gowda learns that the company he built from a small dairy farm into a major Indian conglomerate is in deep financial trouble. Unbeknownst to her and his investors, her husband had taken on a lot of short-term, high-interest loans, and the company is struggling to make its payments. As sole heir to his majority stake in Splendid Ice Cream, Priya is now its de facto CEO. Her creditors advise her to sell or liquidate the company, but Priya is determined to preserve her husband's legacy. Her daughters, however, worried that the business is taking too high a toll on her, beg her to let it go. Should she give in to them or keep trying to save Splendid? Expert commentators weigh in.
Three years after the coronavirus pandemic began, what lessons have we learned? Four new books-The Big Fail, Lessons from the Covid War, The Phoenix Economy, and Chaos Kings-and a blog series on Crooked Timber search for answers. They examine the response to the crisis, the systemic and societal weaknesses it revealed, and the ways it has fundamentally changed the world.
Shortly after the sudden death of her beloved husband, Priya Gowda learns that the company he built from a small dairy farm into a major Indian conglomerate is in deep financial trouble. Unbeknownst to her and his investors, her husband had taken on a lot of short-term, high-interest loans, and the company is struggling to make its payments. As sole heir to his majority stake in Splendid Ice Cream, Priya is now its de facto CEO. Her creditors advise her to sell or liquidate the company, but Priya is determined to preserve her husband's legacy. Her daughters, however, worried that the business is taking too high a toll on her, beg her to let it go. Should she give in to them or keep trying to save Splendid? Expert commentators weigh in.
Shortly after the sudden death of her beloved husband, Priya Gowda learns that the company he built from a small dairy farm into a major Indian conglomerate is in deep financial trouble. Unbeknownst to her and his investors, her husband had taken on a lot of short-term, high-interest loans, and the company is struggling to make its payments. As sole heir to his majority stake in Splendid Ice Cream, Priya is now its de facto CEO. Her creditors advise her to sell or liquidate the company, but Priya is determined to preserve her husband's legacy. Her daughters, however, worried that the business is taking too high a toll on her, beg her to let it go. Should she give in to them or keep trying to save Splendid? Expert commentators weigh in.
With its ability to take mundane tasks off employees' hands and make everyone more productive, ChatGPT is a game changer. In fact, it is just as big a deal for leaders as COVID-19 was. That according to Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick. In this wide-ranging interview with HBR Ideacast host Curt Nickisch, Mollick describes the main ways to use the technology, which include basic writing tasks and HTML coding. He also touches on the risks involved and the questions leaders need to be asking in order to optimize the use of ChatGPT in their organizations. And for those who haven't yet tried it out, his advice is simple: holding off on experimenting with ChatGPT is a big mistake.
Fraudulent behaviour in corporations is much more common than you might think. Indeed, the stories covered in the media are just the tip of the iceberg. The author, a Chair in Finance at the University of Toronto, shares findings from his research, which found that two out of three instances of fraud likely goes undetected. His analysis of the demise of Arthur Anderson indicates that prior to the 2002 implementation of Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), 41per cent of large public firms were misreporting their financial accounts in a material way and 10 per cent were committing securities fraud, imposing an annual cost of $254 billion on investors. He concludes that, if SOX reduced the likelihood of undertaking fraud by even 10 per cent, its high cost - estimated at $3.8 million per firm, on average - would be fully justified.
Whether you've heard the term or not, chances are you've already formed many of your own 'management operating principles'- the guidelines you use to make decisions and get things done from day to day. Understanding how these 'guardrails' influence your work can make you a better leader, says the author, who spent 10 years as a senior executive at Google. She shares her own four operating principles and how she formed them. In the end, she says that it is the combination of your team environment and the team's execution skill that will produce great results. But for that to happen, you need to operate within a consistent framework of core principles.
Every organization can-and should-generate more revenue from its data than it invests in producing and managing it. Yet the idea of turning data into money is often associated with sneaky tactics or 'going too far' with unacceptable privacy violations. As a result, some organizations, especially non-commercial ones, have very little appetite for the term 'data monetization.' The authors say it's time to embrace the concept. They present three approaches to monetizing data: Selling, which entails the exchange of data for money; Improving, which uses data to create efficiencies for cheaper or faster operations; and Wrapping, which uses data to enhance products such that customers want to buy more. In the end they show that, if you will limit what you view as data monetization opportunities, you leave money on the table. Often, a lot of money.
Did you know that waves, tides and currents in bodies of water could provide more reliable sources of energy than either wind or solar? Or that volcanic sand and genetically-edited crops could be significant natural carbon-capture and storage opportunities? Of course, such tech trends on their own cannot predict the future. But by understanding the changes shaping the technology landscape, leaders can make informed decisions and capitalize on new opportunities. The author, who heads up the Future Today Institute, shares three key categories of trends from the Institute's annual Tech Trends Report: Financial Services, Artificial Intelligence and Climate, Green Tech & Energy.
