As professionals, we all are responsible for shipping stuff to our customers (internal or external). The stuff that we ship is commonly referred to as a “deliverable”. As a manager, it helps if you can clearly define what deliverable means. The first step to get something right first time is to define it accurately in […]
Akshaya Patra Foundation in India is a shining example of how social entrepreneurship combined with power of innovation can make a HUGE difference. First, some background information. Akshaya Patra is an Indian NGO that provides mid day meals to about 1.2 million children across India on all school days. These meals act as an incentive […]
Friday again – time to share some of the most profound posts that I loved reading last week. These brilliant posts hit the point and leave us with some excellent lessons. A big high-five to these amazing folks. Six Thoughts About Middle Management – by Lisa Haneberg Lisa says, “Management is a social act. Conversations […]
Building quality involves cost. You spend efforts and energy on preventing the errors (prevention cost) and then checking your work (appraisal cost). These are positive costs, or rather investments that ensure that you get it right the first time. The cost of rework when you or customer identifies a LOT of defects(internal/external failure costs) is […]
It pains to see teams where people work on a common goal but don’t get along well with each other. We work in teams and knowing how to get along well with others is extremely crucial. So how do you get along well with others and establish required comfort? Here are 10 broad pointers that […]
Friday is a great day to share links to some of the best thinking out there. I am fortunate to a part of a wonderful leadership/management community who so generously share their ideas, insights and knowledge. So, here are 5 posts that I totally enjoyed reading in the last week, and I am sure you […]
A lot of companies have the phrase “delighting our customers” in their well-crafted mission statements and quality policies. I see “customer delight” as a cherry, with the cake being “solving their problems and meeting the expectations” – so when we say “cherry on top of the cake”, the cake has to be right. Customers don’t […]
You can measure almost anything in your business, but if those metrics don’t serve a real business objectives, they are just numbers with no real meaning. Measurement is a means to an end, not an end in itself. I have seen extreme cases where organizations either measure so much or they don’t measure anything at […]
Last week, I had a short conversation with one of my colleagues in HR about the all important topic of employee engagement. In an impromptu conversation, we touched upon a very important point: People love (and remember) stories, not facts. We loved it when our grandparents wrapped important life lessons in form of stories. Vivid […]