Real Case Stories

This HBR video speaks about a framework to lead a better and fulfilling life. It emphasizes that one should strive for excellence in all domains and not just in one. 1. Work 2. Home 3. Community 4. Self

Debbie Good, clinical assistant professor of business at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business, teaches time management to her MBA students. She has them account for every minute of two full days in 15-minute increments . Many are surprised at how long they really spend on certain tasks, she says. You might think you’re only checking social media for 15 minutes, but it may be four or five times that long. Write down to look at how long you’re spending on the things you do each day, she says. Once you have a good sense of how long various tasks take, you might even note those amounts on your list to help you track how much you’re trying to cram into your day, she says. Source - Fast Company

Ivy Lee was a PR consultant in the early part of the 20th century. In 1918, Charles Schwab, President of Bethlehem Steel invited Lee to help him increase productivity and efficiency in his organization. Lee reportedly told him that he needed 15 mins with each of his executives and if things work out after 3 months he could pay him whatever he felt it was worth. During his 15 mins with each executive, he outlined a simple method. 1. At the end of every day write down not more than 6 important things you need to do tomorrow. 2. Prioritize them in order of importance 3. Next morning focus only on the first task. Complete the first before moving to the next. 4. At EOD, move unfinished items to a new list of 6 tasks for the next day 5. Repeat daily After 3 months Schwab was so happy with the outcome that he sent him a cheque of $25,000. Source : Fast company

According to Drucker - The Idea of Short - Long range planning is very often misunderstood. They are not determined by any given Time span. A decision is not short range because it takes only a few months to implement or long range because it takes a year to do so. What matters is the time span over which it is Effective

Amazon's Jeff Bezos is of the view that too much Communication is really a bad thing.  This WSJ article quotes an Amazon executive who says that during an offsite when some employees suggested that there should be more communication in the organisation, Bezos declared that "No, Communication is terrible" Bezos preferred a decentralized company where independent thinking prevails over Grouthink. In order to achieve this, he implemented a company wide policy, the concept of the "2 Pizza team". Any team should be small enough that it could be fed with 2 pizzas. Small teams generally tend to function like families, fighting, bickering but eventually getting the work done. Larger teams tend to be more political. Source: Birth of a Salesman, WSJ article by Richard L. Brandt

Netflix's HR practice is so revolutionary that Sheryl Sandberg called it one of the most important documents ever to come out of Silicon Valley. The company is treated like a Pro Sports team which means Stars are hired in every position Key Highlights of the policy are Face to Face 360 degree feedback. People who are not good enough are given a very generous severance package Attendance is not measured. No 9am to 5pm policy No Clothing policy  The company's Expense policy is 5 words - "Act in Netflix's best interest"  eg: Travel as you would as if it were your own money. Employees booked their trips online on their own. Vacation Policy - No policy, take a vacation whenever you wish to. If you work in accounting or finance, you shouldn’t plan to be out during the beginning or the end of a quarter, because those are busy times. If you want 30 days off in a row, you need to meet with HR. Senior leaders are urged to take vacations and to let peop...

Kim Scott, ex Googler and now a coach speaks about Guidance and in her view it is the single most important part of managing people. "Apart from giving Guidance it's also important to receive it. Guidance which is basically Praise and Criticism is feedback. She speaks about a tool called Radical Candor. To explain Radical Candor she speaks about an incident in her career. During her early days at Google, she had to make a presentation to the founders and the CEO. The presentation went off very well and Eric Schmidt was ecstatic. After the meeting was over, her boss Sheryl Sandberg walked her back to her office. She spoke about 4 or 5 points about the presentation that she liked and while she was speaking Kim felt that there was something amiss and a criticism was around the corner. Finally Sandberg said "But, you said 'Um' a lot during your presentation". Kim was relieved and said "Ah! No big deal, I know I do that". Sandberg: "Was it ...

In this McKinsey article  the author tries to dispel the myth of Multitasking. She talks about how the brain is really not capable of doing multiple tasks but keeps switching between tasks. Too much of switching between email to reading to speaking on the phone results in stress and mistakes. In an example, a founder of a company implemented the concept of taking frequent breaks. Some of the techniques that he implemented were Schedule breaks between meetings The CEO would take 25-45 minutes break to go offline which would include being switched off from mail, messages, etc Go off for a walk cheering people who would leave office to go for a run.

The book "Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" talks about a peculiar case when economist Michael Housman was leading a project to study customer service agents' attrition behavior. With data from over 30,000 employees, he struggled to identify a pattern.  Hunting for other hints, he observed that employees' browser usage was also captured. On analysing further he came to the startling conclusion that Employees who used Firefox or Chrome (F&C) browser stayed in their jobs 15 percent longer than those who used Internet Explorer or Safari browser (IE&S).  Thinking it was a coincidence, he ran the same analysis for absenteeism. He was stunned; the same pattern emerged. F&C users were 19 percent less likely to miss work than IE&S users.  He then analysed performance. F&S users had higher sales and shorter call times. On further introspection, he came to the realization that 'How' users obtained their browsers was more importa...