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.