Management Articles

Today’s young professionals are sprinting through their careers. Many aspire to tick off all their personal and professional milestones before hitting 40, retire early, and spend the rest of their lives enjoying peace and comfort, perhaps on a serene hill station, far from the corporate hustle. A Success Story with a Shadow Consider the journey of a young executive. After graduating with an engineering degree from IIT Delhi and earning his MBA in Marketing from MDI Gurgaon, he landed a coveted role at a fast-growing multinational as a Marketing Executive. He led a team of over 100 people across Sales, Service, and Support. The stakes were high, the competition fierce, and gaining even a 1% market share was a herculean task. Under relentless pressure from senior management, many team members burned out and quit. Sales targets slipped. A new team had to be built from scratch, it took six months just to get them up to speed. Three years later, the executive switched jobs, taking along his...

One of the toughest challenges any HR Head may face is being asked to terminate a high-performing employee, not because of poor performance, misconduct, or policy violations, but because of a directive from the top:   “Either one has to go.” In that moment, the HR leader stands at a moral and professional crossroads. Your instincts resist. Your conscience says it’s wrong. Yet your role demands obedience. You’re expected to execute a decision that contradicts everything you stand for as a people leader. What should you do? At such a juncture, the most responsible course of action is to seek clarity, request a one-on-one with the CEO or Business Head to understand the reasoning and present a case for reconsideration. But what if that door is firmly shut? What if there’s no willingness to engage in dialogue? This isn’t an isolated incident. Most HR professionals, especially those with strong ethics and long-term vision, encounter similar dilemmas at least once in their careers. The ch...