Tower Building Exercise and Craftsmanship Vs Modern Management

Another interesting lecture of organization management that remind me memories of childhood activities I used to do that time. One of the favourite activities was building the tallest tower using wooden blocks amongst others but did not know that there was something related to management behind this also. Any external perturbation made the tower easily crumbled. Similar things happened in the class room also.

Prof. Mandi came in the class with the wooden blocks and asked “Who will build the tower”??

– Tower with the base of single block!! Here we got an idea that something interesting will happen again. Most of us raised their hand. Everybody was enthusiastic and energetic that time. Then he said Whoever will come has to pay Rs. 500 that is not refundable. One by one our enthusiasm wiped out. After all Rs. 500 is a big amount!! Finally a guy came forward and deposited Rs. 500 to class CR.. Dr. Mandi asked again to make a guess “How many blocks would he be able to use to build the tower”?? Everybody started throwing the numbers in the air 7,8,10,15.. I said 10 blocks!! The game began:

That guy used single block as base and started putting the blocks one over the other.. 1..2..3..4................16.. The count reached up to 16 and after putting 17th block tower tumbled. Something beyond the expectation happened.. something pedantic!!

Here I understood that never judge and intimidate any body just by the perception. Work done with proper planning and strategy always get accomplish. Mind with no disturbance work effectively.

Then,the second round of bidding for the position of worker, manager and CEO(Senior Management) started. Finally Three guys occupied the positions with respect to the amount paid. Higher position,Bigger amount!! They have also asked to perform the same task. CEO will give command to manager who in turn will give instruction to worker. Prof. Mandi asked the manager to make the worker blindfolded – Great Ruse in the task.. Then worker started building the tower as per the instruction given by the manager. 1..2..3..4..5..6..7.. and after putting 8^th block tower Collapsed. Bad performance.. Team of three failed against single person. Dr. Mandi asked the worker that what was going in his mind while performing the task. Worker said he was unable to understand the instructions given by manager because more than one instruction striking the same time that he could not interpreted. 

Practically it happen in most of the organizations that unnecessarily borne havoc to workers and reduce their efficiency. If manager instructed him in a proper manner he could have performed better, better than that of single person. Here comes the concept of modern management.

The first case that discussed above is nothing but related to craftsmanship where there is no organization management as it belong to the single person. Single person who set the goal, do planning and make strategy to accomplish the defined objective. Single person act as worker as well as Boss. No work can be done in parallel.

The second case was related to modern management where each person work according to the task assigned to them. Work can be done in parallel to others because complete work is converted into different processes and each process is done by the individual worker hence reduce the overhead and make the picture more clear. By De-skilling , management reduce the overhead of single worker and assigned it to all to intensify the efficiency of worker.

In this way management increase the inter-dependency amongst workers and make the environment competitive.

That's all for now..

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