The Global Knowledge Review

My deadline for an article which I committed to David Gurteen is coming closer. I'm still wondering what I should write for the Global Knowledge Review.

Any suggestions?
What would you like to read about if you were getting the GKR?

CEO recruitment

Picked this up from Om Malik's blog:

Attention headhunters : If all corporations take Rice University’s advise, then you all will be looking for new gigs. In a recent study they found that that despite a sharp increase in the “number of CEOs at U.S. companies have been recruited from outside those firms, a new study suggests that boards of directors should look inside their
organizations before filling this critical position.” Love the name of the study
by Yan (Anthea) Zhang of Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of
Management and Nandini Rajagopalan of the University of Southern California — When The Known Devil is Better Than an Unknown God: An Empirical
Study of the Antecedents and Consequences of Relay CEO Successions

FDI in retail, aviation in India

Sujan has an informed post about Foreign Direct Investment in the Indian Retail sector.

Another FDI debate that got stirred up was the announcement by Richard Branson that he would like to invest in his personal capacity in some Indian domestic carrier in the vicinity of 25-49%. Wonder how the government would interpret that ?

Oh oh, they said they are OK with it !

A humorous look at the Reliance imbroglio

OK, a lot of investors might feel that the Ambani feud is no laughing matter, but BombayType has this hilarious look at the "bhailog-ka-locha" :-)!

What they don't teach you....

at XLRI

After Gautam Sinha (94PMIR), and E Abraham (78PMIR), this one is from Ronald Sequeira - VP & Head of Human Resources, Tata Power - of 84PMIR batch from Business Standard (Nov 23, 2004):

If you ever want to see several happy people in one place, visit any leading
B-school campus just after the placement season is over. What a sybaritic
feeling. A business school stamp behind your name and a dream job ahead of you.
The B-school grad has learnt all that is there to learn. Could it get any
better?

From the XLRI alumni Blog

Branding, Social software and The Long Tail

what am I talking about. Well I picked this up from Robert Scoble's blog. Scoble discusses a conversation he's had with Young & Rubicom's David Thorpe. As Scoble says:

I shared with him that "the long tail" is where the next few big companies will come from. In fact, Microsoft and Apple and Google all came from the long tail. Remember 1976? Only a handful of people were into personal computers. A few small user's groups. A few hobby magazines.
That's a lot like where podcasting is today, no? Or even blogging. About 10 million blogs exist right now, right?
So, if you wanna figure out what is coming in the future, you must build relationships with the long tail. You must figure out ways to see things happening in the long tail before anyone else.
Finally, those who pay attention to the long tail will build strong brands, profitable
companies, and strong organizations.
Latest success story to come out of the long tail? Google.
Think about it, Google didn't pay attention to the 80% of the market. They paid attention to the weirdos at the end of the tail. The folks who really used search a LOT.

Not really an original idea right? We all have heard variations of these thoughts, the creative edge is where new ideas come from, etc etc.

But what is different is what Scoble goes on to say about Blogging and branding and conversations , that really made me sit up. Just an "evil geek" he isn't :-)

I told David that blogs are only the tip of the iceberg. Blogs are only the
part of the word-of-mouth networks that we can see. So, for every blog that
talks about something, there are probably 100,000 conversations that we can't
see. Blogs just give us a fuzzy picture of what really is being discussed
person-to-person in IM, email, on the phone, or over turkey dinner tomorrow at
Thanksgiving.
They don't understand bloggers who celebrate audiences of hundreds of
people. They don't understand Google, who built a search engine for the
hard-core-searcher (they are still trying to react to Google's vision six years
later).
They don't grok wikis. After all, only the geeks are using wikis
today, right? (You and I know they are wrong, but selling the long tail is
tough).

Imagine that. A tech company saying that they don't grok wikis! Weird!
So, remember that, you marketer who thinks for the long-term. Watch and listen to the long tail. Next decade's biggest new idea could come from there. Leave next quarter and next months sales figures to the branding and sales guy. You do R&D and listen to the innovators and experimenters.

Anyone know if I can get a "I'm a long tailer" sticker from somewhere?

The Reliance ownership tussle

Sometimes, I think that the Indian business climate hasn't really improved from the days before liberalisation.

