Life of a Business Principal in Consulting

One of my first projects as a scrum master was to develop a product that would be used by teenage girls and mothers who are afraid of an unexpected pregnancy. I had to work with my clients on this project that was sensitive in nature on multiple grounds. Sensitivity #1: I was working with women on a topic related to measuring menstrual cycles and ovulation periods. It is not easy for people in India to hear a guy talk about menstrual cycles so openly. I had to balance between being sensible on how do we treat the entire topic as an objective discussion to shape the product while at the same time not seem like turning women into objects. It was a tight rope but we did it. Sensitivity #2: This was a realm that fell between medical and religious. The stand that the product took was not overtly endorsed by the medical fraternity in India. It was a new methodology that had data that was not collected by medical fraternity and hence concerns were there. This was a blessing ...

Tesco's missteps with its foray into United states of America and its accounting misadventures are unfortunate. Equally unofrtunate is the fact that the new CEO seems to focus on these negaitive events and fails to provide inspiration to the employees on the ground. Any large multi national corporattion would have to go through these challenges. However, it must be prepared to meet these challenges. It is very important for the leadership to handle this crisis without any impact to the operations of the organization. Employees need focus at a time of crisis so that they can keep the engine running. They do not need to know what went wrong in a part of the organization that they were not involved with. The leadership needs to provide the confidence that they can go past the crisis. The leadership also needs to bring the focus to the opportunities that lie ahead and abstract all the negativity around the crisis. In all this crisis, one interesting question that comes out is ...