Be SMART, Be Excellent.

“I will give my best shot this time.”…Sounds familiar?

Why won’t it be!
I have said it thousands of time myself and listened people saying it million times…

(cumulative, of course)
But do we really mean it? Do we even realize what our best shot is? How that could be 
achieved?
I think No. This often comes out to be an impulsive statement rather than a well thought off 

strategy.

The same situation scales up to the level of organizations. Be it a small proprietary or an MNC, it is very important to set realistic goals and vision for the company and well thought off strategy is, inevitably, always required. 

Even this is not enough; we must also understand how to achieve Excellence.

I am going to divide the ‘gyaan’ in two parts...Read ahead with your eyes and mind open!

First and Foremost….

The first part in achieving our goals with excellence is to set the goals. 

Of course, what else could it be? How stupid a suggestion it is!

Wait…I am not finished yet…
It is easier said than done…
Setting up just any random goal will never take you anywhere…It would leave you revolving around the same point losing out on your resources.

For eg:

Mr. Harilal Chobey: “Hey, I just came to know about the life of a film star. I want to be a superstar actor. Let me spend 3 hours in a beauty salon and 2 in a gym each day  for a year, and then nobody would be able to stop me!"
Mr. Champak Prasad: "Wait, Shouldn’t you join some acting school first?"
Mr. Harilal Chobey: "Uhmm…Never thought about that! Is it relevant at all?!"

Here Mr. Harilal set a goal for himself without putting up a lot of thought into it. His goal setting is not just random, but impulsive, irrational and most importantly it lacks the requisite amount of ground work.

Hence, setting up a SMART goal becomes the first and foremost step before we sprint towards our dreams.

Ok, do we have to look for the literal meaning of ‘Smart’ and proceed?
No, wait!
It’s something much more profound.
(Frankly speaking, it’s not a new concept. There has been numerable interpretations and explanations. I am jut presenting my own) 

Yes. This is SMART goal which I was talking about.
The elements above give us a, more or less, checklist of what all parameters we should 
comply with before finalizing our goal and proceeding any further.

Now, here comes the catch!

Often, it happens with us that we make goals, check them for few of the above mentioned

parameters but fail to include all of them. It is very important that our goals reflect (at least) 
all of the above characteristics. 

I personally think that maintaining a balance between ‘ambitious’ and ‘achievable’
is the most difficult one among the mentioned factors. While the goal should be achievable, it 

should be ambitious enough to always keep us on our toes.

Well, that looks like a lot of work. Who, in the whole world, would take up so much of 
headache.

The answer is simple, "Whosoever understands that 'Success' is at stake".

Let’s walk towards Excellence….

Once we are prepared with our goals, the real race begins.
The next motive is to attain excellence on both individual and organizational level.

The formula is very simple (simple ‘to write’.., ‘to follow’ is a different story).

EXCELLENCE = EFFECTIVENESS * EFFICIENCY

 These 3 are commonly called as ‘3 Es’.

Ok, three similar look words to make it look wonderful. But what’s the point. What 
exactly is the difference between Effectiveness and Efficiency? Don’t they mean same thing?

Hang on, I was just about to answer that when you(r thought) interrupted.

Effectiveness is ‘Doing the right thing’ whereas Efficiency is ‘Doing things rightly’.

Efficiency is more related to speed up the process whereas effectiveness is associated with 
providing correct direction to the work in hand.

Still not clear?

Let’s take up an example.

Take the example of two Customer Service reps, the first one is very short with the customers. 

If they start to tell him any unnecessary information, he cuts them off and tells them "leave it, 

that's not important". He quickly resolves their issue but leaves them with a bad taste for the 
company - most will never be repeat customers. He is able to handle 50 customer calls per day. 

The second rep takes time with the customers, shows empathy and concern, reviews the 
situation with the customer at the end of the call. Every customer is satisfied and impressed - 
all will certainly do more business with the company and refer their friends. This rep is able to 
handle 30 customers per day. 

The first rep is very efficient; the second rep is more effective. 

Hence, achieving excellence would include both the elements in balance.

