Book Review: Havard Business Review on Knowledge Management

Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management is a collection of 8 different articles on the way companies approach or should approach to knowledge management. 

The first article by Peter Drucker emphasizes the need of knowledge management in  information based organizations and suggest developing clear simple objectives and a structure for sharing information. Drucker sees motivating and rewarding specialists as one of the challenges for the information based organizations. 

The article on 'Knowledge Creating Company',  Ikujiro Nonaka the focuses on tacit knowledge and calls it as 'soft' aspect. The article carries illustrative examples of of Japanese companies such as Honda, Canon, Matsushita and Sharp. The articles supports a fresh approach towards managerial roles and responsibilities, organizational design, and business practices in the knowledge creating company. 

Davidn Garvin in the article "Building a Learning Organization" raises three critical dimensions of building a learning organization: 

1. an easy to apply definition of learning organization

2. unambiguous operational guidelines

3. tools for measuring organizational learning

Garvin considers five activities essential for learning: systematic problem solving, experimentation for new approaches, learning from past experience, learning from best practices and transferring of knowledge. 

In 'Teaching Smart People How to Learn' Chris Argylis highlights the human behavior related issues that act as hindering blocks for learning. He substantiate his points with the example of a US based consulting firm and explains why well educated professionals block learning process and suggests ways companies could improve the ability of their managers and professional to learn. 

'Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work' by Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Stratus focuses on how managers must understand that their is no single approach to learning and people with diverse back ground, different approach towards problems solving should understand one another and contribute to the organizational processes. The authors explain this with their experience with organizations. 

Art Kleiner and George Roth in 'How to Make Experience Your Company's Best Teacher' elaborate on a tool called the learning history developed by a group of scientists, business managers and journalists of MIT. The authors believe that the tool is useful for knowledge management process of organization. 

'Research That Reinvent the Corporation' by John Seely Brown discusses the need of designing of new technological and organizational architectures that make a continuously innovating company a reality. 

In 'Managing Professional Intellect' James Brian Quinn, Phillip Anderson and Sydney Finkelstein offer best practices for creating professional intellect. The authors also discuss the four levels of operation of professional intellect: cognitive knowledge, advanced skills, systems understanding and self-motivated creativity. 

   

Book Review: Patriots & Partisans

The book Patriots & Partisans by eminent historian Ramachandra Guha is a great combination of various essays on democracy, politics, people and sociology. The essays are divided into two parts: Part I named Debating Democracy comprises of 9 essays covering a wide range of topics related to politics and democracy; Part II names The World and The World has 6 essays that highlight personalities and people who have contributed to enriching intellectualism in India. 

Guha starts his preface with the interesting line : "I am a person of moderate views, these sometimes expressed in extreme fashion" probably because he has always felt that the moderate intellectuals in India need to be more strong and effective in putting forward their views. The author feels there are three prominent ideological enemies of the idea of India: the demand of a Hindu fundamentalism, communist dictatorship and ethnic separatism. The idea of India has always been plural and inclusive, fundamentalism, separatism and dictatorship lack the power to engulf the diversity and difference that the country stands for. Guha also believes three more mundane challenges have been added to this list recently- inequality, corruption and environmental degradation. 

In the first part on the book, the essays on Congress Chamchagiri, Hindutva Hate Mail and An Asian Clash of Civilizations deserves special mention. The essay on Congress Chamchagiri highlights how loyalty is given priority over calibre and qualification in  the party. Moreover, with examples, Guha had opined that this culture has engulfed many other regional parties across India. The essay on Hindutva Hate Mail has interesting reproduction of mails received by Guha by fundamentalists. Some of the mail reflect how hounding are some fundamentalists, some elements of them are associated with some Hindu organizations. The essay An Asian Clash of Civilizations revisits India China war, its causes and consequence. In the last chapter of part I, the beauty of compromise, Guha has expressed his views on possible solutions of Kashmir and Nagaland issues. He believes that both central government and rebellious groups in these states must be flexible and flexible enough to arrive a win-win situation rather than resorting to a rigid and strong stand which may come in between the way of negotiations. 

