Digital CV- Antriksh Kumar Roll Number 35

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Navrang....just for namesake

'Navrang', hindi for 9 colours. But that's not what we are going to discuss today. Of course a management lesson would accompany it.
Here we are back, people, with our series of discussion on the course of Principles of Organization and Management.

So what did our Prof Mandi had to offer with Navrang. Well, a very peculiar kind of a toy. I am getting used to this way of teaching with toys- to see something so innocent as a bunch of blocks turn into something that can easily pass as a management jargon.
I mean have a look at it..

This is stuff for kindergarten students but the message it delivers would be difficult to be understood by Post Graduates like us. Anyhow, moving on.

So, what is an organization composed of? Elements, sections, departments. And the melodrama continues. Connect that to navrang, each of the 27 small fragments form an element which work cohesively to form a rod, or say, section, and three such sections combine together to form a department(here plate).

And what do these departments make up when they come together? Well, they make up an organization.

So, Professor Mandi gave us a task to make this cube with each face of the cube having distinct colours. It might sound easy, but many of the students who took the onus to complete it, couldn't get it done.

However, when you orchestrate each move in a proper pattern, things just turn out to be fairly easy.

This is what happen in organizations. Random, haphazard movements never turn into something great. Planned and properly guided steps turn into a larger picture which is befitting to be called an organization.

I have attached a video of how to solve this puzzle of navrang with 9 cubes of different colour on each face.

Watch this space on more discussion on Organization and Management.
Comments and Suggestions are welcomed.

Rendezvous with Amit Shah

Not much of a rendezvous, rather a formal gathering where NITIE alumni Amit Shah shared his experience with us.
Slight departure from the regular lessons of Principles of Organization and Management.
It was a Saturday, and a much awaited one because of the hectic committee selection process in the week prior to the day. Dr Mandi had arranged a session with Amit Shah, an IM-12 passout from NITIE who had actually excelled in his field of interest, given that the world went into a financial turmoil when he passed out from college in the year 2007.
Rather reluctantly, I went to the college where the session was planned to be held. And to my surprise, it turned to be perhaps one of the most informative session that we've had so far in our short stay here in the college.
The session started with a brief introduction, where we were made aware of the accolades that Amit had won. I was in-fact mesmerized by them, because, like us, he had studied from what is called, the 'Mecca' of Operations, and had excelled in the field of Finance to become Executive Vice President and Country Head of the Corporate Branding, Marketing and Strategic Communication Department of Yes Bank Ltd (yes sir, all of that).
The ease with which Amit explained his learning from the varied experience he has garnered over the years, is simply commendable. Going with the flow is generally easy, but coming against the grain and then excelling at it, is another story altogether. Well, I think, people who are feisty enough to think beyond the regular norms are the ones who actually achieve great things in life.

Just for your reference, below is the link to Amit's LinkedIn Profile.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/amitkshah

A few clicks from the session

Watch this space for future discussions on principles of organization and management.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Passing mountains, Crossing Valleys...

Don't go by the topic. It's not a travelogue. In-fact a new lesson in the field of Principles of Organization and Management.
We are back again folks, to discuss new arenas of the course taught here at NITIE by our very own Professor Mandi (famous professor, indeed!!!)

So what's in store today...
A rather happening session, a physical workout, a management lesson.
The objective today, as explained by Professor Mandi was to learn about the importance of team work and the various constituents associated with it, using a very unorthodox way of crossing a valley.

To understand the objective better, take a look at the illustration below,

It is essentially self explanatory. Three people would be crossing a valley, by strategically using a pole. Risks involved....well many!

Without going into explaining the details in a boring way, let's have diagrams, tables and data do our work

The following deductions can be made from the illustrations above:

Persons	First	Second	Third
Steps
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risk
3	Full Risk
4	Half Risk	Half Risk
5	Safe	Full Risk
6		Half Risk	Half Risk
7		Safe	Full Risk
8			Half Risk
9			Safe

So, what did we learn from all this?

Participative Leadership: different from the traditional approach of an authoritative leader

Open and Clear Communication: as you would have imagined, communication amongst the three people is the key to successfully accomplish this task

Trust: mutual trust amongst the team members is a must. If the members don't have trust in each other, they might turn cold feet when reaching the edge of the valley.

Coordination: Coordinated effort was required to accomplish the task. With that, crossing the valley would have been extremely difficult.

Apart from these, it is evident that for the task to be a success, each member should understand his/her roles and responsibility. Failing to understand one's role at the time of deliverance might end up being fatal (if crossing a real valley, that it).

Here's a video demonstration of the same exercise by our seniors.

