Why ESG scores are important for organizations ?

ESG relates to the Environmental Sustainability, Social Responsibility and Good Governance aspects related to organizations.

Why ESG issues matter and how to make organizations more ESG compliant is a challenge organisations face as customers are getting more aware of sustainability,  social and governance issues. 

Design Thinking exercise on "Reducing Corona Virus Impact on Humans"

The other day I was conducting another exciting Design Thinking exercise in the PGDM class. Even though the class strength was small, we could get a great participation from the students and come up with interesting suggestions on Reducing Corona virus Impact on Humans in a class exercise conducted in the PGDM semester 3 class in Alliance University, Bangalore, India. 

Click here for my earlier blog writing on Effective Brainstorming exercise as proposed by Dr. Roger Sperry of Caltech ..

Click here for an earlier Design Thinking exercise at Alliance University on Improving Retail sales during Covid Times. 

Click here for another Design Thinking exercise at Alliance University Bangalore on handling the crippling drinking water crisis in Bangalore..

The different stages of Design Thinking are Empathising, Defining the Objective, Ideation, Prototyping and Testing. 

The Empathising stage involved asking the participants to introduce themselves by narrating an unfortunate and unforgettable experience in their lives. After the self- introduction, the participants were asked to clearly Define the Objective of the Design Thinking exercise. This was to ensure that all the participants were on the same note and were thinking in the same direction for a solution. 

The next step involved Ideation. This step involves conducting the brainstorming exercise as narrated by Dr. Roger Sperry of California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The human brain is divided into two hemispheres, left and right. The left hemisphere is more rational while the right hemisphere is more creative. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the human body while the right side of brain controls the left part of the body.  (click here for my earlier post on the Brain storming exercise). 

Click here for a Brainstorming exercise on reducing the Traffic Congestion at Silk Board junction in Bangalore.

Topic of Design Thinking exercise : Reducing Corona Virus Impact on Humans

The suggestions that came from the students side is being highlighted here.

1. Regularly doing yoga / exercising

2. Practicing personal hygiene

3. Eating balanced and proper protein and vitamin rich food. 

4. Enable online payment where cash transaction is involed

5. Ensure mask on face

6. Maintain social distancing

7. Purchase in bulk from store 

8. Regular health checkup

9.  Avoid gathering of more than 5-7 people

10. Keeping health accessories like Oximeter at home

11. Avoid close contact (repeats with suggestion 6, an overlook)

12. Avoid shopping in malls which have high customer density

13. Avoid going to restaurants and hotels

14. Avoid touching body parts like mouth, nose etc.

15. Going to for long walks wearing masks more frequently

16. Getting enough exposure to sunlight for Vitamin D

17. Avoid shaking hands and physical contact with others

18. Wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at all times

19. Scheduling the day for proper mental health by assigning times for reading, exercising, sleeping, meditation etc.

20. Wash vegetables/fruits with warm water before consumption

21. Washing clothes after coming from outside / keeping slippers outside

After proper rational discussion among the Brainstorming team members, five suggestion have been arrived at (given in red colour) which would be recommended to the Bangalore Corporation authorities, to enable them take a proper assessment of  the results from the Ideation session of the Design Thinking Exercise.

Repeating the 5 suggestions for correct understanding

1. Regularly doing yoga / exercising

2. Eating balanced and proper protein vitamin rich food

3. Ensure mask on face

4. Avoid gathering of more than 5-7 people

5.  Scheduling the day for proper mental health by assigning times for reading, exercising, sleeping, meditation etc.

After repeated heated discussion among the members of the brain storming session, the top 3 ones (highlighted in green) have been arri

ved at which would be recommended to the Bangalore Corporation authorities for following up.

The team members will also be made available whenever the Corporation so demands to explain the concept better to the decision making Corporation officials.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 79 years old Director US Centre for Infectious Diseases had the other day come up with 3 simple tips (click here for an analysis of Dr. Fauci's speech) on how to keep Covid away from humans. His recommendations are mostly matching the results of this Design Thinking Exercise too. 

 We do hope that these recommendation will be taken seriously not only by the public health authorities in Bangalore, but also by authorities in Delhi and in different parts of the world.

Click here for the original pdf of Design Thinking article in HBR 2008 which kickstarted the present Design Thinking craze, Tim Brown, Ideo. ..

Another one of HBR's original article on Design Thinking by Prof. Jeanne Liedtka, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, HBR Sept 2018, Why Design Thinking (click here)

George..

Why developing green software is the need of the hour ?

Any software has the development, testing, optimisation and deployment stages. At all these stages the corresponding Carbon footprint can be assessed and documented. Further more the data captured by the software gets stored in a cloud storage resulting in extended Carbon footprint.

