Navrang

Just when you thought The Magnet was the only thing where you could explore hidden management principles and you were back to your comfort zone, there came The NAVRANG Puzzle. When Dr Mandi bought one into class, I was puzzled (pun intended). The basic objective of the Navrang Puzzle is to get all 9 colors on all 6 sides.

Unlike a standard Rubik's Cube, where we rotate the faces and align a single color on each of the 6 faces, the Navrang Puzzle is to be dismantled and reassembled so that all the faces have 9 different colors on each face. Dr Mandi challenged us to find an algorithm or method to reassemble the Puzzle in order to reach the intended objective. After a few desperately minutes of thinking a few fast thinking Samaritans devised a plan, but unfortunately, the plan didn't work too well.

              Looking at us struggling miserably, Dr Mandi decided to lead by example and he solved the Puzzle in about 2 minutes using a well-defined method. Sir used a 3-step algorithm. And below is my own attempt at solving the same using the same algorithm.

So where is the management in this ?

Here it is...

It is here we were introduced to two important concepts: (a) Organizational Structure and (b) Unity of Objective.

           An Organizational Structure consists of activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision, which are directed towards the achievement of organizational aims. An organization can be structured in many different ways, depending on their objectives. The structure of an organization will determine the modes in which it operates and performs.

Unity of Objectives stands for the philosophy according to which every individual and every process in an organization should aim to fulfil the organization's Objectives and Mission Statement.

 The most important step was to understand is that without an objective, this puzzle would never have been solved. It is the objective that determines the method by which we have to solve the problem. Any method we device, it must be capable of being easily replicated. Only then can we achieve economies of scale and get effective outputs.

 As the different colored cubes are arranged in single face of NAVRANG, similarly in case of an Organisation every individual is assigned a proper job and function to deliver. All the distinct colors represent people/teams with distinct skills, tasks, jobs, personalities, background and ethnicity. The NAVRANG (9 colors per face) represents all of them being distributed evenly, all of them coming together, working in harmony to achieve the objectives of the organization. Any blocks misplaced will affect the whole NAVRANG, so the same case happens in organisation also. Having two same colors represents redundancy, conflicts, inefficient allocation of resources which is not expected and leads to inefficiency.

Bottom line is The Organization Structure should be as holistic and multidimensional as a NAVRANG cube.