Out of the essays in part II of the book, The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual and Pluralism in Indian University focus on two interesting dimensions of Indian society. There was a time when many intellectuals used to learn multiple languages with reasonable fluency and their ability to translate the best of literary creations to other languages helped in percolating ideas from one set of people to others. Guha points out that the number of such intellects are going down with time as the new age writers stick to only language. The essay on Pluralism in Indian University highlights ways and methods to encourage diversity in age, social class, nationality etc. in Indian university. 

This book definitely helps you to decode some of the complexities associated with the idea of India. Guha's lucid writing style makes it an easy and smooth read. 

Book Review: The McKinsey Mind

The book The McKinsey Mind by Ethan and Paul is a master-piece for professionals seeking structured approach to problem solving. The book could broadly be divided into three sections- Analyzing, Presenting and Managing. The authors have further divided this book into several chapters for each of these sections.

In the section Analyzing, the book covers the ways a problem statement could be formed through appropriate hypothesis formulation, designing of project delivery including staffing, resource allocation etc., gathering information through formal and informal sources and interpreting the information gathered to test the hypothesis. The book also suggest several ways to collect data, conduct interviews, tweaking hypothesis if founded untrue. 

In the next section on presenting, in addition to the methods of presenting a structured and easy-to-understand method of presentation; the book discusses how to buy the confidence of various stakeholders. The chapter on "buy-in" is crucial to understand and penetrate into the organizational politics of the client. 

The third section on managing has three chapters: team, client and self. In these chapters the authors go beyond the dos and don'ts of project delivery to discuss the nuances of managing team, client and one-self. 

This book is a must read for students aspiring a career in management consulting and for professionals who seek logical and structured way of problem-solving. 

Book Review: History of the World

The History of the World From the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century authored by Arjun Dev and Indira Arjun Dev is a wonderful read of the world history- concise and easy to comprehend. The authors have lucidly explained all the major incidents of the period using World War I, World War II and Cold War as the principal focal points.

The book is divided into five broad chapters: world before World War I, World War I, World between the two World Wars, World War II, and Post World War II. Each of the chapters covers all major and important incidents of the time that have a bearing on the way world politics is being shaped. The book also provides a bird's eye view on the major incidents that took place in the recent times be it US's war on Iraq, Afghanistan etc.

This book is extremely informative and is highly recommended if world history of the recent times interests you. The lucid descriptions, illustrative maps, interconnected themes makes it a easy read.

Book Review: IT"S NOT LUCK

Eliyahu M Holdratt comes up with innovative business strategies through his book "It's not luck". UniCo goes for a shift in its policy and decides to sell the non-core businesses. Unfortunately, Alex Rogo's companies dealing with printer, cosmetics and pressure pump industries have to be sold. Rogo has to ensure a good deal for all these companies and being an empathetic superior Rogo also wants to ensure that the jobs of the employees remain intact.

All the three businesses have their own set of challenges and Rogo  has limited time and no investment to turn the loss making units to a gold mine. Here comes his skill to identify the UDEs (UnDesirable Effects), formulate Current and Future Reality Tree. Many times constructing these diagrams helps Rogo to visual a clearer and sharper image of the issues faced by the business and ways to challenge and change the business offering without any substantial investment.

Well, the last two chapter of the book moves into a newer issue- what is the right kind of business expansion strategy? Here also Rogo manages to convince his bosses that business has three prime objectives to fulfill:
1. To make money now and in future
2. To provide a secure and satisfying environment to employees now and in the future
3. To provide satisfaction to the market now and in the future
Rogo goes ahead to explain the merits of running business with these three fundamental goals and then comes up with a business expansion strategy that he feels appropriate.

Like Goal, It's Not Luck (Goal 2 in India) is a smooth and engaging read. You read a novel that sharpen your understanding of business- marketing, operations, people management and business strategy. A must read for managers and corporate leaders.

