A must-read for Indian consultants and managers from the management expert Arun Maira!
In The Solutions Factory, Arun Maira digs deep into his experiences as a consultant and presents twenty human-led business stories that cover all kinds of problem-solving techniques told through carefully picked personal experiences and anecdotes. By distilling the essence of the work that consultants do, he offers a management handbook that is unique to Indian business practices. From cultural understanding to communication skills, this book illustrates the applicability of simple tips for a diverse range of business roles and levels.
Maira’s down-to-earth and insightful approach, keenly oriented towards respectful and ethical business practices, illustrates his signature mix of idealism and pragmatism-be it is about managing an unexpected crisis or about learning more about another company’s culture. In this age of financial uncertainty due to the pandemic, a book like this is as essential for small-business owners as it is for the heads of major corporations. Maira’s focus on excellence through ethics, success through learning, and valuation through value brings to the fore his people-centric and back-to-basics approach-an approach that every modern corporation will need in order to prepare for the future ahead of us.
Broke to Breakthrough is a business biography of India’s largest dairy products company – Hatsun Agro – and its founder R.G. Chandramogan.
Hailing from Virudhunagar district of Tamil Nadu, Chandramogan started this venture in 1970 as a twenty-one-year-old, making ice candies with three people in a 250 sq. ft. rented place and selling in pushcarts. By the mid-1980s, ‘Arun’ ice cream had become the market leader in the state. But Chandramogan didn’t stop at that – he branched into the dairy business by leveraging his brand-building experience with ‘Arun’ and forging connections with farmers.
Thus was born Hatsun Agro Product. It is today a Rs 5,500 crore-plus company that also has pioneered a unique model of directly procuring milk from over 4 lakh farmers (B2F) and selling only branded consumer-facing products (B2C).
What happens when businesses and their customers don’t share the same values? Or, for that matter, when employees of a company don’t share the same values as their executives? Welcome to the world of Brand Activism.
Companies no longer have a choice. Brand Activism consists of business efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, and/or environmental reform or stasis with the desire to promote or impede improvements in society. It is driven by a fundamental concern for the biggest and most urgent problems facing society.
Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action is about how progressive businesses are taking stands to create a better world.
“The wise man knows he doesn’t know. The fool doesn’t know he doesn’t know.” – Lao Tzu
What’s the most important step in fixing a puncture? It isn’t jacking up the car, or taking the wheel off, or finding the puncture.
There’s something more fundamental than any of those. Something without which you can’t even begin to fix a puncture.
The most important step is finding out you’ve got a puncture. Without that you can’t do anything. Instead of saying, “It’s just a bit bumpy, must be the road,” and carrying on, you must acknowledge that something has changed and you don’t know what that is.
If you don’t admit you don’t know what’s happening, you can never find out. If you don’t find out, you can never change it. The most important step, always, is admitting you don’t know. That’s the power of ignorance.
In this latest collection of real-life stories, Dave Trott provides lessons about problem solving and creative thinking that can be applied in advertising, business, and the wider world.
The world of investing normally sees experts telling us the “right” way to manage our money. But how often do these experts pull back the curtain and tell us how they invest their own money? Never. How I Invest My Money changes that.
In this unprecedented collection, 25 financial experts share how they navigate markets with their own capital. In this honest rendering of how they invest, save, spend, give, and borrow, this group of portfolio managers, financial advisors, venture capitalists and other experts detail the “how” and the “why” of their investments. They share stories about their childhood, their families, the struggles they face and the aspirations they hold. Sometimes raw, always revealing, these stories detail the indelible relationship between our money and our values.
Taken as a whole, these essays powerfully demonstrate that there is no single “right” way to save, spend, and invest. We see a kaleidoscope of perspectives on stocks, bonds, real assets, funds, charity, and other means of achieving the life one desires. With engaging illustrations throughout by Carl Richards, How I Invest My Money inspires readers to think creatively about their financial decisions and how money figures in the broader quest for a contented life.
Stephen Clapham is a retired hedge fund partner who now trains stock analysts at some of the world’s largest and most successful institutional investors. In The Smart Money Method he reveals the time-tested techniques he uses to research and pick stocks. Read this book to discover:
– The step-by-step research process used by trading experts to pick stocks and test their market-beating potential.
– Tools and techniques that will help you research new stock ideas, as well as maintain and eventually sell an investment.