In the realm of cybersecurity, an important concept for every leader to understand is that of Digital Crown Jewels ('DCJs'). These are your organization's most precious digital assets, consisting of the data you possess, process, and pass on that allows you to deliver on your strategy. This might include customer records, purchasing histories, employee records, finances and intellectual property information about proprietary products and services. DCJs also include an organization's data processing environment (DPE): how data flows through the organization and the processes by which the firm and its agents access and manipulate data. The challenge is this: the list of actors who pose a threat to the integrity of a firm's DPE is long and growing. The authors provide guidelines for protecting your DCJs in three categories: preventable risks, strategic risks and external risks. They end with a warning: act now, because the potential cost of failing to act is far too great.
Transport Solutions was a global travel services company with headquarters in the United Kingdom (UK). It had a matrix organization design with 5 lines of businesses (LOBs or verticals) supported by 5 different business units (BUs or horizontals). However, with the entry of smaller and Agile new players in the market around 2015, Transport Solutions started experiencing challenges. The organization followed a 'waterfall' model of software development with teams from different BUs contributing to the development in a systematic stage-by-stage process. This helped ensure high quality products and services. However, the downside was that the minimum time to market (cycle time from concept to reality) was 26 to 33 weeks depending on the complexity of the product. Everyone was busy doing the work as expeditiously as possible and there was no reason to believe that the cycle time could be reduced further. The case focuses on the transformation of Transport Solutions from a siloed organization to an Agile organization, and the assistance provided by TCS in facilitating the transition. It describes some challenges faced during the transition and the interventions by the management of Transport Solutions and TCS to address those challenges to successfully implement Agile.
ELGi transformed from a small family-run manufacturer of compressors and pumps to a global player through multiple initiatives based on improving the quality of their product and the productivity of their workforce over two decades. They adopted an innovative approach to improve their blue-collar workforce's lifestyle and income levels, linked to worker upskilling, increasing job autonomy, and a radical approach to wage agreement. Previously, wage negotiations for ELGi workers were unpredictable and without a clear structure. The process took time and was ad hoc. Dr. Jay, the promoter family member, did not subscribe to the traditional approach of keeping labor wages low and benefiting from the wage arbitrage followed by global subsidiaries in India and other Indian manufacturing companies. He wanted Indian workers to earn competitive wages, almost equal to what blue-collar workers in the West make and become globally competitive. Hence, a "basket of goods" approach to wage fixing was introduced in 1996 to ensure a good lifestyle for workers and their families. This approach linked consumption to compensation and was determined based on the needs of a family of four. Moreover, the company acknowledged the importance of enhancing worker motivation in order to remain competitive on a global scale. By defining a basket of goods as "must have" and "good to have", which was collaboratively developed between the workers, their families, and the management, they periodically expanded the basket items over multiple years. Additionally, with organization-based profit-sharing schemes, suggestion schemes, and career progression mechanisms, ELGi built a dedicated, motivated, and engaged workforce. Furthermore, the practice of keeping workers as contingent workers for long periods was changed to offer permanency for workers completing over three years based on their performance feedback.
This case depicts the critical decisions Xingli Dong (Shirley) made during her career transition from a female Ph. D. in engineering to Energy Automation R&D VP of Schneider Electric and sparks a discussion on her next key decision for a career change. In this male-dominated field, she met a barrage of suspicion and setbacks during her growth from a female Ph. D. in engineering to the head of the R&D Center, especially in carrying out an eight-year-long project. Shirley insisted on leading the team with open-mindedness and inclusiveness, making rapid and incremental iterations through trial and error. The successful project delivery earned her the trust of the headquarters and an opportunity to lead the company's global R&D business. The new position, however, required her to balance work and family and manage a global R&D team while working in China. With authentic leadership, she won the trust and recognition of her 300-strong cross-cultural R&D team; with empathy, she managed to close down a site in Poland. Inspired by other excellent female leaders, she continuously reflected on female executives' unique strengths. In October 2021, Schneider Electric organized a 360 Leadership Assessment for senior executives, during which Shirley realized her weaknesses in strategic thinking would put her in a weaker position to exercise leadership in the long run. Shirley began to consider whether she should leverage her existing strengths in her existing role or venture out of her comfort zone to seek new opportunities. However, she had doubts about whether Schneider Electric would support her pivot into an innovation-related role, where she had no particular advantage.
In January 2019, the Competition Commission of India approved a significant merger in India's fast-moving consumer goods industry. The merger between Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) and GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Limited (GSKCONS) took place in April 2020. The deal helped HUL strengthen its food and refreshments business and diversify into the health food drinks market. The hefty purchase price paid for the merger led HUL to record massive goodwill and other intangible assets that had previously not been recorded on GSKCONS financial statements. An investor researching the merger noticed these drastically increased values and wondered how a product company could have such high intangible assets on its balance sheet. What was HUL's strategic motive in the merger? Had it acquired some right-to-use assets from GSKCONS that had led to an increase in other intangible assets? What were the potential sources of value from the merger? Would the merger benefit HUL in the long run?
Set immediately after a December 2019 short-seller attack, the case explores Plug Power's long challenging history. It then focuses on two key issues raised in the short-seller report related to lease accounting and stock warrants that Plug purportedly used to boost profits.
The case is set in spring 2021, immediately after Plug Power made financial restatements dating back to 2018. The case describes the restatements, which revealed that Plug was reclassifying expense items to boost gross profits.