Imagine, an entrepreneur creates India's biggest private organization from rags to riches with nothing apart from street smart savvy and the ability to raise money for mega projects. Dhirubhai Ambani becomes the icon for the primary investor in India and vitalises the Bombay Stock Exchange. Reliance starts off in the textile industry, integrating backwards into Polymers, then Petrochemicals. It discovers its strength as the ability to project manage huge projects and the ability to raise money cheap. It even sought to takeover construction company L&T to further reduce time and cost of its projects. Then it moved into areas like Oil & gas and Telecom bringing it's same strengths to reduce cost and think big. Dhirubhai passes away and the mantle falls on his two sons.

Mukesh, the chosen heir, hardworking, organization man.
Anil, the younger son, flamboyant, glamourous, the external communicator and the financial brain.

Reliance's moves into new economy areas like Broadband, Telecom etc areMukesh's pet projects. Anil moves into the background making media appearances.

And last week, when a reporter asked Mukesh on percieved differences between the brothers, Mukesh said "There are ownership issues, but they are in the private realm"

Helllooo?

Private realm?

With a comment like that did Mukesh really believe that it could remain private? Or was he pushing the envelope ? We will never know. What followed was a classic case of what not to do in crisis management.

The markets reacted with the Reliance Industries shares nosediving.
It was public news that Dhirubhai had not left any will. So the laws of the Hindu Undivided Family take over, and the matriarch Kokila Ben called for a family meeting of the two brothers and their two sisters to sort out the tangle.

After that Mukesh sent off an e-mail to all the employees saying in effect "I'm the boss"

As of now Anil Ambani has not made a public statement , but apparently the brothers are consulting their lawyers.

Looking at this as a student of Organizational Behavior this seems like a classic case of the first revolution from Griener's model. An organization that was largely entrepreneur driven and where the ownership and management control were focussed into the family (who were often ranked as THE most powerful people in India) had to unravel sooner or later. What took people by surprise is the timing.

Where is the group headed now? Mukesh might have the money, but Anil has more powerful friends (like Amitabh Bachchan, Amar Singh) and he is a Rajya Sabha politician also. I personally do not think this will go to the courts. Both the brothers stand to lose a lot of wealth as values will erode soon in such a case. Anil, being the more canny strategist would probably ensure a settlement like (as a Biz journalist pointed on TV yesterday) "The Line of Control" !

marketing and product blogs - the question of 'staff' functions

Crossroads Dispatches by Evelyn Rodrigues links to my comment on Marc's new blog where he sought feedback.

But it is an interesting question, are Marketers making life 'too complicated' for themselves ? Are HR people? Are Finance people? Do we in the "staff" functions like to make our work like rocket science to feel that we are "adding value" to the organization?

If you see the six trends that are seen to be impacting HR (from Deepa's Jigyasa Consulting blog) I am sure they can be addressed if one thinks of them as "business challenges" rather than HR challenges.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying HR is "common sense". It is not. There is a science and art to it. Group dynamics and motivation theory is not common sense. It is common sense when it applies to me, individually, but sensing undercurrents and diagnosing group issues comes only with lots of practice and lots of empathy.

Attention grabbing CVs

Robert Scoble was referred this CV by JY. And this is doing the rounds in Microsoft, and therefore, might prove the adage that attention grabbing CVs can actually make a difference...even if they take ages to load !

Who would have thought that CVs can be like a little movie. And no, don't start paying animation developers to make such CVs for yourself. You see, most resume software packages do not read Flash (any exceptions?), and lots don't read even images or pdfs!

Ingrid addresses the House of Lords on Globalization!

Well, doesn't happen too frequently that someone you (virtually!) know gets a chance to address the House of Lords in the United Kingdom !

Well, that's what Ingrid Srinath , CEO of CRY (child relief and you) did recently and you can find the internet version here at the CRY site. In the presentation Ingrid covers the other side of globalization and builds awareness of the 'collateral damage'(or discrimination by design) that globalization gives rise to, especially in a developing economy like India with its huge 'leagacy' issues of centuries old biases. Of course, Ingrid focusses on issues like child education and mortality but the message is telling. She attacks the governments apathy and its "lies, damned lies and statistics" that obfuscate more than they clarify. One of the most poignant parts of the presentation is when Asma Shiekh's story is personalised here. I got a lump in my throat reading those slides.

So what do you think about Globalization now?

For training professionals...

Check out these posts from Donald Clark's blog on how CLO Dashboard puts learning executives on the driver's seat, and another one on the various definitions of e-learning and finding the most suitable one.

Pesticide or Coke/Pepsi - The sequel

After the controversy of pesticides in Coke/Pepsi a couple of years ago...the story has returned in a new form. Madhukar blogs about a BBC report that chronicles how farmers in North India are using Coke/Pepsi as a cheaper alternative to pesticides !

