Abhisek Mukherjee: “Understanding real business coaching starts with three insights: First, business coaching is akin to sports coaching—it must focus on building targeted skills and behaviours to achieve well-defined goals. Intrinsic motivation is critical, but it must be channelized toward the desired result. Second, coaching is not a stand-alone, HR-driven activity, but an integral part of the strategy-planning-governance process. Third, somewhat contrary to the first, business is a wicked problem. Unlike kind problems (e.g., chess), the rules of business are not always well-defined; they change over time and often unexpectedly, the definition of “winning” is ambiguous and the consequences of actions taken are often delayed and poorly correlated. Business coaching must therefore enable high-potential leaders to thrive in such dynamic environments.”
Francis Fukuyama: “Many people have recognized the centrality of polarization and offered solutions for how to get out of it. Among these are: institutional changes, especially to our electoral laws, that would restructure the incentives under which politicians operate; the growth of a third, centrist party that grabs the middle ground from the extreme wings of the existing two; and grassroots movements to build moderation and understanding from the bottom up. All of these will be important components of depolarization, but none of them will be sufficient by themselves or take place soon enough to solve the problem. The path out of polarization needs to be a political one, given the nature of our democratic system: that is, a realigning election in which one party decisively wins control of both houses of Congress and the presidency and holds on to power through two or three electoral cycles. These realignments are rare, but in conjunction with the other pathways suggested may be in reach in the coming years if one of the two parties plays its cards right.”
ET: “With close to ₹28,000 per capita being spent by the central and state governments on development expenditure, sound public expenditure management is a key step towards creating long-lasting investments in human and physical capital. Recent reforms in public expenditure management – Public Financial Management System (PFMS), Government eMarketplace (GeM), direct benefit transfer (DBT), government digital innovations in several states, etc – have led to greater accountability in public expenditure. However, these are mostly stand-alone systems, with the practice of maintaining accounts in the government remaining more or less unchanged for decades. Can we aggregate public expenditure pan-India to know how much is spent on building canals? Can we list all benefits an individual is entitled to under different schemes? Can we track the last rupee spent on a specific scheme? Do we know whether this money was spent for the purpose it was allocated and, if so, whether it has been spent effectively? There are no easy answers.”