That was it. Another, very informative session ended.

We shall be continuing our discussion on the future session of Principles of Organization and Management. Till then, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Water water everywhere, but not a single drop for the "Three Monks"

Three Monks (or Three Monks no water or Three Buddhist Priest, whatever suits you), is a Chinese animation feature film that released in 1980.

Three Monks no water!

The film is based on the 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.

You would be wondering why am I talking about an animation film (hello, not kids anymore), but read on to know more.

Here we are back on the discussion of Principles of Organization and Management. This time, Professor Mandi had a slight twist in store for us. The session started with a discussion on "Three Monks" (yes, the film). I think a little glimpse of the movie plot would be good for the understanding.

A young monk lives a simple life in a monastery on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle, leading to a devastating fire in the monastery. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The monastery never lacks water again.

So what do we learn from this? Or rather, what management lesson could one perceive from the film?

The story of the three monks tells us about the basic human nature and the requirement of having a proper coordination amongst the team. People mostly try to lay off their work on to others instead of making a collective effort and divide the work properly. Also, for any activity to be done successfully, the coordination between the team members is very vital. And for proper coordination the team members must feel friendly towards each other. As in the video when the three monks become friends towards the end they were able to come up with the innovative idea to procure water for the monastery.

Let's have consider the methods employed by the monks to fetch the water up to the monastery:

1.                  One monk carries 2 buckets of water at a time and takes it to the monastery.

2.                  Two monks share the load of a single bucket of water.

3.                  The use of pulley system to fetch the water in which all 3 monks are involved.

To compare these methods with each other, take a look at the table below:

Methods:	1	2	3
1	-----	Compared to method 2, method 1 proves to be more efficient as the amount of work done in the particular time is more in 1. Also, in terms of productivity, 1 is better.	Compared to 1, 3 appear to be a better option plainly because of the work being quantified. Effective division of work would lead to better productivity.
2	Method 2 is better than method 1 in terms of load sharing, but the shear difficulty that the monks faced because of each of them being of a different height, made the task a lot more demanding.	-----	Compared to 2, 3 had a mix of both: better productivity and efficiency. Also to be kept in mind, physical fatigue in method 3 is much less than compared to the 1 and 2.
3	Method 3 has a good mix of both increased productivity and increased efficiency. Moreover, decreasing human labour and physical fatigue. Where method 1 could easily be related to craftsmanship, 3 was all about an organization	Method 2 involves the effort being divided but on round to fetch water, only one bucket (half the work) could be procured. In terms of productivity, method 2 is least productive. Method 3 on the other hand is the most effective to achieve the aim, that is fetch water with minimum effort and maximum output (example of a perfect organization).	-----

From the comparison, it is evident that method 3 is the best, but that didn't happen all of a sudden. The three monks had to go through a lot of hardships to achieve this. Similar things could be achieved in an organization. The daily on-goings of an organization should be innovation-based, in view of increasing the productivity and decreasing manual labor.

Various examples could be taken from the current corporate. Toyota, for example, follows the just-in-time model, which is a result of innovative ideas put to work. Dell Computer’s supply chain was a result of innovation. DHL Courier Service changed its international parcel delivery system in view to achieve better productivity.

With that, another informative session came to an end.
Watch this space out for more informative discussion related to Principles of Organization and Management.

"If you can’t appreciate what you've got, you’d better get what you can appreciate": Pygamlion

We are back here to continue with the series of discussions on the course of Principles of Organization and Management. We enter into the fourth session discussion today. Please refer to the previous posts for reference on the topics that we have covered.

So what's in the stores for today?

The session started with a discussion on 3D Printing (what does that have to do with principles of Organization and Management?). 3D Printing is a novel technology that is being used these days in the field of 3D modeling and prototyping. Various industries such as automobile, construction, etc. are using 3D models printed straight out of CAD drawings to study their behavior when exposed to their working conditions. Scaled models of automobiles are tested in wind tunnels to fine tune their aerodynamics without actually building the vehicle in its skin. It's a pretty intriguing concept however it does come at quite a premium, costs running in excess of Rs 50 lakhs.

Professor Mandi informed us that seniors from our very own college (alumnus, if you may) were actually working in this field. They had set up an organization to help provide 3D Printers for engineering colleges in India. A noble step indeed. I was wondering if only my engineering college had one of these machine, how much fun it would have been to work. You think of a model, you make it on a computer, and instantly you could have it materialize in front of you.

