Fourth Day of POM : Pearls Galore !

And here are some more pearls of wisdom from our 4th encounter with Dr. Mandi

Summary of tasks on the board and some action

Pygmalion Effect 

Pygmalion was a sculptor who lived in Cyprus. Women who lived on Cyprus didn't stay virtuous, so Pygmalion decided to live alone and made a perfect sculpture, Galatea. During the Aphrodite feast, thanks to Pygmalion`s prayers, the sculpture turned into a real person. This was called The Pygmalion effect.

Pygmalion in action

The Pygmalion effect shows that if we want something enough, we'll get it.

The Pygmalion effect is also an important instrument in management theory. It makes managers be aware, that the success of their employees depends not only on qualification, personal qualities or working environment. Manager always has to believe in his people and expect them to achieve the best results. In such case the subordinates will always feel this trust and demonstrate their best skills and abilities in their work.

Also, the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. The corollary of the Pygmalion effect is the Golem effect, in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.

SMART Goals

Smart Goals

Specific

The first term stresses the need for a specific goal over and against a more general one. This means the goal is clear and unambiguous; without vagaries and platitudes. To make goals specific, they must tell a team exactly what is expected, why is it important, who’s involved, where is it going to happen and which attributes are important.

Measurable

The second term stresses the need for concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of the goal. The thought behind this is that if a goal is not measurable, it is not possible to know whether a team is making progress toward successful completion.

 

Attainable

The third term stresses the importance of goals that are realistic and attainable. While an attainable goal may stretch a team in order to achieve it, the goal is not extreme. That is, the goals are neither out of reach nor below standard performance, as these may be considered meaningless. 

Relevant

Relevant goals (when met) drive the team, department, and organization forward. A goal that supports or is in alignment with other goals would be considered a relevant goal.

Time-bound

The fifth term stresses the importance of grounding goals within a time frame, giving them a target date. A commitment to a deadline helps a team focus their efforts on completion of the goal on or before the due date. 

All these were taken care of in the Single Block tower task and hence the expected goal was achieved timely in both open eyed and close eyed scenarios.

And one more observation that we could draw from the tower task was:-

Goal Set > Potential > Goal achieved > History

The Goal Set should be such that it helps us to realize our true Potential.

Generally the Goal Achieved is less than our Potential, because our potential continuously keeps on changing, and we always keep on striving to reach that target.

The Goal Achieved has to be more than the Historic Goals achieved. If this is not the case, it will eliminate the scope of growth and improvement.

Goals Curve

I hope by now even you guys must be looking forward to the next roller coaster ride as much as I am! Cheers !

Third Day of POM: 1 + 1 = 2 or 1+1 = 11?

The class for which we have started waiting eagerly came again and we were all the more excited this time around, primarily, to unlearn and relearn. And after the class we were as satisfied as we had expected.

Just like the Expectancy Dis-confirmation model says,

Satisfaction is when  à  Experience >= Expectation

And our Experience indeed was much greater than our expectations.

The class started with some discussion about the Sky walk task which our college seniors had performed. The figure below is self explanatory of the fact as to what the task is all about.

The length of walkable gap and the minimum people are turnkeys for the experiment.

Sky walk

Chalking out the vision, mission and objective statements would be any place to start for a manager carrying out this experiment. Defining roles and assigning tasks based on risks involved would come next. Based on all this 
the execution of the task should be taken up.

After this discussion we were taken on a roller coaster ride of our own . So let’s get a sneak peek into our
roller coaster experience.The setup this time around was the same; Dr. Mandi walked in made us take us back to our roots and opened the doors to the way of learning through fun/earn.The activity this time around was to build a tower using wooden building blocks and it was divided into two stages.

Stage 1: Build the tower alone

To decide who would be the one building the tower, a bidding process was introduced.The one who bids the highest would get the opportunity to build the tower as per the expectation he sets. In case the person delivers as per the expectations, he would get his bid amount back; otherwise the entire class would get the opportunity to gorge on some delicious chocolates.

So the first person, who put up a bid of 400 Rs and set an expectation of building a tower with 16 blocks, was put to test.

Tower 1

And the person under promised and over delivered with building a tower with 22 blocks.

The 1^st stage introduced us to the concept of Craftsmanship (the old school of management).

Craftsmanship: It basically means that one person tries to manage everything and anything. There is no division of work. The person has to manage everything single-handedly. He ends up being a Jack of all trades but master of none.

Output is on the lines of : 1+1 = 2

The person has the power of doing and deciding. The person is the one working, he is his own manager and he is his own CEO. The open eyed person in the first stage of the activity falls in this group.

We have numerous examples of such people around us – Cobblers, Bread makers, Hawkers, so on and so forth.

Stage 2: Build the tower blind folded, using one hand only (worker); while receiving directions from an open eyed person (manager), to achieve the goal set by the CEO.

The same bidding process was observed and the three people were asked to set a target of building a tower with more than 22 blocks.

All of us thought that being blind folded and just by merely receiving instructions from a person, would not lead to a tower with 23 blocks (expectation set by CEO). 