So, both the 'goal setting' and the strive towards excellence were the two things I wanted to
talk about.
I recently learned it. I thought sharing it would be a nice thought.

So, next time, you say 'I'll give it my best shot', Just include a SMART goal setting, coupled 
with 3 Es. I don't see any reason why you would not be able to deliver your best.

Ok, the ‘gyaan’ is over for the time.Hope I was 'effective' and 'efficient' to some extent.

Hope you liked the blog post.

Happy Reading!

The affair between managers and workers

This blog is aimed to discuss a very popular theory studied and used in organizational management to understand the behavior of individuals at work. 

The theory constitute of two models, namely ‘Theory X and Theory Y’. The theory was originally given by the social psychologist Douglas McGregor in his book ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’ which was published in 1960.

Leaving aside the historical information, let’s just see what these two models are. It’s not very difficult to relate with these models as we lie in one or the other in different situations of the life ourselves.

Theory X:

Theory X says:

The average human being has an inherent dislike for work and he will try and avoid the work as much as possible. (Not so difficult to relate ourselves, is it?). Now, if we think about this very statement, the other assumptions could easily be deduced. Let’s see how!

• Because of their dislike for work, people need to be ‘pushed’ to work by controlling and threatening them to work hard enough.
• Since the person is not interested in his work, so he prefers to be directed, dislikes responsibility, is unambiguous and desires security above anything else
• The managers in such situation ends up being strict and stiff with the workers and find forcefully pushing the workers to work (in any circumstances) be the only way to extract the maximum productivity out of them.

Theory Y:

In contrast with Theory X, this theory is based on the hypothesis that expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest for human. Hence the extension of this statement and the comparison with theory X gives us following further information:

• Control and punishment are not the only ways to make people work. There is a bigger commitment by the worker towards the organization and hence, he directs himself to work in the favor of the organization.
• The manager needs to motivate the workers to encourage them to contribute as much as they can to fulfill the goals of the organization.
• The employees/ workers also tend to use creativity, imagination and ingenuity at work to resolve many complex issues/problems.

 Now comes the important question: Which theory and behavior is beneficial? What are the comparison points between the two?

After presenting this theory to us, Prof. Mandi continued the lecture and introduced us to an interesting

theory to understand the different relationship combinations between manager and workers.

I will now try and make you understand the same in the following section.

Look at the figure…

For the convenience of our analysis, we consider that there are two types of managers (positive and negative). Similarly, there are two types of workers (lazy and hard-working).

  

Figure 1: Two types of Managers and two types of workers

Applying simple permutation and combination knowledge, we get to know that there are only 4 possible cases (2*2 =4 isn’t so difficult) as shown below:

Now, once I have told you what the combinations are, let’s just see what exactly the combinations in the matrix imply!!

Theory X managers:

  

Situation 1: Employees are good and the managers assume that they are lazy

Most of the people think that they have been through this situation. In this situation even if the employees are good and willing to work, their strengths and potentials are not used to that extent. They are never encouraged or motivated by their managers. Such team lacks the healthy communication and synchronization between the levels.

Situation 3: Employees are lazy and the managers also think that they are lazy

This situation the team does not perform at the level it can perform.

Theory Y managers:

Situation 2: Employees are good and the managers also think that they are good.

This is the best situation people can be into. This is the situation where we can expect maximum productivity out of the team.

Situation 4: Employees are lazy but the managers assume that they are good.

This is also a very good scenario for the organisation as the perception of the manager is positive and he can always motivate and inspire the lazy/ bad workers to work harder.

A classic example of this situation is that of a relation between parents and child. Even if their child is not doing good in the studies, parents still believe in their child. They always encourage their child to perform better by saying that their child is good.

This the way managers can make their employees work and channelize their potential in the right direction to produce the desired goals.

 
After analyzing the different scenarios, I hope you have understood these much of basics about the employee behavior in an organisation! And you have an understanding of the relationship between manager and workers!
This is all I have for now on the topic!
Will keep coming with my POM lessons for everyone to read.

Till then, keep reading!!

The first(hand) experience of my first lecture at NITIE!!

