Learning the management..Block by Block!

Hello Everyone

This post is about yet another informative lecture by Prof. Mandi in Principle of Management subject.

The highlight of the whole class was an exercise cum group task we were made to perform. The prof. had come with small wooden blocks with him and the same were supposed to be used for building a tower.

A tower?
Yes!

The rules were simple:

• The tower should have a base of single cube only.
• At a time,only one cube should be placed.
• Build tower as tall as you can.

Before the students for the exercise were picked up from the class, Prof. asked us to set our goals, define them quantitatively(the height of tower one is going to aim for). As I had talked about goal setting in one of my previous blog post, we had to set our goals accordingly.

The exercise involved building tower from small cubes over one another on a flat ground. The problem at the first time seems to be easier but sometimes constraints involved make it difficult to perceive the solution to the problem. As a manager, it is important that results are to be produced in order to realize aspirations of top management. No matter how difficult the situation is the motto “Nothing is impossible” should always be kept in mind.

The constraint involved in the exercise is that the tower had to be built by three persons in which one person is blind folded who can only touch the cubes (herein termed as worker), second person who has to instruct the first person to stack the cube (here in termed as manager) and third one who observes and comments on the progress of tower (herein termed as top management). Another 5 people (just because 8 people, in total, raised their hands and each one had to do something ) were made the top management people, who were looking at the proceedings from a distance and giving their inputs and kept interrupting in between. In a real time situation in an organization, top management gives the problem which has to be executed by other persons (Asst. Manager and workers) in the company in lower hierarchy.

So now, let me divide the process (and learning) of building tower, for better understanding,  into following steps:

Goal Setting

The first step for a manager is to set up a realistic target or goal, this can be determined from past experiences and competitors. In the present situation the target was set as tower of 18 cubes based on past data and what other competitors can achieve.

Strategizing

The workers are the work force of an organization, they only know about what to do but don’t understand underlying concept of doing the work as in our case worker is blind folded. The manager has to strategize and formulate process to get work done from the worker.

Communication

The next step is to able to convince the workers that the target is achievable and breaking the target into much smaller targets. The process formulated above has to be communicated or conveyed to workers in a simpler way.

Working Conditions

The Manager must also take into account health and safety needs for the workers and take necessary step in making workers comfortable at work place. As in our present situation, worker was given rest and offered refreshments time to time without compromising on deadlines set up by top management.

Presenting to top management

The Manager must present the overall progress of the work to the top level management and communicate progress at the shop floor and problems, if any, faced by workers.

The Top Level management is responsible for the overall management of an organisation. They don’t get into much intricacies of process but more concerned about getting the results.

Hope you found the post useful.

The Three Monks & their management lessons!

Hello folks,

Carrying forward the nexus of my POM blogs, here I present to you a short animation movie to watch.

Wow....a movie! Great!

Yes! To add to the value, I'll tell you what all management lessons could be learned from the same movie.

Ok...sounds good! But please don't make it boring for us!

Aye, I dare not! 

Ok...let me start with some factual 'gyaan' as usual.

Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. in 1976. 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."

Alright, now before I share with you what all I learnt from the video, why don't you watch it yourself first.

Alright, now if you have watched it (if not, I insist you do watch), I am sure you must have made some interpretations out of it yourself. Unless you are sleepy, the video wasn't an enigma for you to decipher.

Okay! Okay! We got it! Come straight to the business. Tell us what all you wanna share now.  

Alright then, let me share with you what all lessons I extracted out of the video.

The video is full of management lessons to be learnt on team work intricacies. The movie gives an excellent (and entertaining) lesson on the relation between effort, output, productivity, work methods and innovation.
I have divided the whole video in 4 parts:

00:00-04:16

The video starts with one monk living in a temple on the top of a hill and he is responsible for filling up the bucket with water required in the temple. We notice that he manages to perform the job. Here, a considerable aspect is that he carries two buckets on the pole instead of going for 1 bucket one time, to maximize his productivity.

04:17-08:16

The second monk enters the temple and they decide to work together and share the work. Here starts a big lesson for the organisational management enthusiast. The two monks find it difficult to evenly distribute the work. 

At one point of time, one monk has to make more efforts and at the other moment, the second monk faces the same feelings. 

This is often witnessed in the organisations when the employees feel that the work has been unequally distributed among them and each one has the feeling that he is the sufferer and the other one is enjoying his/her time, which may or may not be true. This causes friction between them and they often end up in unproductive forms of competitions like we notice e two monks try to compete in beating their small drums.

However, after some initial coordination issues, the solution is found by using the following  two tactics:

1. Objective Measurement: A very important lesson is to avoid subjective measurements as much as possible and use 'standard' work measurement methods. For eg.: Once, the monks had decided to carry the bucket in the middle of the pole, first the monks try to determine the mid point by using their hands, which is quite subjective. They both have different dimensions of their hands and hence, they both reach different mid points.
Then they use a 'ruler' which is a 'standard' tool for measurement. This solves their problem of work division. 

This is to be learnt as being managers, we have to ensure that the work is performed with minimum efforts , maximum productivity and  optimal work division.

2. Participative  Management: While determining the mid point, one of the monk measure using the ruler while the other one marks the mid point (You didn't notice this, did you?! ). This is called 'participative management'. The participation of both ensures not only satisfaction for both of them but also make them overseers for each other. (What an efficient and effective way to ensure maximum productivity)

08:17 - 14:30

A third monk enters the scenerio. The first two monks become elated. They unite and try and push the third monk to perform the job all by himself. This shows a very traditional problem noticed often in organisation where the senior workers try to bully the newcomers. This is more observed in organisations where the roles and job schedules are not explicitly defined.Then happens what is expected. The three monks fall into a conflict and the work gets gridlocked. None of them is ready to work and fill the buckets.

14:31 - 18:00
An important aspect is to understand why it happened?

The three monks didn't have their known share of work/duties. Hence, the conflict.

Then comes the real hero of the movie, the mouse. Why am I saying so?
Because mouse is the one who brought the situation which would leave the monks(and us) with a great lesson.
Keep reading for that!

When the temple catches fire, the three monks find themselves unprepared for the situation. They then realize that they require coordination and team effort to cope up with the situation in hand. This not just unites them to work together but also bring them on their toes. 

The lesson from this is that challenges have the potential to inspire us to work together.

INNOVATION

Once the situation in hand is over, the three monks innovate a new system of work using pulley system to be used from then onwards.The beauty of the new devised system is:

• Work is clearly defined for each of the monk.
• Even without an external supervision, this type of system is capable of monitoring itself. This is because no monk would be able to avoid his work as the others would ensure his productivity.

This system is very useful in organisations. This innovation remains to be the biggest lesson we could learn from these three monks.

Hope you liked the lessons(and blog)!
Till the next blog,
Enjoy reading!!