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.

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..

Keep Reading !!

Principles of Organisation and Management

This was the second lecture by prof. Mandi in which he taught us the concept of Theory X and Theory Y. Every time it's not necessary that X and Y are used to understand either mathematical concepts or biological concepts, they could be used in management principles also.These two theories X and Y are related to the Managers and their behaviour, observation and perception towards the employees of the organization.

Theory X comprises the information about the managers who think that workers dislike the work and avoid if they can. Pushing them to do the work with the threat to achieve the goals of an organization. Management believe that workers need to be supervised.

Theory Y comprises the information about the managers who think that workers enjoy the work naturally. They think workers are self-motivated, ambitious, deterministic and self controlled.

Management believe that workers know their responsibility towards the organization and will work well under the right conditions.

These two theories are like two opposite sides of a single coin – Both are related to the management only but differ in meaning.

Let's elucidate it further and have a look:

1). Theory X Manager assume LAZY workers as LAZY and make them work.

In this case as workers dislike their work and management push them to let the work done. Without goal clarity and lack of proper strategy which leads dissatisfaction amongst workers and borne havoc between management and workers. Workers are coerced by the management to accomplish the objective. That's the story in most of the organizations.

2). Theory X Manager assume NOT LAZY workers as NOT LAZY and make them work.

In this case workers like their work, enjoy it and self-motivated to accomplish the goal effectively under the given deadline but manager still don't have confidence on workers and keep an eagle eye to monitor each and every activity of the workers. Manager supervise them according to his/her perception not by the observation which in turn vitiate the environment all around the workers and affect their emotions also. This will create lack of trust and pacify the self-motivation. This type of behaviour itself is unethical. It causes an exodus of ingenious,stellar and deft workers from the organization. This type of management lead perdition to the organization.

I would like to share my experience with this type of management as an example:

In my company, during that tenure of working I was supervised by the two different managers.

The first manager is the best and only example that I could correlate with this theory X. I have always done the assigned work prior to the deadlines but it did not make any difference to her. She did not even appreciate my work once. She always kept a note of my In time without bothering Out time. There was no sovereignty to apply my own ideas while working. This kind of management actually kill the prowess of being self-motivated and self-controlled. There is no trust between the management and workers which is imperative in an organization management.

3). Theory Y Manager assume LAZY workers as LAZY and make them work.

In this case, workers are lazy and Manager think workers are good. Even though workers dislike the work but manager motivate them, build trust on each other and try every possible alternative which satisfy the workers. Manager provide incentives,appreciation and reward them for the work being done. The management which follow theory Y gives more satisfaction to the workers in the organization in contrast to theory X. This attitude of management shape the organization and expedite its growth.

4). Theory Y Manager assume NOT LAZY  workers as NOT LAZY  and make them work.

In this case, workers like the work and enjoy it. Manager understand that workers are dedicated to the work and do everything as expected without continuous supervision. The propensity of workers towards the work make the relationship with management stronger period by period. As workers know their responsibility, they do not provide any space for ramification of errors which affect the organization growth. This is the ideal case of management which should be adopted by management in all the organization.

Again I would like to share my experience as an example:

My second manager was the one who belong to theory Y. “To be a good manager one has to be a good human being first.” I really enjoyed working with him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qm_3saEo7o

I, as a manager will definitely follow theory Y because it will bring out the best of all because this theory Y helps in maintaining a structured organization.