The cover theme of the May-June issue is ‘negotiation’. Experts—Stephen Kozicki, Gordian Business; Dr Joshua N Weiss, Harvard University; Alan Yong, author of Improve Your Odds: The Four Pillars of Business Success; Asif Upadhye, Never Grow Up; Ross Reck, author of The Win-Win Negotiator; and Jayanth Narayanan, IMD Business School—share their views on various aspects of this subject. We have featured an article on strategic inflection points by Rita McGrath, author of The End of Competitive Advantage while Leslie Peters, author of Finding Time to Lead, tells us how leaders should control time by prioritising and not be controlled by it. Ramya Ramamurthy, author of REBUILD, throws light on crisis management and charts ways businesses can survive. Dr Smita Dabholkar Singh of IMT, Ghaziabad, displays the power of storytelling in an organization. George Binney, Ashridge Hult Business School, Philip Glanfield, Ashridge Hult Business School, and Gerhard Wilke, an anthropologist explore the leadership concept and describe how balancing between a manager and leader makes sense. John Knights, author of Leading Beyond the Ego, too touches upon leadership and tells us how a transpersonal leader is essential for an organization. In our regular sections, we have David Mattson, author of The Road to Excellence dispelling perceptions of leaders. Morgen Witzel, The University of Exeter Business School, defies the negative beliefs of negotiation and draws a clearer picture of negotiation as a collaboration between two parties.
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.