Steadily the session moved on to discuss the matter of Goal Setting and how it can form or deform an organization. Say, for example, taking the tower building as we covered in the previous posts, what would be someone's goal when he sets to build up that tower. If someone wishes to list them under the sub-headings of:
1. Goal Set
2. Goal Achieved
3. Goal (Historical)
4. Potential
5. Realistic Goal Set

6. Realistic Goal Achieved

Not easy if you analyse the situation. I mean, u haven't even started your work of tower building, but you need to be clear about your goal. More specifically, about every minor detail.

This is where the concept of SMART Goals comes up.
S- Specific, Simple, Structure, Sustainable, Sensible

M- Measurable, Motivating

A- Achievable, Ambitious

R- Rational, Realistic

T- Time bound, Tangible

For an organization to thrive, it should have a clear visualization of its SMART goal. When I say organization, I mean all the individuals who build-up the organization.

Here the abstraction of Pygmalion Effect was also considered.

Pygmalion is an English play by noted playwright George Bernard Shaw, where a Phonetics Professor takes up the onus of making a common flower girl elegant and fit enough to pass in the Queen's Garden Party. The idea is, the Professor had confidence in his abilities and placed great expectations on the girl, so that she could perform better. That's what Pygmalion Effect precisely is. It is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform (Wikipedia, eh!).

Lesson learnt.



Now it was time for a practical demonstration which happened in the next session. A team was called again for that (never ending, huh!) tower building exercise. But this time, it was not mere 'Craftsmanship' as play; It was an organization: structured, coordinated, motivated and high aiming. And the results did show that. From the 16 blocks height in previous attempt by a craftsman and 7 blocks height try from the flustered 'organization' (of sorts), they achieved a commendable 24. Job well done.
But hey, we did learn something, didn't we: not to have a low aim. So the team started again, and broke the previous best record of 27 to reach 28. Great!!!

This is the power of Expectation learned from the Pygmalion Effect and the strength of Organization.

Watch-out this space for more discussions.

eee.... The three E’s!!!

Taking the series of experiences of Principles of Organization Management along, let’s move on to the next session we had.

Yet again, the class lined up for us was cancelled due to unavailability of the Professor-in charge. But hey, you’re in NITIE. There’s no day-offs here. The session, yet again, was taken up by our very own Professor Prasad (or Professor Mandi. I should stop this introduction anyway).

So, what did Professor Mandi had in store for us today?
He walked into the class room with his bag of many things, and a somewhat familiar toy in his hand. I recognized it on the very glance (courtesy: my sister, as she is an alumnus of NITIE (IM16)) as the toy that the previous batches have sold at the event named Mandi (Professor Prasad is called Professor Mandi because of that; more on that in later posts).
But, it was again a day for the wooden cubes. I thought, probably Professor Prasad might have missed out on something in the previous sessions.

The discussion started with a continuation from previous session; a comparison between Craftsmanship and Modern Management. Craftsmanship, as taken up in the previous posts, doesn’t require any management. Here satisfaction may be high, but the glimpse of an organization is nowhere to be seen. On the contrary, Modern Management faces some intricate challenges, which might look easy, but are wholly difficult in their execution.

Craftsmanship requires dexterity; it requires skills to do the work, because there’s no one to cover up for you. In management, however, skills are not much of a priority, as the work is quantified and distributed.
Take an example of a welding shop, not a small one, but a large scale assembly line type (much like the one in an automobile company). There would be a person who would solely do the cleaning of surfaces, another one who would be preparing the edges to be welded and then there would be a welder. Here, the work is suitably divided with a hint of parallelism, such that, if one person fails on a job, the whole shop won’t suffer. By contrast, if you consider all of these tasks being done by one single person, the level of dependency on him reaches a whole new level. In essence, there’s no person-based but process-based work involved in modern management.

The three E’s, as the title of this post suggests, becomes the spine of management. That’s Effectiveness, Efficiency and Excellence, combined together to form a mantra that is followed in an organization.

Excellence = Effectiveness X Efficiency

Bear in mind that it is a multiplicative equation and not an additive one. And how does one define these E’s? To quote Professor Prasad, ‘more out of less is Efficiency’ and ‘more out of less for more is Excellence’. The effectiveness needs to be present, because clearly, making more out of less without serving any purpose is waste (duh!).

Towards the end of the session, there was a bid for making the tower, in the same fashion as discussed in the previous post (I thought, we won’t be using those cubes today; naivety). This time though, there was a slight change. Now, there was a bid for the CEO of the company, a mid-level manager and a worker (with suitable bidding cost for each of them).

Professor Prasad did find his men, but due to shortage of time, this activity was postponed to the next session.

With this, the session ended.

Watch out this space for more experiences.