You don’t need an MBA or a job with a top company to be a good manager. Amit Chatterjee, in his provocative and contemplative book, explains how managers can excel beyond expectations. He urges managers to act of their own volition and shows how to transcend from being managers to leaders. Through illustrations and useful graphs, the author offers purposeful practices for leadership. Ascent provides a growth mantra for managers and how they can emerge as leader-managers through investment in complexity and volition. It is a must-read for all managers who want to grow and become effective leaders.
Catagory: Business & Economics
Working Out of the Box
Do you know which business leader plays a game of sudoku every night before going to bed? Never uses a computer to write down important thoughts? Likes to stand and work?
In Working Out of the Box, Aparna Piramal Raje gives us an intimate peek into the lives of forty progressive leaders by exploring the connections between their workspaces and working styles. Capturing quirks, individual styles of working, motivations and leadership traits, and tracing the patterns exhibited by these leaders, she unravels their defining qualities and explains how they reflect in their workspaces. Divided into four sections, personal energy, organizational capital, brand values, environment and sustainability, the book provides insight into what makes these CEOs tick and how they manage their most valuable assets.
Effective People
Is Shah Rukh Khan an effective actor? Is Naresh Trehan an effective doctor? Was A.P.J. Abdul Kalam an effective nation builder?
Are you an effective person?
In this book, bestselling author T.V. Rao studies and analyses effective doctors, actors, civil servants, social workers, educationists, nation builders and entrepreneurs. Some of them seem to go beyond the tenets of effectiveness and shine out as what the author calls Very Effective People and Super Effective People.
His diverse examples and cases range from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Devi Shetty, Anil Gupta to Kangana Ranaut, Sachin Tendulkar, Anupam Kher to ordinary people whose lives are no less effective.
Hugely readable, with self-assessment tools at the end of each chapter, Effective People will propel you to leap forward and discover the best in you.
The Executors
‘If you produce what you have promised to, no one would want to come in your way’ S. Ramadorai, former vice chairman, Tata Consultancy Services
‘Relying on conventional wisdom is never a smart idea in an emerging business’ Akhil Gupta, vice chairman, Bharti Enterprises
‘Do your duty to the best of your ability, without attachment to the results, and remain calm in both success and failure’ Venkatesh Kini, president, Coca-Cola India and south-west Asia
‘Planning is academic. Action decides the winner’ Rahul Bhasin, managing partner, Baring Private Equity Partners
These are some of the life lessons that 30 of India’s most celebrated managers share in The Executors, a personal account of how they came to run influential companies such as Bharti, Bennett Coleman, Tech Mahindra, Apollo Munich, Convergys, Yum! Brands and Max Life Insurance, among others. Packed with inspiring stories of struggle, this book culls out the wisdom that these leaders have imbibed over the years and are keen to impart to others. Ashutosh Sinha insightfully explores their management style, philosophy and how they lead from the front.
Grassroots Innovation
A moral dilemma gripped Anil K. Gupta when he was invited by the Bangladeshi government to help restructure their agricultural on-farm research sector in 1985. He noticed how the marginalized farmers were being paid poorly for their otherwise unmatched knowledge. The gross injustice of this constant imbalance led Gupta to found what would turn into a resounding social and ethical movement-the Honey Bee Network-bringing together and elevating thousands of grassroots innovators.
For over two decades, Gupta has travelled through rural lands, along with hundreds of volunteers of the Network, unearthing innovations by the ranks-from the famed Mitti Cool refrigerator to the root bridge of Meghalaya. He insists that to fight the largest and most persistent problems of the world, we must not rely only on expensive research labs but also look towards ordinary folk, and eventually build bridges between the formal and informal sectors. Innovation-that oft-flung-around word-is stripped to its core in this book.
Poignant and personal, Grassroots Innovation is an important treatise from a social crusader of our time.