Tower 2

                                     

                                                               Tower 2 Video

   

But to everyone’s surprise, the team managed to build a tower with 27 blocks.

The 2^nd stage introduced us to the concept of Division of Labor (the new school of management).

Division of Labor: It basically believes in the principle of dividing the work into jobs, jobs into activities, activities into tasks and tasks into elements.

It takes away the power of deciding from the person implementing the task, and also makes his scope of work narrow, specific, well defined; this helps him become an expert in his module and thereby increases his efficiency. The CEO sets the goal related to the number of blocks with which the tower needs to be built and the manager defines the process on how to implement the same.Hence everyone’s work becomes well defined and this helps to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of work done greatly.

Everyone moves from a jack of all trades to being a master of one.And many such ones make a significant whole.

Output is on the lines of :  1 + 1 = 11

Inferences that we could draw:-

Parameter	Craftsmanship	Division of Labor – Organized Management
Work	Ambiguous	Crystal Clear
Skill required	Skill	Deskill
Effort required	High	Low
Time to complete	High	Low
Efficiency	Low	High

This is what all we learned out of this fun activity. As expected it was a highly enlightening process and again we fell in awe of this technique of teaching.

Personal Experience

At work, I was working on a module independently. All the decisions and tasks were being handled by me alone (Craftsmanship). Right from reporting to functional designs to technical designs to coding.  So I was a jack of all the trades.

Then I was assigned a subordinate (co - worker), we divided the tasks a little but we worked like two craftsman without much division of labor.Then a third member joined our team, because of some inappropriate team dynamics, conflicts and procrastination; I ended up dividing the entire work into tasks, tasks into activities and I assigned the same to each of them. Each one of them had specified tasks assigned everyday from a specific domain (for instance technical design and coding and not functional tasks and reporting). Only I had the power to take decisions. Gradually they became experts in their respective fields. One became expert in technical designs and coding; the other one in functional designs and reporting. This improved the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the team by leaps and bounds; and led us towards excellence.

And now I can relate what happened at work to what I learnt in this class ! Already looking forward to the next roller coaster ride. Cheers!

P.S - The link for the full video of the 2nd task.

First Day of POM : To Learn or To Earn ?

Looking at the rain outside we all were eagerly waiting in our chairs for the faculty to arrive and the class to begin.

Dr Prasad aka Dr.Mandi entered the class , unsettled us from our comfy chairs and asked us to sit on the floor and started talking in Hindi ; he took us all back to our roots , to that rawness and we all felt nostalgic at that point of time.

NITIE - Syndicate 2 - Section B

The class started with Sir introducing himself and we were delighted when Sir said that 'He was born to teach' and it truly reflected during the entire session that he was indeed born to teach.

Sir started requesting questions from the students and there mere many enlightening and interesting things that we discussed :

1) Mandi - http://www.nitie.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=508&Itemid=422

MANDI , 2009

We discussed about the concept ,origin and intricacies of the same.We realized that Mandi is one of the best ways to learn management at grass root level.We were amazed by the fact that this concept was so interesting , that it attracted lakhs of sponsorship , ranging from the clothes to umbrella and everything.Also , not only we , even the media was intrigued by this concept of NITIE Students taking management to the city at such a basic level,learning and earning from it ; and they covered parts of this event.

We discussed about the event and realized that the event covers all the aspects of management ;from choosing your own products(from Gandhi biographies to Alumni products),

procuring the same , deciding your own strategy, deciding the cost of the product , to ways to sell the products.

It made us realize that management is not learned in the classroom , it is learned when you are out there outside in action , trying to learn out of your attempt to earn.

2) Innovative Educational Products

There came a time when Sir reached for his bag , took out some products and handed over them to us.

One of them was Newtons Cradle , other one was Globe Ball , and the last product was much More than a Butterfly.

The beauty of the products , which were basically toys, was that they gave more Gyan than Fun.

a) Newtons Cradle - an innovation toy by two students of production engineering which helped them set up their first firm while they were in college itself and

also put to practice all their assignments on the same, taught basics principles of physics in fun way.

Newtons Cradle

It made us realize the importance of practical learning and which is indeed a much more fun way and the real way to learn.This introduced us to the concept of learning through earning. We realized that real learning is that , out of which we can earn , and that there is no point in learning , if no earning can happen out of it. And that we should learn in a way that it automatically leads to earning. And somewhere in our mind we all ended up making a resolution to earn at least a fraction of the amount we are spending here while we are learning.

b) Globe ball and More than Butterfly - The ball had a globe printed on it.A boy can play with both of them as well learn from the globe printed on the ball and the principles of science which are inherent in the design of the butterfly.

Globe Ball

The important point we learned through this was that opportunities lay around us, we just have to think differently & grab them.We have learned a lot throughout our student life now it is the time to apply it & earn while we learn.

At the end of the session, we felt enlightened and somehow this session has already left an everlasting impression on our mind.

We just Cant wait for the coming sessions ! Cheers !

P.S - You can have a look at the man in action here - http://www.youtube.co/watch?v=B2R8hzI8jXA