Green software relates to the degree to which software development, optimisation, testing and deployment phases, combined with the data storage strategy, which limits the Carbon Footprint during the life cycle of the said software. Greener software would entail very low Carbon footprint while less green software would have high Carbon footprints.

How can one systematically check the greenness of the software and develop systematic methods and procedures to ensure development and deployment of greener and greener software. 

A reference is taken to the HBR article 'How Green is your software', authored by Sanjay, Adam, Shalabh and Regina in HBR of Sept, '20, (click here), which tries to formulate a three step strategy to assess the greenness of the software.  A software which collects minimum quantity of relevant data for storage in the cloud storages for shorter periods of times and is aggregated early on, is much more efficient than one that stores tons of useful and not so useful data for long periods of time.

Seminar and Dissertation - the difference and how to write a decent one ..

A higher education system as a proof of a candidate's ability to display higher education skills needs to write seminar paper and dissertation. What is the fine difference between them.

While seminar papers are written towards the middle of the higher education course. a dissertation is an informed conscious and self-selected in-depth study done at the end of the programme.

Universities following the British system of education use the word dissertation to refer to the body of work at the end of a undergraduate or masters level degree, and use the word thesis to refer to the body of work produced at the end of a PhD.

A Seminar session is a class held for advanced studies in which students meet regularly to discuss original research, under the guidance of a professor. Research is (uncountable) diligent inquiry or examination to seek or revise facts, principles, theories, applications, etc; laborious or continued search after truth.  - www.wikidiff.com

After doing the Seminar, the student is able to present the state-of-the-art knowledge in that area of study.  

 There is no original work or research, it is just a compilation of knowledge in the area of study. this is usually done in consultation with an experienced faculty member who would be guiding the student on 

• what to read 
• where to read from, which journals, reports etc
  
• what to collect 
• how to document
  
• how to collate the data 
• how to start writing the report
• how to divide into sections, chapters etc
  
• how to cite the references
• how to write the reference or bibliography section etc. 
  

A dissertation allows students 

• present their findings in response to a question or proposition that they choose themselves. 
• the aim of the dissertation project is to test the independent research skills students have acquired during their time at university, 
• the assessment used to help determine their final grade.

 

The best word processing software to write such seminars and dissertations is LaTeX, the document preparation system. Here is a link to one of my tutorials on LaTeX.( click here..) Alternatively you can also visit www.overleaf.com, open an account and start latexing. 

 

Pl contact me at geasaw@gmail.com for a soft copy of Leslie Lamport's authoritative book of LaTeX.

george..

Basic Operations Management decisions in any industry

Any organisation or industry has to essentially go through these 10 areas of decision making.

1. Design of Goods and Services. - looking at the product or service, deciding the best mix of materials and machines to produce it in the most economical and less wasteful way

2. Quality Management - ensuring the production of goods or service out of the facility meets the highest standards of quality in the production stage

3. Process and Capacity Design - deciding on how the various proceses are arranged and the capacity of each of it to help achieve the final output

4. Location Strategy - where to locate the unit in order to leverage on the lowest costs of transportation and availability of skilled labour

5. Layout Design and Strategy. - one location is decided how should the facility be designed to keep productivity high and wastes low

6. Human Resources and Job Design - recruiting and motivating the right labour to help achieve targets at the best cost

7. Supply Chain Management - determining the source of the suppliers and the destination demand, the markets and planning out on the best transportation and logistics strategies to meet the capacity and demand

8. Inventory Management - the best production batch size and storage policies that effect overall minimum costs of storage and ordering

9. Scheduling - in a production facility finding the best sequence of carrying out the service or jobs on machines in the most optimised and effective manner

10. Maintenance - ensuring proper and timely upkeep of machines and processes that ensures high uptime of the facility

All these processes can help get the output out from the facility. But the organisation will have its priorities and would have identified its core competence areas, how to maintain its competitive edge over the competitors. 

Twenty five years ago, John Elkington coined the term, the 3Ps, the triple bottom line.  Just at the start of the Industrial revolution we find the first phase building up.

• Industry 1.0, the only focus has been on profit.  
• Industry 2.0 has seen the focus also shifting to profit and people, which includes the better utilisation of human resources, ie. the employees, customers, suppliers, other stake holders etc. 
• Industry 3.0  focuses on profit, people and planet, we see great attention on sustainability standards, limiting the climate  change, limiting Carbon footprints and on Carbon credits.
• Industry 4.0 focuses on profit, people, planet and performance.  All the focus we see on setting voluntary emission cuts attaining sustainability targets, focusing on automation, AI, IoT, smart factories etc improving the performance of the system, delivering higher value to customers and stakeholders, raising productivity and lowering costs.
  

Operations strategy looks at the different ways to improve and retain the competitive advantage. 

George