Leadership Secrets From The Mahabharata
Management insights culled from the Mahabharata, one of the greatest books of all time, is not simply the story of a fratricidal war or a fount of wisdom for philosophers; it is also a comprehensive manual on strategy. From this storehouse of knowledge, Meera Uberoi selects the most pertinent shlokas to reveal the secrets of leadership and the path to success. She shows that the Mahabharata is equal, if not superior, to other management bibles such as The Art of War, The Prince and Go Rin No Sho, The Book of Five Rings. The aphorisms in Leadership Secrets from the Mahabharata have been selected from the Santi Parva, the Bhagvad Gita Parva and the Adi Parva.
As Bhishma lies dying on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Krishna realizes that with Bhishma’s death, the world will lose ‘all knowledge’. To prevent this, Krishna asks him to impart to Yudhisthira all he knows. These teachings, coming as they do from Bhishma, the wisest of them all, contained in the Santi Parva, form the core of Uberoi’s book. Apart from detailing how to apply the craft of kingship to modern business practices, the book also explores the analogy between kingship and leadership. Pithy and insightful, Meera Uberoi’s selection is a practical guide to leadership in any field of life. The aphorisms, grouped under heads like Duty, War, Espionage and Conduct, deal with eternal values and truths that are as relevant today as they were 3000 years ago.
Extraordinary
Extraordinary: 5 Steps to Achieve Success will help you realize your dream and be extraordinary! Are you leading an ordinary life? Many people go through life struggling with daily frustrations, making compromises all the time and feeling sorry for themselves. They never get to do what they really want. Soon, they begin to see themselves as failures. Is success just a matter of luck? Is the path of achievement open only to a few? Are most of us doomed to lead unfulfilled lives, without ever realizing our true potential? Certainly not, says Atul Magoon. Through inspiring real-life stories, this book shows you how success is simply a matter of putting in hard work, overcoming your fears and making full use of the opportunities before you.
The Game Changers
Entrepreneurship is not about breaking free from the 9 to 5 humdrum, not about being your own boss, and definitely not glorious. The entrepreneur shuns the comfort of a cushy corporate job and six-figure salaries to set sail on uncharted waters with a single-minded zeal and only an idea as an anchor. But it is this idea and passion that makes all the difference and catapults them into a world of infinite possibilities. The Game Changers brings to you 20 success stories of IITians who went on to live the big dream. These include: Suhas Patil, Vijay Kumar, Vinod Gupta, Sam Dalal, Sridhar Mitta, Arjun Malhotra, Kiran Seth, Prabhakant Sinha, Ranbir Singh Gupta, Bikram Dasgupta founder of Globsyn, Praful Kulkarni, Sunil Gaitonde, Anand Deshpande, Arvind Kejriwal, Harish Hande, Anuradha Acharya, Venkata Subramanian, Bikash Barai, Vikram Kumar, and Krishna Mehra.
With a foreword by Dr Duvvuri Subbarao, governor, Reserve Bank of India, and introduction by Damodar Acharya, director, IIT Karagpur, this book marks 60 golden years of India’s finest institute. Come, be a part of their journey, get inspired to dream and make your own story.
The Mouse Charmers
The advent of the Internet has been a significant game changer. The Mouse Charmers are a new breed of entrepreneurs in emerging India powered by the Internet and the opportunities that it offers to create new markets and to cater to old markets in new ways. Some of them have already achieved success where they can be called iconic and inspiring while others have powerful ideas that put them on the same path.
Anuradha Goyal tells the stories of digital entrepreneurs like Flipkart, Zomato, ImagesBazaar and IndiBlogger; how they started out, the innovations and technologies involved, their business models, and unique marketing strategies. Inspiring and useful, The Mouse Charmers is an essential guide for aspiring entrepreneurs.
IIMA Strategies for the Future
Have you wondered why international business seems magically simple in text books but inescapably complex in reality? With international business pushing horizons, cross-border activity is rampant and national boundaries are getting blurred. Economies have opened their doors and globalization is the watchword of the hour. Strategies for the Future explores the opportunities of a mingling world with remarkably discerning anecdotes and hands you the tools to master international trade. Professor Ajeet N. Mathur helps you formulate assumptions and make decisions under uncertainty in response to differences in business environments, national competitiveness, and regional and global strategies of other business players. As part of a competitive global village, this book is indispensable for any manager or entrepreneur bounding forward in the promising world of international business.