I am writing this blog to share my experience, knowledge and insights about the first lecture of my subject, ‘Principles of Organizations and Management’ (POM) in PGDIM course at NITIE, Mumbai by Prof. T. Prasad. The purpose of these blogs is to share and spread the knowledge through my blogs.

It was 9.00 AM in the morning and as is the trend of all premiere B-Schools, I had already been told (rather cautioned) by one of my senior not to be late for any class. I reached in time, sat in the room and was waiting for my first class of post-graduation to start off. The time table said it was the lecture of ‘Principle of Organizations and Management’. A matured simple looking man entered the class. He placed his bag and umbrella (which is ubiquitous in Mumbai) on the table and started taking out something from his bag!
To my surprise, he took out few toys from the bag! He asked the students to rotate the toys in the classroom by throwing them over to each other randomly while he asked one student to adjust his mic.

The lecture begins….

Being the very first lecture of post-graduation, I was expecting that the professor would pour in loads of bookish knowledge and the lecture would be filled with jargons. But the very first 10 minutes of the lecture proved me wrong and I saw Prof. T. Prasad (a.k.a. Prof. Mandi) pouring in his words of wisdom in the simplest and most fundamental way. The learnings from the lecture were truly valuable. Let me try and summarize the learnings I took from those 2 hours…

Learning #1: Know your Cost and Understand your Value…

Prof. Mandi made it very clear in the very first 10 minutes to us that we are here for serious business and looking at the monetary aspects of our actions is one of the most critical aspect for us in life.

He asked us all to calculate the opportunity costs involved for each of us for these 2 years of our post-graduation. Opportunity cost is, basically, the value of the best alternative forgone in case of picking up one opportunity among many.

 Hence, the cost included not just our fees at NITIE but also the salary we would have got had we opted to continue/ start with our job as well as a rough estimate of our expenditures. It was an important way to make us realize that we have put an enormous amount at stake coming here for our studies and working hard to prove our worth is the only way ahead!

Learning #2: “Aaj ki roti aaj hi kamaana”

This is one of the lessons which seemed to be very close to Prof. Mandi’s ideologies.
The forthright lesson is that if you have the urge to spend and consume, then learn to earn your own subsistence daily. This not just simply motivates you to earn but force you to appreciate the necessity of the labour required to be put in on daily basis to cover up for our expenses.

Learning #3: “Either you are there on time or your chance is gone!”

The next important thing which we got to learn was that it is not sufficient just to be at the right place on the right time, but you need to be fully prepared as and when the opportunity knocks at your door.
Though, this wasn’t really something which we didn’t know. But sometimes, it’s very important that somebody help us bring out the thoughts hidden somewhere in the closets of our mind.

Learning #4: “Sochho Becho…Becho Seekho….Seekho Sochho”

Apart from the thought provoking meaning it holds, the statement became much more interesting when Prof. Mandi introduced this as a song to us!!
The lesson, basically explains that we all are involved in business, in one way or the other, if we look at the broad perspective of life. And hence we should keep the entrepreneur in us always alive.
Here came the roll of the toys which were flying all over the classroom from one hand to other till now!
Prof. Mandi asked two students to come in front of the class and gave the roll of salesman and customer to them. The salesman was supposed to sale the (scientific) toy to the customer using all the tacts he could think of.
Then interestingly, the roles were interchanged and we saw how the same person would react in the same situation as a buyer as well as a salesman.
The exercise was continued for a while and the observations gave us the lesson which is basically involved behind any business…
“You strategise, you sell…….as you sell you keep learning more about business and you improvise….and as you learn more you think of better ways….(and the cycle gets repeated)

The lecture went on in the same animated fashion and it gave us many subtle lessons.
Who would not love a lecture where we get to listen Pink Floyd and also sing along, with the professor’s consent.
Looking forward to more such fun filled and knowledgeable lectures!


Hope I was able to share the lessons I learnt with a similar enthusiasm as the professor. I’ll be coming up with more blogs covering the lessons as the course progress with the objective of sharing and spreading the wisdom through my blogs. Please comment and provide suggestions on how could the quality of blogs be improved.


Happy Reading!!