Wednesday, August 20, 2008

ARTICLES FROM REDIFF

9 Great Management Lessons from Dhirubhai Ambani

Today morning when I was browsing through rediff I got this article by A G Krishnamurthy. So I thought of sharing with you guys this article’s main points. Here we go……

Dhirubhaism No 1: Roll up your sleeves and help

Dhirubhaism No 2: Be a safety net for your team

Dhirubhaism No 3: The silent benefactor.

Dhirubhaism No 4: Dream big, but dream with your eyes open.

Dhirubhaism No 5: Leave the professional alone!

Dhirubhaism No 6: Change your orbit, constantly!

Dhirubhaism No 7: The arm-around-the-shoulder leader

Dhirubhaism No 8: The Dhirubhai theory of Supply creating Demand

Dhirubhaism No 9: Money is not a product by itself, it is a by-product, so don't chase it

World's 10 top management gurus

Few days back I got this in rediff…

1. C K PRAHALAD

Prahalad is the world's topmost management guru and the first Indian-born thinker to claim the title.

He studied physics at the University of Madras (now Chennai); worked as a manager in a branch of the Union Carbide battery company, then went to the Harvard University and earned a PhD.

Prahalad, is now the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, specializes in corporate strategy.

2. BILL GATES

Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13.

In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer - the MITS Altair.

In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen.

3. ALAN GREENSPAN

Alan Greenspan was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States -- the US Fed -- from 1987 to 2006. It was said that when he sneezed, the world caught a cold.

He currently works as a private advisor, making speeches and providing consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC.

Greenspan was lauded for his handling of the Black Monday stock market crash that occurred very shortly after he first became chairman, as well as for his stewardship of the Internet-driven, 'dot-com' economic boom of the 1990s.

4. MICHAEL E PORTER

Michael E Porter is the Bishop William Laurence University Professor at the Harvard Business School.

He studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and then switched to business, earning an MBA and a PhD in economics from Harvard. He later joined the faculty there.

It is said that Porter has always been obsessed by competition. Unfortunately, he slipped from the number one position he held in the 2005 list to the fourth position in the 2007 list.

5. GARY HAMEL

The Wall Street Journal has ranked Gary Hamel as the world's most influential business thinker, and Fortune magazine has called him the world's leading expert on business strategy. For the last three years, Hamel has also topped Executive Excellence magazine's annual ranking of the most sought after management speakers.

6. W CHAN KIM & RENEE MAUBORGNE

W Chan Kim is co-founder and co-director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute and The Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD, France.

Renee Mauborgne is the INSEAD distinguished fellow and a professor of strategy at INSEAD.

7. THOMAS J PETERS

He went to Severn School for high school and attended Cornell University, receiving a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1965, and a master's degree in 1966.

He then studied business at Stanford Business School, receiving an MBA and PhD. In 2004, he also received an honorary doctorate from the State University of Management in Moscow.

According to Peters, excellence in business depends on eight ingredients.

Activism, with people who 'do it, fix it (and) try it'

Excellent companies 'learn from the people they serve'.

They promote entrepreneurship and autonomy

Management learns from a 'hands-on' approach

Workers are valued as the key to achieve productivity

Excellent companies stick to their knitting, exploiting their core competencies and not pursuing wild goose chases

They keep their form simple and their staff lean;

They know how to be simultaneously tight-fitting and expansive.

8. JACK WELCH

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of a rail road conductor, he studied chemical engineering at the university of Massachusetts, gaining a PhD in the same subject from the university of Illinois.

He joined General Electric's plastics division in 1960. At age 33 he became one of the company's youngest general managers and in December 1980, after a little over twenty years in the company, he was named GE's eighth CEO, the youngest in the company's history.

GE's financial success came at the expense of extensive layoffs. During the process of streamlining the company, over 100,000 workers lost their job. His perceived ruthlessness earned him the moniker 'Neutron Jack'.

9. RICHARD BRANSON

Richard Branson was born in 1950 and educated at Stowe School. It was here that he began to set up Student Magazine when he was just 16. By 17 he'd also set up Student Advisory Centre, which was a charity to help young people.

In 1970, he founded Virgin as a mail order record retailer, and not long after he opened a record shop in Oxford Street, London. In 1972, a recording studio was built in Oxfordshire, and the first Virgin artist, Mike Oldfield, recorded 'Tubular Bells' which was released in 1973. This album went on to sell over 5 million copies!

Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s - as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label.

Richard Branson is the 236th richest person according to Forbes' 2008 list of billionaires with an estimated net worth of $7.9 billion.

Branson has has dyslexia and thus fared poorly in his studies.

10. JAMES C COLLINS III

He studied business at Stanford.

He began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992.

In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts research and teaches executives from the corporate and social sectors.

Jim has served as a teacher to senior executives and CEOs at over a hundred corporations.

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