A good compendium of articles written by leading Management thinkers and practitioners who have drawn from their rich experience in penning these articles. Its easy readability and simplistic presentation make this book even more acceptable for practicing managers. The book gives an insight in to the multi faceted dimensions of Leadership, which is so essential in managing a business organization in an increasingly competitive world. More so, the arrival of this book seems timely when the business sentiment globally is at its lowest ebb. The articles written on various management subjects has been sequentially organized in to five parts. Part I titled The Quest for Knowledge makes a compulsive reading, It awakens one to the mind boggling potential each one is endowed with, a pointer to the intellectual explosion possible by combining the logical processes of the left brain with the creative side of the right brain. Schoemaker?s article on Overcoming the Mental Blind Spots speaks of the common urge in many of us to accept the Status quo ignoring entrepreneurial approach to decision making. Amarjit Chopra outlines the three strategies generally adopted in selling ideas illustrated with a typical case study.
Part II, addresses the Leader?s role in facilitating change Albert Vicere identifies the four key roles of being a Boundary-less thinker, Networker, a Diplomat and an Interpreter for effective leadership. There are several other articles which give new insights to become an effective leader.
Part III dwells on New leadership skills and Kaye?s article gives several practical tips.Part IV sums up the strategies to be put in place for driving the cutting edge to be successful and Part V describes the attributes of the New Millenium. The CISCO case study featuring the two important components of the innovation machine namely the Process design and the Organisational Design and the generic processes associated with it, is an eye opener to the CEOs in leveraging Internet working technologies to revolutionizing core business processes. The CISCO case study is a fine illustration of innovative thinking processes that can make an organization vibrant. The author Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Timble, do sound a note of caution, that innovation is not so simplistic to imitate and that each organisation has to make a self assessment and be clear about the end results, if it has to succeed in this direction.
For the budding Managers of the new era, the articles seek to ignite the urge for learning and open new vistas in quality of thinking which is so essential in developing a cutting edge and rejuvenate the Corporation in the Global market place.
As a Chief Executive Officer of a Multinational Engineering Corporation, reading this book has given me different perspectives and an urge to usher in innovative approaches and practices. I would like to review the book with my functional team members and urge them to give a reading. To say that the assimilation of the book would achieve the objective of setting in motion a qualitative thinking process will be an under statement. There is much more to each one of us as we put them in to practice.
DR.V.R.RAJAN
CEO
KIRBY BUILDING SYSTEMS
HYDERABAD-INDIA
