The case Career at Crossroads: Passion or Profession? focuses on the journey of a young professional and multifaceted artist, Manasi Prasad. This case reveals her career progression as she strives to excel while balancing her profession and passion. Manasi Prasad faces multiple dilemmas, trials, and tribulations during her journey. This case highlights the inherent conflict of a young professional at every stage of life. The classic dilemma is between a well-trodden path or a road less traveled and various other decision-making situations. Part A of the case ends at the peak of Manasi's career when she is faced with a crisis, that is, losing her voice, being unable to sing, and having an autoimmune disease. Part B deals with her transition. The case deals with how she led the IME team from concept to reality and subsequently managed the operations; each stage of her career had unique challenges.
The case Career at Crossroads: Passion or Profession? focuses on the journey of a young professional and multifaceted artist, Manasi Prasad. This case reveals her career progression as she strives to excel while balancing her profession and passion. Manasi Prasad faces multiple dilemmas, trials, and tribulations during her journey. This case highlights the inherent conflict of a young professional at every stage of life. The classic dilemma is between a well-trodden path or a road less traveled and various other decision-making situations. Part A of the case ends at the peak of Manasi's career when she is faced with a crisis, that is, losing her voice, being unable to sing, and having an autoimmune disease. Part B deals with her transition. The case deals with how she led the IME team from concept to reality and subsequently managed the operations; each stage of her career had unique challenges.
The COVID-19 pandemic required most organizations to enable a work-from-home/work-from-anywhere approach. The enforced necessity became a habit for many employees, who preferred the new flexibility. However, with organizations wanting to bring employees back to the office, there was resistance due to an unexpected reason. The work-from-home environment had allowed moonlighting for a few employees, who undertook gigs and even permanent assignments with other employers. This phenomenon is widespread among IT/ITeS and other consulting/knowledge industries. The motivations for these assignments were additional income and increased learning and exposure. While dual employment was not legally allowed in India, employment contracts enforcing this rule and penalizing employees led to increased talent loss. Employees were happy to leave the organization for less formal or rigid work environments, resulting in higher attrition. Organizations' dilemma was to reject moonlighting through strict contracts, employee monitoring, and informal checks or formalize it through making moonighting "ethical". Still, measures rejecting moonlighting could dilute the culture of trust and increase attrition, not just of the moonlighting employees. However, organizations could embrace this phenomenon and formalize moonlighting through appropriate policies and guidelines, which led to increased risk to employee commitment, ensuring productivity, information and security risk, and the organizations' capability in predictable client servicing.
Mylab Discovery Solutions is a biotechnology firm based in Pune, Maharashtra, a state in the western part of India. The company is focused on developing and commercializing diagnostic solutions and automation in molecular, serology, and immunology areas. Its applications are in clinical diagnostics, drug discovery, biomedical research, agri genomics, and animal and food safety. Till early 2020, like any other young venture in a nascent market, Mylab was struggling to raise funds and spread awareness of high-priced but more accurate "molecular diagnostics" in a price-sensitive market. Its fortunes changed in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The firm was dubbed the "poster child of the COVID-19 pandemic" after it rose to the limelight for developing COVID-19 RTPCR and rapid antigen test kits. The next two years saw it raising funds, automating and scaling production, doubling down on research and development, launching multiple new products, and pursuing inorganic growth through acquisitions and alliances. However, by January 2022, the pandemic seemed to have run its course. The founders, Hasmukh Rawal and Shailendra Kawade, were considering strategies to maintain Mylab's growth momentum. Through a series of interviews with key players at Mylab, we have developed a case study to delve into how a startup in the nascent biotechnology industry in India succeeded in turning out innovation after innovation and scaling up production of test kits from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands in the span of a few months. The learning objectives of this case are to understand the unique challenges faced by ventures in nascent markets, compare the ecosystem of ventures in nascent industries with those in mature industries, and discuss how stakeholder relationships evolve as a venture advances in its journey.
NET ZERO TO NET HERO - CAN WE GROSS IT? is a two-part case that highlights the pressing need for businesses to move towards sustainable practices. This is particularly relevant in today's Climate Crisis environment, where governments and businesses need to work together at COP summits to lay out policy roadmaps. Paving the way for sustainability in a firm, is a multipronged approach with interlinkages to local as well as global policy directives and understanding this, through the context of what CII does, gives the bigger picture for any small, medium or large firm to strategically plan and communicate their approach to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as to be seen as clearly "walking the talk" when it comes to showcasing themselves as being oriented towards truly caring for the planet.