For farmers in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh it is cheaper than pesticides and gets the job done just as well. The product? Pepsi or Coca-Cola.
Agricultural scientists give them some backing - they say the high sugar content
of the drinks can make them effective in combating pests. Unsurprisingly, Pepsi
and Coca-Cola strongly disagree, saying there is nothing in the drinks that can
be used in pest control.

Oak Hill, General Atlantic take 60% stake in GE BPO

From Rediff Biz:

Oak Hill Capital Partners, a $1.6-billion private equity firm and General
Atlantic have agreed to pay about $500 million for 60 per cent of General
Electric's business-processing operations in India, sources close to the deal
said.
GE Capital Services is the leader in offshoring services to India. Set
up in 1997, the company employs over 12,000 people in eight sites in India in
four cities. It has five centres -- one each at Gurgaon, Bangalore and Jaipur --
and two in Hyderabad.

The golden question is, will GE plan to sell off the remaining 40% stake also? If so, who else will bid for it? And how will GE 'dis-engage' its management control from GECIS?

The other interesting point was that GE valued GECIS at $ 1 billion, and so does that mean the deal was overvalued?

Interesting times ahead !

Reverse Offshoring?

Interesting Fast Company article on US citizens working for Indian IT organizations. It would be a cultural challenge for these people to move from American organizations with their emphasis on individual performance to move to group performance norms of Indian organizations. I also wonder how they reconcile the endless debating tendency of their Indian colleagues with their own propensity for action and execution...

Best Consulting employers in the US

Consultants are rarely short of advice for others, but do they practice what they preach when it comes to creating healthy work cultures at their own organizations? Consulting Magazine's annual Best Firms to Work For survey of thousands of consultants found several firms that were earning high praise from their toughest critics:
their own employees.
"The next big battle in the war for talent, has begun and these firms are now on the frontlines," says Consulting Magazine Editor in Chief Jack Sweeney.
"The professional lives of consultants can only improve, as these top firmsdemonstrate that people remain the ultimate competitive advantage."

CONSULTING MAGAZINE'S 10 BEST CONSULTING FIRMS TO WORK FOR
Bain & Company
McKinsey & Company
Boston Consulting Group
Booz Allen Hamilton
Kurt Salmon Associates
Pittiglio Rabin Todd and McGrath
Sapient Corp.
Milliman USA
Mercer Management Consulting
DiamondCluster International

Besides highlighting the cultural strengths of different leading firms, Consulting Magazine's Best Consulting Firms to Work For survey makes visible the difficult demands of a consulting career.
"Consulting firms traditionally demanded that employees completely sacrifice their personal lives for their work," says Sweeney. "Consultants tell us there is still much room for improvement, and we like to believe the magazine's Best Firms survey is helping curtail such sacrifices."
For the rankings, Consulting Magazine surveyed more than 4,000 U.S.-based consultants at 32 firms. Firms were scored by their employees' responses to questions in six equally-weighted categories: Leadership, Compensation & Benefits, Culture, On the Job, Work/Life, and Career Development.

Source : Yahoo Biz news

KM - The organizational ghetto?

dave pollard has an interesting post, and yeah I was nodding too :-). Read the full post here:
An excerpt:

At a KM conference last year, I somewhat timidly suggested to the audience
that KM has become the organizational ghetto for the most creative minds in
business. I explained that almost everyone I knew in senior positions in KM was
brighter and more inventive than their peers, and had self-selected or been
hand-picked by management to lead their organizations' KM programs for that
reason. There was a belief in the dot-com '90s that knowledge was the critical
strategic asset of business, and the gateway to innovation. KM was going to make
a difference, and allow people enamoured with creativity and change to lead that
change.A decade later, most people left in KM are disillusioned. The culture of
big business has shifted sharply back right, and cost reduction, not innovation,
is Job One. There has not been much to show for all that promise and creative
ambition. But those in KM should not blame themselves. They were unwittingly set
up for disappointment. Executives don't know what to do with creative thinkers,
and putting them into KM was, at least in hindsight, a perfect way to
'institutionalize' them, keep them visible as innovation role models but
marginalize them so they don't actually do anything, or spend much of the
company's money. They are the corporation's lip service to diversity and
creativity. The problem is, unless they want a life as starving artists or
starving writers, they really have no place to go. They're trapped in this
creative ghetto.