Recently, I was invited to take a place on a Tech for Distribution Center (DC) panel during the annual Georgia Logistics Summit. We tackled some intriguing questions: During this time of technological change, what does the future work force look like? What is the most important quality to look for when hiring? Who will be best suited to carry the organization into the new smart machine age? The Center for Logistics Innovation, which is part of…

Managers matter. Management style matters. For many workers, autonomy means trust. When I look back on my career, my best managers avoided micromanaging their employees. However, I’ve also seen it work for some leaders. Early in my career, while I still lived in India, I remember one interview, for a job with a newly-minted public company, very clearly. It was a Sunday afternoon in Bangalore. I had been scheduled to meet with Raj, but a…

We live in a digital world…and it’s only going to get more digital. With that reality in mind, I’ve wanted to dig deeper into the topic, particularly as it relates to the high-tech industry. That’s why I was excited to see an invite from my alma mater, Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, to attend a Digital Disruption panel moderated by Maryam Alavi, dean of the school. The participants were: David Godsman, chief digital officer,…

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In fact, at least when it comes to figuring out strategy, one excellent way to find the path to success is to find someone who is doing what you would want to do and study that successful execution. You can create a successful model and understand market dynamics. You’ve seen it happen in business often before. For example, back in 1980’s, Motorola wanted to know whether cell phones…

If Anne Hathaway (or fill in the blank with your favorite star) were hosting a party, I can imagine that she’s want to create a magical evening for the guests, perhaps even sending them home with a special memento of the evening: something elegant, luxurious, personal, and lasting. This doesn’t sound like an unreasonable expectation from a VIP shopper’s perspective but are the retailers and the distributors fully equipped to handle such an order? You…

When we talk about leadership in the technology sector, it’s critical to start with a shared understanding of what leadership really is. There are plenty of misconceptions about what leadership is. Let’s start with looking at what leadership isn’t. True leaders are not: Dominating. Leaders don’t talk in loud voices with intent to suppress others. Controlling. Leaders don’t feel the need to control everything and influence others through that control. Colluding and manipulating. Leaders don’t…

It’s surprising but huge warehouses with several sophisticated systems are not immune from sending their warehouse operators home in the middle of the day due of lack of work. Planning is especially hard in peak holiday seasons. Often, it seems warehouse managers have no effective tools to accurately forecast labor demands based on outstanding orders waiting fulfillment. If you take a step back to see the historical evolution of the labor management systems, it all…

“Culture will eat strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, anytime.” This was the first sentence that the professor of marketing and strategy uttered during our first MBA class at Georgia Tech. He underlined his point with the story of how Kellogg’s tried to conquer the Indian market with its breakfast cereal. The company was trying to sell corn flakes with cold milk as breakfast in the Indian market, a culture that eats a warm breakfast finished…

Back in 1995, when I went to see a movie called Disclosure, the story line about sexual harassment in corporate America was OK, but what really fascinated us was this thing called virtual reality. In the movie, the virtual world was used to store confidential information in a system of files and folders within the computers. Who wouldn’t be riveted by a seemingly real virtual world created by computers. Today, the Oculus rift is creating a similar spark…