Management behind crossing the valley..

The situation was that three persons have to cross the valley and reach the other location safely. Let's analyse the situation how did they do that??

 

Persons	First Person	Second Person	Third person
Step
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risky,
3	Full Risky,
4	Half Risky,	Half Risky,
5		Full Risky,
6		Half Risky,	Half Risky,
7			Full Risky,
8			Half Risky,
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

Safe - Both the legs of the person have full support
Half Risky – One leg in the air and the other leg has support
Full risky - Both the legs are in the air without any support
Half risky – One leg is in the air and the other leg has support
Safe - Both the legs have full support

 

Ø   Structuring the Task :

• All roles are equal and there is no differentiation between the responsibilities of any three persons. All three are equally responsible in their contributions for the overall task completion. , the task is designed to be - Easy, Lighter, Clear and Systematic 

Ø   Structuring Team Roles :

• Roles of all three members are similar but not same; and equivalent in terms of total effort & risk. All 3 member Roles have equal distribution of Risky situations (1); Half risky situations (2); No risk situations (2). All roles are designed for equally strong persons and there is no weaker or stronger requirement in any specific role.
• Communication and feedback across the 3 members was instantaneous.
• Interdependence among the 3 members was maximised and made crucial.

The roles are interlocking, with highest levels of interaction among the members, with instantaneous feedback being exchange and without any scope for social loafing.

Ø   Preparation and Execution :

All the three members are systematically trained for all the steps and, while crossing, they communicate and coordinate with each other through a various kinds of sounds and other signals.

Ø  Team Excellence :

Team excellence comes through proper designing of team tasks, correctly assigning team roles, and preparation and execution of the tasks. Thus, excellence is designed by the managers.

Tower Building With Smart Goal

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.

Everybody strive for success in his/her professional as well as personal lives. But success is not that easy to accomplish. To be successful, first we need to have an aim in our life and after that we need to work hard to achieve those aims by setting up SMART Goals.

“Smart” here is an acronym and each letter defines the traits that should be kept in mind while setting up goals.

S – Specific, Simple, Strategic, Sustainable. 

M – Measurable,

A – Achievable, Ambitious.

R – Realistic, Rational. 

T – Time, Tangible.

In an Organization Goals should be set in a way that they are more than what it has achieved earlier but less than the potential. Goals achieved by you should be below what you have set as the target. In this way you will strive to give your best the next time and improve your productivity in the process. You will ultimately achieve what you aim for but in this way you will always think that there is still room for improvement which will eventually lead to increase in the potential of the organization.
The combination of realistic goal set and realistic goal achieved evaluate the performance. Better the these two factors, better will be the performance.

Three Monks Animation

Three Monks  is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1976, It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.
 

The film is based on the ancient Chinese proverb "One monk will shoulder two buckets of water, two monks will share the load, but add a third and no one will want to fetch water.

 

There was a monk who lived in a temple built on the top of a hill. Everyday he used to get two buckets full of water from down the hill and carry them back to temple using a shoulder pole. The water he got was more than enough for one person. One day a monk visited the temple and started living there. next day when they got up, first monk thought of giving the responsibility to bring water to the new monk. But the new monk refused to do it alone, therefore they decided to share the responsibility but the shoulder pole was small and could accommodate only one bucket then.

The water they got was still enough for both of them.

Later a third monk came to stay with them. On the next day morning when all the monks got up, nobody took the responsibility to fill the buckets as the shoulder pole could accommodate only two persons and they could not decide who should stay back .On that day, they began to suffer from thirst since water had finished. That night temple caught fire. Finally all the three monks got together to fight the fire and started working together to get the water every morning and no one suffered from thirst thereafter.

 

It is evident that team work is necessary for successful organization. The animation needs further probing for learning the secret of effective team work. The first lesson for managers is that each member has a different capability and should be assigned work accordingly. The second lesson is to assign right work to right people. We saw in the video that when third monk was given task of fetching water he was consuming most of it himself. So he was not the right person for such hard task. Finally not only his work was utilized, he was also not consuming the monastery resource as he was positioned near water pool down the hill.

There were some important concepts shown in the film which need to be analyzed. Management is all about the concept of conceptual skills, human skills, and Technical skills. If productivity is not there, better to change the technology not the people. Divide work and perform accordingly. One of the important concepts was “Job Rotation”. Job rotation is a management technique that assign trainees to various jobs and departments over a period of a few years. Job rotation help trainees to best apply their knowledge, abilities, interests.

Another concept was division of labors and labourers. Division of labors means divide the work amongst labors. Labourer is a person who does one of the construction trades, traditionally considered unskilled manual labor, as opposed to skilled labor.

Laborers have all blasting, hand tools, power tools, air tools, and small heavy equipment, and act as assistants to other trades. Division of work amongst labourer is divide the work force, society by the pre-conceived notion.

Some important points would like to highlight :
1) Everyone is capable of being selfish, but doing so diminishes our ability to cooperate with one another.

2) As the saying goes, “Unity is strength” we should co-operate with each other and work together in a harmonious manner.

3) This story teaches us that it is inappropriate to shirk responsibility and proper measures should be taken before a catastrophe occurs.