Recent Blog post

‘Driven – Inside BMW, the most admired car company in the world’ by David Kiley

By Deepa

I have just started reading ?Driven ? Inside BMW, the most admired car company in the world? by David Kiley It promises to be interesting and I hope to be writing more about it. I asked Panke, (BMW?s chairman Dr. Hemut Panke) who was a consultant at Mckinsey and Co. before joining BMW in 1982, […]

Read more

Who are likely to be more successful: Those who focus on their work or those who focus equally on work / home/hobby?

By Deepa

An interesting study by Ellen Galinsky of Families and Work Institute called ?Leaders in a Global Economy? on how men and women in 10 multinationals have dealt with primarily the following two questions: ?In the past year, how often have you put your job before your personal or family life?? ?In the past year, how […]

Read more

Is it going to be the age of “contract” or “portfolio” careers?

By Deepa

Consider these findings from a survey conducted by Top Consultants. Contract Consulting is now a lifestyle and career option being pursued increasingly by a younger generation of consultants. About 30% of contractors have less than 5 years of consulting experience and 65% have less than 10 years consulting experience. A staggering 42.8% of contract consultants […]

Read more

The top six challenges dominating the “world of work” in the year 2005 and beyond: Part I

By Deepa

Here is what I think would be the top six dominating challenges for organizations in the year 2005 and beyond: Innovation Ethics and Integrity Outsourcing Multi-cultural and Multi-location groups Work-place demographics and lifestyle expectations: free agents, tech generation, baby boomers Networking tools: Impact on learning and collaboration To read more about the top three issues, […]

Read more

Warm Wishes for a peaceful and disaster free 2005!

By Deepa

2004 ended on a solemn note with the Tsunami taking a heavy toll in this part of the world. While Singapore, the country where I reside has been spared, Tamil Nadu my home state in India has been ravaged. This blog was the best thing that happened last year and with it I had the […]

Read more

More on Innovation

By Deepa

The recent Boston Consulting Group?s 2004-2005 Senior Executive Survey on Innovation shared the following preliminary findings from the study: 73 percent of participants worldwide said their companies will increase spending on innovation in 2005, up from 64 percent in 2004. On average, participants said their companies plan to boost spending on innovation by 15 percent. […]

Read more

Innovation is the name of the game!

By Deepa

The November issue of HR magazine had the cover story titled ?Cooking up Innovation?. In that article, Gary Hamel talks about ?The Future of Innovation? ?The biggest Innovation of all? Hamel says ?is Management Innovation and the challenge to HR is to help bring the same kind of management processes to innovation that other departments […]

Read more

Two Powerful Techniques in Facilitation

By Deepa

In this month?s newsletter, I’ve written about two powerful techniques that can be used in group facilitation. Left Hand Column Exercise: This technique was used originally by Chris Argyris and made popular by Peter Senge through his book, The Fifth Discipline to understand the underlying causes while interacting with one another. Confrontation Meeting: This technique […]

Read more

Employee Learning Day

By Deepa

Today, December 01 has been declared as Employee Learning Day by ASTD These are some of the suggestions listed on their site to promote learning: Set up an on-site learning centre with information about learning opportunities within the organization and throughout the community Encourage membership and involvement in a professional association Inform employees about business-critical […]

Read more

A valuable lesson

By Deepa

I just finished reading ?Agent of Change: My Life, My Practice?, Richard Beckhard, one of the founding practitioners of Organizational Development. My most valuable takeaway from the book was the following insight: ?From earlier work, I had learned about the hourglass theory of energy: under stress, individuals or organization systems experience high negative energy. Because […]

Read more