The Negative Side of Too Much of Information

The global economy continues to become more and more information and knowledge based economy. Availability of the Internet and the ever increasing digital penetration has impacted the way the educated minds think, act and articulate. On one hand, easy availability of data has made life simple. Unlike the hardcopies, softcopies and internet provide us the luxury to use keywords to search relevant information in shorter time with higher efficiency. Some of the Internet sites provide the additional luxury to search as per relevancy or as per chronology. However, all these advantages have also brought some issues of concern for the intellectual world.

The ability to think, imagine and conceptualize has been one of the biggest victims of the abundance of information at a very low price. Gone those days when students use to think, discuss, analyse concepts in order to achieve deeper insight into any issue. Googling out has become the norm of the day. Let it be a subjective issue that requires some angle of thinking, brainstorming, deliberation etc., many young minds to prefer googling it in the Internet and form their opinion on the basis of 2-3 initial search results thrown out by the search engine. Unfortunately, most of the initial results of any Internet based search engine are usually paid websites.

Many intellectuals and academicians have started venting out their concern on the issue. Some academicians are of the opinion that the Internet has increased the volume of the content they used to receive per assignment they ask to students, but the quality has dipped substantially. Similarly, many industry professionals also complain about the lack of conceptual understanding of the students they interview for jobs. Usually, the first answer to any case situation based question involving critical thinking is “Am I allowed to use Google” or “I will check this in Google”.

No doubt there is nothing wrong in googling out for information. The problem lies in not utilizing the power of human brain. Consequently, the outcome of any thought process based on borrowed outcome already available in the Internet prevents out-of-the-box thinking. And too much of in-box thinking not only hampers mental development of human beings, but also prevents society to draw benefits from more innovations in both quantity and quality terms. 

Capital Punishment: Is It the Real Solution of Social Problems of India

India in recent times has noticed a strong protest against social crimes, especially for crimes against women. Many stakeholders, intellectuals and political leaders have recommended that a stricter law with capital punishment will be the solution to the problem; they believe that this would act as a deterrent.

However, a closer analysis reveals that such a proposition lacks deeper understanding of the social issues that the country faces. Before suggesting capital punishment should not we review whether we have managed to implement the existing rules? Should not we dive deeper into the reasons underlying the increasing incidents of such unacceptable behaviour of youths? If capital punishment has failed to stop murders in the country, how will it stop rapes and assaults?

Let us look at some of the issues that play a vital role in making the mentality of youth sick and biased.

Equal status to women

Unfortunately we have not managed to provide equal status to women in our society. Preference for male child is common even among the educated elites of the society. The biased sex ratio of the country is a huge indication of the accelerating social mayhem that the country is leading to. Sex ratio is going down with time and people cutting across income level and social class are overt about their liking for males. It is mere optimistic to expect that the capital punishment will solve the problem when we as a society lack behind in providing equal status to women.

Police Service

Our police service is closer to politicians and rich individuals than to the Indian mass. Rules and regulations are implemented depending on the economic income level and social image. A poor man getting tortured by police while filing an FIR is not uncommon in India. Then on what basis it is being expected that capital punishment will solve the basic roots of the issues. When it is difficult to lodge an FIR, no investigation is carried even one manages to lodge an FIR; how can the provision of capital punishment stop crimes.

Judicial System

If you are not a businessman or a politician, chances are high that you will get dates after dates before you actually know the judgement. Though higher courts like High Courts and Supreme Court have proved their commitment to the rule of land, lower courts are still notorious. When the judicial system is not robust, will capital punishment be awarded to the culprits who have man and muscle power?

The solution of the issues faced by the nations requires long term strategic investment in nation building activities including:

·         Providing better education access to all sections of the society

·         Building an atmosphere of gender equality and mutual respect

·         Ensuring speed and empathy in judicial system for timely implementation of existing rules

·         Investing in women and female children so that the sex ratio start improving

All these facets of eradicating crimes require time and effort. However any quick-fix solution will make the system even worse creating a feeling of distrust among masses and will take people farther away from the political and administrative process.