Emerging Management Paradigms

The book “The India Way” explains the sources of Indian success and how a country with a lot of challenges with transparency, efficiency, grinding poverty and adult literacy managed to make a huge progress in last decades.

The India Way is about survival, winning against the odds, about ‘jugaad’ (manage in spite of lack of resources) and ‘adjust kar lenge’ (adjust and accommodate)

The message from Indian leaders to the world is surprisingly “human” and explains:

• How to engage with employees in a holistic way
• How to improvise and adapt
• Identifying products with compelling value
• Broad mission and purpose (beyond profit)

Can this model be adopted elsewhere? Most likely not. The authors express these doubts themselves – these concepts are deeply rooted in the culture however American leaders should at least take a few lessons from “The India Way” – limit the excess of their model and learn to act more responsible towards the society.

I must say I really like the India way and this book completely changed my view on Indian society and companies. The world would definitely be a better place if leaders allover the World listened to the advice from India and used it.

Leslaw

The book ‘Good Boss, Bad Boss’ reinforced my thoughts about the negative impact that bad bosses have in companies and positive effect that good bosses can have. Here are some key takeaways from the book:

• There are 21-38 million bosses
• Bosses matter most to direct subordinates
• People do not quit bad companies, they quit bad bosses
• Immediate bosses have much more importance on an employee’s performance than the company in which they work
• A leader sets a tone which reverberates throughout an organization
• Attention is directed up the organization hierarchy, but people in power tend to become oblivious to followers
• Bosses get an inordinate amount of the credit or blame with respect to what they can actually control or accomplish
• Wise bosses have strong opinions that are weakly held

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve listened to interviews with Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson who described Jobs’ bossing as occasionally ‘mean’. The author of ‘Good Boss, Bad Boss’, Robert Sutton, posits that a boss that runs a successful company but treats his employees poorly is not a good boss. That said, is Apple an exception to the rule?

-Samuel Tokheim

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, is not a business book.  It is a book about psychology of willpower.

According to Baumeister’s research and supported anecdotally by Tierney, willpower is a quantifiable and scarce resource in human beings.  It is “used up” when we resist temptation or make difficult decisions that involve trade-offs.  It is restored by raising levels of glucose.  It can be strengthened by training–like repeatedly sitting up straight when one notices bad posture.

This is shown in a number of experiments that involve testing whether people are able to make decisions, maintain a strenuous activity, or resist temptation under various conditions.  The book also talks about figures like David Blaine and Henry Morton Stanley.

What does this mean for business?

If we accept the premise that knowledge work is demanding of willpower, then Baumeister’s research is relevant to the design of the workplace.  Does a workplace have many distractions?  Maybe it is better to let people work from home where they can focus.  Alternatively, it makes sense to provide workers with food in the office, as this will allow them to restore their glucose levels when their willpower is running low.  Providing benefits like health insurance could ease worker’s concerns in their private life, which would leave them with more willpower for when they are working.

Workplace technology that aids in decision-making or requires less concentration is widely considered to be “labor saving.”  What’s novel is the connection between ‘labor’ and willpower, which implies that even activities that aren’t work per se can deplete our ability to do work.  Treating employees in a way that is sensitive to these limitations and relying on intrinsic motivation could lead to more and higher quality work and a more cooperative workplace.