Corporate training isn't all fun and games, but maybe it should be. Most of us have (often grudgingly) used corporate learning systems. We skim through 50-slide PowerPoint decks hoping to correctly guess enough answers to pass so that we can get back to our "real work." Much of what we learn is often forgotten by the time we receive our certificate of completion. But a new study, conducted at the professional services firm KPMG, shows that gamified training done right-lessons conducted carefully and over time, incorporating elements such as progression through challenges and levels, instant feedback, points, and competition-can significantly improve employee performance.
A new series of studies shows that cat owners are drawn to products that reduce risk and prevent problems, while dog owners prefer products that promise gains. That has implications for the messages marketers craft and even for policy makers trying to influence consumer behavior.
When it comes to providing career development support for employees, most companies offer three key elements visibility into opportunities and paths, the means to learn and practice, and rich feedback and coaching only to high-potential performers. The authors explain how organizations can integrate those elements into a career development system that works across all levels of the workforce to boost retention and cultivate needed skills.
The debate about the best way to lead has been raging for years: Should you empower your people and get out of their way, or take charge and push them to do great work? The answer, say the authors, is to do both. Their research shows that effective leaders routinely shift between these two seemingly opposing modes-and build teams whose members are good at switching back and forth too. Sometimes teams need diverÂgent thinking (during idea generation, for instance); at others, they need convergent thinking (to, say, make a decision and map out next steps). Leaders must be crystal clear about which mode is appropriate when. They have to make it psychologically safe for people to speak up, contribute, and argue, and when it's time to end the discussion and act, signal that they're taking charge again. There are four ways to increase the ability to shift modes: Question your assumptions about power and fixed hierarchies. Study your habits and your team's to see if you're stuck in one mode or the other. Set clear expectations with meeting agendas and rituals that mark transitions. And reinforce shifts with your own words, deeds, and body language.
Compared with start-ups, established corporations have many resources and capabilities that ought to give them a head start: customers, products, operations, licenses, distribution, marketing, and capital. But corporations lack one critical capability: the entrepreneurial muscle to take an idea from small to big, from zero to one. The authors describe a new model-the hybrid start-up-which differs from typical internal corÂporate ventures. It combines the best of people, processes, and resources from both inside and outside the company. They show how many big companies are creating their own hybrid start-ups to unlock the value of their assets and defend their markets while becoming digital leaders. They draw on lessons from more than 190 such ventures launched over the past eight years with the help of BCG Digital Ventures, including those created by companies such as UPS (Ware2Go), Mercedes-Benz (RepairSmith), Volkswagen (Heycar), First American (Endpoint), AIA (Snackbox), Airbus (UP42), and others. The data provides strong evidence both that the model works and that hybrid start-ups are two or three times as likely to succeed as independent start-ups.
Many workers today are stuck in low-paying jobs, unable to advance simply because they don't have a bachelor's degree. At the same time, many companies are desperate for workers and not meeting the diversity goals that could help them perform better while also reducing social and economic inequality. All these problems could be alleviated, the authors say, if employers focused on job candidates' skills instead of their degree status. Drawing on their interviews with corporate leaders, along with their own experience in academia and the business world, the authors outline a "skills-first" approach to hiring and managing talent. It involves writing job descriptions that emphasize capabilities, not credentials; creating apprenticeships, internships, and training programs for people without college degrees; collaborating with educational institutions and other outside partners to expand the talent pool; helping hiring managers embrace skills-first thinking; bringing on board a critical mass of nonÂdegreed workers; and building a supportive organizational culture. IBM, Aon, Cleveland Clinic, Delta Air Lines, Bank of America, and Merck are among the companies taking this approach-and demonstrating its benefits for firms, workers, and society as a whole.
China's companies have long been acclaimed for their manufacturing prowess and, more recently, for their pragmatic approach to innovation. Now it's time to recognize how they are reinventing the role of management through an approach the authors call "digitally enhanced directed autonomy," or DEDA. These companies use digital platforms to give frontline employees direct access to shared corporate resources and capabilities, making it possible for them to organize themselves around specific business opportunities. Autonomy is not complete, nor is it given to everyone. It is directed exactly where it is needed, and what employees do with their autonomy is carefully tracked. The approach contrasts with the Western model of empowerment, which gives employees broad autonomy through reduced supervision. This article describes the three core features of the DEDA approach: granting employees autonomy at scale, supporting them with digital platforms, and setting clear, bounded business objectives. It offers examples of how companies are using those features and draws lessons for Western companies.
