The cover theme of the Mar-Apr issue is ‘Bias’. Experts—Marilyn O’Hearne, author, Breaking Free from Bias; Amy C Waninger, Lead at Any Level LLC; Muniinder Anand, Center for Creative Leadership; Howard J Ross, Cook Ross Inc—share their views on various aspects of this subject. Will Kintish, authority on effective and confident networking, shares suggestions on what effective networkers can do to build a stronger network. Vasuta Agarwal, InMobi, shares the growing trends in the mobile economy. Dr Saleena Khan, IMT, Nagpur, calls on the need for feedforward interview as a means to boost productivity in an organization while Amit M Joshi, IMD, shares insights on data analytics and artificial intelligence. Royston Guest, author of Built to Grow and Rise, offers tips to programme one’s winning mentality. Jon Katzenbach, author of The Critical Few, Varun Bhatnagar, Strategy&, and Chaitali Mukherjee, PwC India, implore leaders and employees to bridge the culture gap in an organization while Bretton Putter, author of Culture Decks Decoded tell us why CEOs should be culture-driven. Asif Upadhye, Never Grow Up, writes about listening, an essential and overlooked leadership tool. In our regular sections, Timothy J Tobin, author of Peak Leadership Fitness, who emphasises on the importance of a ‘fit’ leader. In gurumantra, Morgen Witzel, University of Exeter Business School, throws light on bias and how it paves a default path in our thoughts.
The Smart Manager, India's first world-class management magazine, was founded in 2002 by eminent business historian Dr Gita Piramal with Harvard Business School Dean, Prof. Nitin Nohria with the mission of updating managers and business practitioners in India with the latest thought-provoking strategic ideas from experienced, world-class managers, academics and consultants from across the globe. Over the years, the magazine has carried articles authored by illustrious management gurus such as the late CK Prahalad and Sumantra Ghoshal, Jack Trout, Ram Charan, Gary Hamel, Gay Haskins, Jagdish Seth and Lynda Gratton. We believe that "managers are the best teachers of managers" and most of our articles are written in the first person by top-tier CEOs such as Kumaramangalam Birla, Sunil Mittal, Aditya Birla, KV Kamath, Santrupt Mitra, Rajeev Dubey and S Ramadorai. We also have relationships with a number of B-schools around the world, apart from most top-level schools in India. The Smart Manager hosts the Tata Consultancy Services Smart Manager Case Contest, the most prestigious competition of its kind in the Indian print media. The contest, with a cash prize of INR50,000 per issue, sees wide participation from national and international business managers and students. The 'Smart" in The Smart Manager is an acronym for Strategy, Marketing, Analysis, Resources and Technology. Truly useful knowledge when you need it 24 x 365, year after year.