– Learn how to test your theories, make sound investment decisions, and manage your portfolio.
– The best opportunities to buy and sell stocks, and invest with confidence.
– Assess the quality of any business, judge the management’s ability, Identify shady accounting, and avoid dying companies.
– How to value any business to find bargain shares.
– Navigate the post Covid market scenario and make profitable investments.
The author offers real-life investing examples and war stories from a 25-year career in stock markets. The message is clear – you can beat the market. Simply learn and apply the insider secrets contained within this book.
The Market Wizards are back! Unknown Market Wizards continues in the three-decade tradition of the hugely popular Market Wizards series, interviewing exceptionally successful traders to learn how they achieved their extraordinary performance results. The twist in Unknown Market Wizards is that the featured traders are individuals trading their own accounts. They are unknown to the investment world.
Despite their anonymity, these traders have achieved performance records that rival, if not surpass, the best professional managers. Some of the stories include:
– A trader who turned an initial account of $2,500 into $50 million.
– A trader who achieved an average annual return of 337% over a 13-year period.
– A trader who made tens of millions using a unique approach that employed neither fundamental nor technical analysis.
– A former advertising executive who used classical chart analysis to achieve a 58% average annual return over a 27-year trading span.
– A promising junior tennis player in the UK who abandoned his quest for a professional sporting career for trading and generated a nine-year track record with an average annual return just under 300%.
World-renowned author and trading expert Jack D. Schwager is our guide. His trademark knowledgeable and sensitive interview style encourages the Wizards to reveal the fascinating details of their training, experience, tactics, strategies, and their best and worst trades. There are dashes of humour and revelations about the human side of trading throughout. The result is a engrossing new collection of trading wisdom, brimming with insights that can help all traders improve their outcomes.
Command attention, charm your superiors, and win people over wherever you go. How to Win Friends and Influence People has helped thousands of readers gain self-confidence and unlock life-changing opportunities-and now, it’s your turn.
Master the fine art of communication, express your most important ideas, and create genuine impact with the help of international bestselling author Dale Carnegie. Written in his trademark conversational style, this book illustrates time-tested techniques through engaging anecdotes and events from the lives of legendary orators, historical figures, and successful leaders.
This book will help you:
– Become a great conversationalist, leaving a good impression wherever you go.
– Persuade people to do what you want, unlocking numerous life-changing opportunities as a result.
– Become a true leader, mastering the fine art of people management.
– Create incredible and long-lasting connections that offer you genuine value and growth opportunities
Full of timeless wisdom and sage advice, this practical handbook on human relations will equip you to navigate the treacherous waters of interpersonal relationships in both business and social settings. Now you too can unearth your true potential, forge long-lasting relationships, and discover How to Win Friends and Influence People in every walk of life!
Right Between the Ears reveals the secrets that allow brands to open up hidden domains in our minds through powerful psychological triggers. The power of cognitive brands is not accidental; it is architected by applying recent scientific advances in fields as disparate as psychology, behavioural economics, social anthropology and cognitive neuroscience. These consilient techniques now allow us to peer into the soul of a brand as never before.
Marketers have created truly phenomenal brands in the past. However, until now, our understanding of brain science was not quite enough to explain why some brand campaigns become so iconic while others fizzle. This book provides a new lens with which we can deconstruct those successes and failures. It takes the reader on a rollicking ride through examples and stories of brands as timeless as De Beers, Mastercard, Allstate and Guinness, as well as modern-day wonders like Madison Reed, Allbirds and Warby Parker.
The book is called Right between the Ears because that is where the brain is. Psychologists sometimes say that everything about sex happens not where you think but right between your ears. Everything about brands, too, happens there. This book reveals all you need to know to build your own epic brands.
The Tatas have a legacy of nation-building over 150 years. Dancing across this long arc of time are thousands of beautiful, astonishing stories, many of which can inspire and provoke us, even move us to meaningful action in our own lives.
A diamond twice as large as the famous Kohinoor pledged to survive a financial crisis; a meeting with a ‘relatively unknown young monk’ who later went on to be known as Swami Vivekananda; the fascinating story of the first-ever Indian team at the Olympics; the making of India’s first commercial airline and first indigenous car; how ‘OK TATA’ made its way to the backs of millions of trucks on Indian highways; a famous race that was both lost and won; and
many more.
#TataStories is a collection of littleknown tales of individuals, events and places from the Tata Group that have shaped the India we live in today.