Teams under pressure often fall back on dysfunctional coping mechanisms that are deeply rooted in human evolutionary psychology. The group works like a pack, instinctively looking for ways to alleviate its members' collective anxiety. It might unconsciously ascribe an unwanted role, such as scapegoat or savior, to one or more members and lapse into skewed interactions-for example, directing its energy toward fighting a common enemy, whether real or perceived, rather than advancing its actual mission. The authors discuss how to spot these harmful patterns and break their hold. They describe a powerful tool deployed in their work with top teams: sociograms, or pictorial representations of team members, their connections, and their interactions. By understanding the unconscious forces that influence them in times of stress, teams can become less captive to such forces and more engaged with improving performance.
Controversy has swirled around psychological targeting-the practice of influencing people's behavior by mining their digital footprints, identifying their personality traits, and then tailoring messages to them. Because it was misused to try to sway votes during recent elections, some have made it out to be a brainwashing tool. That's simply a myth, explains Sandra Matz, a leading expert on it (who actually helped break the election story). Psychological targeting can't radically change minds, she says. However, marketers can use it to shift opinions and attitudes, create demand where there was none, and engage with customers on a much more personal level. In this article she describes how companies can employ it in a way that creates the maximum value for them and their customers-and adheres to fundamental ethical principles.
A surprising number of extremely successful people are often wracked by anxiety, the author writes. They suffer from what psychologists call thought traps and others might refer to as cognitive distortion or thinking errors: negatively biased and untrue patterns of thought that arrive automatically and often ensnare us, preventing us from seeing clearly, communicating effectively, or making good reality-based decisions. To combat thought traps, some anxious achievers turn to overwork, others to coping mechanisms such as substance use, avoidance, or passive-aggressiveness. Aarons-Mele explains the 11 most common thought traps-all-or-nothing thinking, labeling, jumping to conclusions, catastrophizing, filtering, discounting the positive, "should" statements, social comparison, personalization and blaming, ruminating, and emotional reasoning-and recommends strategies for overcoming all of them.
Discount retailer Dollar Bill's has been struggling to maintain its margins over the past two years because of inflationary pressures, delays on imported goods, and decreased foot traffic. Now the board has asked CEO William Fisher Jr. to develop a strategy for raising prices. William worries that raising prices will hurt the company's reputation and alienate customers, but he recognizes that something has to change. Should Dollar Bill's maintain the dollar price point by reducing product quantity, such as repackaging five-packs of chewing gum into four-packs for the same price? Or should it abandon the dollar price point and begin offering an array of more-expensive goods? This fictional case study features expert commentary by Greg Besner, the CEO of Sunflow, and Barrie Carmel, the vice president of pricing at Michaels Stores.
There are plenty of good reasons to quit a job. Maybe you want better pay, need to get away from a toxic boss, or are ready to pursue a different career. But quitting can be scary, because it also highlights what you stand to lose: the relationships you've cultivated with colleagues, the comfort of a familiar boss and organization, financial stability, sometimes even your sense of yourself as a gritty, resilient, loyal person. This article reviews several new books-Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away; Two Weeks Notice: Find the Courage to Quit Your Job, Make More Money, Work Where You Want, and Change the World; and My What If Year: A Memoir-that offer advice for weighing the benefits and the costs of quitting.
The '70s icon looks back on her career in rock and roll and writing, describing her unintended rise to fame, why she took a break from music, and how she became an award-winning author.
Discount retailer Dollar Bill's has been struggling to maintain its margins over the past two years because of inflationary pressures, delays on imported goods, and decreased foot traffic. Now the board has asked CEO William Fisher Jr. to develop a strategy for raising prices. William worries that raising prices will hurt the company's reputation and alienate customers, but he recognizes that something has to change. Should Dollar Bill's maintain the dollar price point by reducing product quantity, such as repackaging five-packs of chewing gum into four-packs for the same price? Or should it abandon the dollar price point and begin offering an array of more-expensive goods? This fictional case study features expert commentary by Greg Besner, the CEO of Sunflow, and Barrie Carmel, the vice president of pricing at Michaels Stores.