Srishti Nair

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage.
For all the hype and the management charts and the impenetrable language, ultimately what the product consultancies sell is brains. Not the sort that have been schooled in a particular discipline, such as law or accountancy. But the kind that they hope could be set to resolving almost any business problem under the sun. No wonder, then that brains are at a premium; and no wonder that consultants are excited by what they call ''thought leadership''.
Ideas, they are convinced, are a source of competitive advantage. They help to attract customers. According to Richard Foster at McKinsey, consultancies now need to offer not just independent advice, but alternative ways of seeing the world. Bosses are endlessly curious about management theory, partly because they are always looking for ways of beating the competition, partly because more and more of them have studied management at business school.
Ideas are useful for attracting and keeping clever recruits. Many MBA students go into consultancy because they think it will be more intellectually demanding and varied than mainstream management. Mr Gupta recalls that he joined McKinsey after Harvard because it seemed to be a sort of ''super business school''. And many stay because they hope to produce a book or article that will turn them into gurus. Ideas are essential to corporate regeneration. Consultancies that merely apply people's ideas rapidly go downhill.
When it comes to producing those ground-breaking ideas, consultancies rely on a variety of techniques. First, they encourage their own people to be creative, using sabbaticals, promotions, prizes and pay rises as incentives. Gemini has established a ''thinking room'' in its Morristown headquarters where consultants can sit in isolation: booths, put on goggles and think deep thoughts. McKinsey is spending more money on intellectual capital, and is trying some structure on its traditionally laissez-faire approach to generating ideas. It is establishing research programmes on subjects such as growth, globalisation and the future shape of companies, and has set up a sort of internal mental Olympics in which 150 teams of junior McKinseyites compete to impress their seniors with their management thinking.
The consultancies' second line of approach is to form alliance with business schools and business thinkers. A.T. Kearney is sponsoring research on the future shape of companies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Booz-Allen on the changing social contract at the London Business School; and Anderson Consulting on learning at Northwestern University, to name but three of hundreds of projects. CSC Index puts on seminars at which outside gurus ponder issues such as creativity or the changing role of chief executives.
Yet the path to thought leadership is strewn with pitfalls. It is all very well to develop an eye-catching product such as re-engineering or Economic Value Added, and throw the weight of the organisation behind marketing it; but other companies, many of them with more resources, may pinch the lead and improve on it, and eventually the market for the product will cool, leaving its inventor desperate for something else to sell.
Establishing and retaining intellectual leadership clearly takes strong management skills. Curiously enough in the management consultancy business these appear to be in short supply.
Q. According to the author, the threat to the concept of "thought leadership" is that

Directions: Read the following information carefully and answer the question given below.

A person has kept some sweets in 10 lockers for his 10 students, so that each of them chooses one. In each locker, there are some chocolates and some lollipops, where each lollipop costs Rs. 15 and each chocolate costs Rs. 25. Each locker is differently coloured i.e. yellow, blue, white, red, green, brown, pink, grey, orange and purple. Lockers are in two rows, one above another. The bottom row has lockers marked with numbers 1 to 5 (left to right) and the top row has lockers marked with numbers 6 to 10 (left to right). Locker number 1 is just below locker number 6 and in the same way, locker number 2 is just below locker number 7 and so on. Locker numbers 1 to 5 contain sweets worth Rs. 485 and locker numbers 6 to 10 contain sweets worth Rs. 570. There are neither less than 3 sweets nor more than 8 sweets in any locker. Locker number 9 is brown in colour. Locker number 5 has 4 lollipops and 4 chocolates. Locker of red colour is numbered 3 more than the locker of green colour and both are in the same row. Locker number 1 contains sweets worth Rs. 125. The red coloured locker has sweets worth Rs. 45 more than the green coloured locker. Only the purple coloured locker contains the maximum number of sweets. The pink coloured locker is just above the yellow coloured locker. Grey colour locker is numbered 3 more than the locker which is yellow in colour and both are in the same row. The locker number which is numbered 1 less than the orange coloured locker contains sweets worth Rs. 95. The blue coloured locker contains 2 lollipops. The white coloured locker contains 3 sweets. Sweets in the orange coloured locker are worth Rs. 5 less than the sweets in the pink coloured locker. The red and white coloured lockers contain the same number of lollipops. Sweets in the grey coloured locker are worth Rs. 10 less than the white coloured locker. Sweets in the pink and blue coloured lockers cost Rs. 190 altogether. The orange and brown coloured lockers contain equal number of chocolates. Locker number 2 has sweets worth Rs. 80.

Q. How many sweets are there in locker number 7?

Directions: The question is based on the following passage. Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows.

Companies across industries are looking to increase the representation of women who work in technical roles—including in engineering, product management, and other fast-growing fields. There has been an increased focus on gender parity in new hires and on greater equality in executive roles. But companies may be missing another critical moment: equitable advancement in early promotion. Across all industries and roles, women are promoted at a slower rate than men. Indeed, only 86 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men at the same level. But the gender gap for women in technical roles is more pronounced, with only 52 women being promoted to manager for every 100 men. Diversity is especially crucial in these roles to help debias the technologies that make up an ever-present and evolving component of modern life. The most gender-diverse companies are 48 percent more likely to outperform the least gender-diverse companies.

What we learned is that some companies are instituting a systematic approach to advancing women in technical roles and reaping the benefits of a more diverse, inclusive, and higher-performing workforce. We describe enablers that have helped companies repair the broken rung on the career ladder for women in technical roles: providing equitable access to skill building, implementing a structured process that seeks to debias promotions, and building a strong culture of support for women via mentors and sponsors. The reason why broken rung matters is because early promotions in a career are most critical to success. By failing to promote and retain women in technical roles who are in the early stages of their careers, companies end up preparing fewer women for senior roles.

Most of the leaders interviewed acknowledged that their companies have uneven early-promotions processes that perpetuate the broken rung on the career ladder for women in technical roles. But few said that their companies had begun to monitor the advancement of women in these roles during the first five years after they are hired. And while many interviewees said that their companies offer mentorship programs, conscious inclusion training, and other diversity and inclusion programs, only a small number could name interventions aimed at achieving gender parity in promotions for early-tenure women. Fixing the broken rung will require concentrated efforts.

For a promotion to be successful, the new role should be a good fit, in both skill level and temperament, for the advancing employee; the person who's moved up should be able to thrive and continue to grow in the new position. For this to happen, groundwork needs to be laid ahead of time via access to timely opportunities that help colleagues demonstrate their growth and maturity and readiness to advance. It's also important for women in technical roles to join high-visibility projects where they can develop their skills on the job. Feeling deprived of these valuable opportunities, women told us they perceived promotions as unattainable, and many chose to leave. To correct this, some companies have created project databases where tech employees can search for opportunities according to the type of skills required. The combination of career-development opportunities, structured promotion processes, and support from senior colleagues has proven effective at advancing and retaining women in technical roles and can, in time, help diversify leadership teams.

Q. What is one of the features, in reference to the passage, of a well-laid promotion policy?