Leadership Thinking Skills – GMBA 2110

Satish Iyer

Learning Portfolio – Critical Thinking

Case: As a consultant to the Mayor of Hyderabad, India give advice on how to

decrease traffic congestion in the downtown core. Apply three appropriate
critical thinking techniques to the problem. Develop 15 % recommendations
(based on using paradoxes) that would be in the sphere of influence of the
mayor.

Techniques Used:

1) Pig Analysis

2) Stretch Benchmarking

3) Metaphor

All these three techniques help us in understanding the situation at large as well
as in detail and thereby we would be able to come up with a actionable
recommendations which if pursued will deliver the desired results.

Pig Analysis:

Different Stakeholders that have been considered while doing this analysis are as
shown below:

Schulich School of Business

Leadership Thinking Skills – GMBA 2110
Satish Iyer

Perspectives:

Government: Government is concerned with the overall functioning of the city

keeping in mind all the requirements and perspectives of all the people
mentioned below.

Traffic Police Department: It is huge task for the Traffic police dept to
manage the huge congestion in the city and it becomes difficult for them to
avoid congestion and other accidents arising due to that.

Daily Commuters: Daily commuters experience a tough time on a daily basis

going through the traffic congestion which tires them out and in turn affects their
personal and professional life.

Environmentalists: Environmentalists are making a huge protest regardinng

pollution and other hazards that are happening due to traffic congestion.

Public Transport Authorities: Due to the traffic congestion it is very difficult

for the public transport dept to manage the schedule with the available
resources.

Local Companies: Local companies have to manage their employees and

thus their productivity by ensuring their employess are at the office on time .

Foreign Companies: Foreign companies look at the infrastructure and public

transports systems before coming down and setting up their offices so that they
are able to offer a conducice environment for their employees.

Families: The traffic congestion situation is an important factor families look

upon when selecting cities to settle down. It becomes very cumbersome and
people dont get time to spend with their family as the congestion increases as
most of the time is spent at the traffic signals itself.

Schulich School of Business

Leadership Thinking Skills – GMBA 2110
Satish Iyer

Pig analysis has been done keeping in mind all the stakeholders as shown above
and the below recommendations have been made:

Recommendations:

1) Implement large public transport projects with help of government, and

private infrastructure companies and thereby improve the public transport
system.

2) Improve infrastructure in terms of roads, flyovers and pavements and

thereby segment traffic for smooth travel.

3) Introduce lane driving with specific speed limits in each to segment the
traffic movement.

Stretch Benchmarking:

In the stretch benchmarking technique, I have used the example of the

Hyderabad International Airport to benchmark the current issue. Close to 3-4
years ago the Hyderabad international airport was in a similar mess, with heavy
air traffic which made it nearly impossible for people to manage the time to
catch flights on time. The earlier airport was being managed by the government
and was quite congested due to lack of space as well. With the air traffic
increasing year on year it was nearly becoming impossible to manage the
airport. So to overcome this problem the government came out with public-
private venture to restructure the entire airport and it was outsourced to GMR
infrastructure a Hyderabad based infrastructure company. It has built an airport
3

Schulich School of Business

Leadership Thinking Skills – GMBA 2110
Satish Iyer
in record time of the highest standards and recently in a survey done the airport
ranked as the 5th best airport in the world amongst the medium to large sized
airports in terms of air traffic.

Recommendations:

1) Introduce Public Privatisation in the infrastructure development of roads

and public transport system and thereby achieve an efficient road
transport system

Metaphor

I have chosen the memory chip of a computer to carry out a metaphor

analysis with the traffic congestion. Till the data traffic is reasonable enough and
the chip is able to process the data the computer works fine. As the data
increases the requirements increase and there is a need to increase the memory
of the chip and thereby make it capable of handling the data traffic. The
computer hangs if there is an information overload. Everything is well defined in
a computer chip for smooth running.

Similarly as a city grows, develops road infrastructure is one of the major

requirements of the city. With growth of the city comes the necessity to handle
the vehicles and transportation of people to keep running the city smoothly.

Schulich School of Business

Leadership Thinking Skills – GMBA 2110
Satish Iyer

Recommendations:

1) Create a smooth well defined road infrastructure to ensure smooth

movement. As there are no defined routes there is a chaos which creates
congestion.

2) Plan out the city in such a way that heavy industries and other dense
operating enterprises are running separately as a cluster away from the
centre of the city. This will fragment the traffic and also help in the lateral
growth of the city.

3) Well defined planning is required which create clusters and thereby

reduce the concentration on one single place and thereby ease the traffic.

A) Why did you use these 3 particular thinking techniques?

These techniques as stated in each of the following help in understanding

the problem at a macro level by understanding the stakeholders as in pig
analysis and at a micro level as in the stretch benchmarking and metaphor
analysis. Stretch benchmarking gives us a specific directions in which we
could progress as we have adopt successful techniques already adopted in
different industries. The metaphor helps us take a close look at the
problem and helps in analysing and understanding the analogies with
different objects to find out logical and coherent conclusions to our issues.

B) What 15% solutions would you recommend to the mayor?

The following would be my 15% solutions to the mayor which could be

implemented so as to find a way to achieve the desired results.

15% solutions:

a)

Issue: Improving the infrastructure to cater the huge traffic congestion

Schulich School of Business

Leadership Thinking Skills – GMBA 2110
Satish Iyer
Solution: Implement large public transport projects with help of government, and
private

Infrastructures companies and thereby improve the public transport system.

Barrier: Implementing large scale projects would take a lot of time and funds.

Paradox: All types of transport systems are not costly to implement.

Revised Recommendation: Introduce and invite tenders for building

cost effective transport system in terms of building a system which has
highest capacity at a relatively lower cost.

b)

Issue: Privatizing public transport.

Solution: Invite tenders from worldwide for building a world class transport
system.

Barrier: Government may lose revenue and hold on the public transport system.

Paradox: Slow divestment will decrease the hold but increase the revenue in long
term.

Revised Recommendation: Slowly carry out public-private partnerships

in faces to build infrastructure.

c)

Issue: Re-structuring of the city.

Solution: Plan out the city in such a way that heavy industries and other dense
operating enterprises are running separately as a cluster away from the centre
of the city. This will fragment the traffic and also help in the lateral growth of the
city.

Barrier: Strong resistance may be seen from different quarters to shift the base
from established places.

Paradox: This will create a special marking and thereby create an identity for
them which would be useful for further expansions.

Revised Recommendation: Declare special incentives like Free zones

and thereby introduce different zones and move away heavy industries
and start off with re structuring, for IT related services create IT parks.

Schulich School of Business

Leadership Thinking Skills – GMBA 2110
Satish Iyer

Schulich School of Business