Learning Process Improvement through an Animated Film!

Even management principles can be learnt by films! I realized this when Prof. Mandi taught us some key concepts by using a short film as a learning medium. Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. After the Cultural Revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animations created as part of the rebirth period. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.

The film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rolBiHfWokY

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." 

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple 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 holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. 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 temple never lacks water again. 

Some of the key learnings are:

1.       Process improvement vs People management:

Agreed! Management is both about people and processes. But for processes to work and achieve results, the preliminary thing is establishing a well defined method. Once an efficient method is established, one can work towards people management, but not vice versa. 

For the film, we try do a Productivity analysis according to which getting 1 bucket shared by the two monks is a much better proposition. Just to make it clearer, here is a table illustrating the productivity statistics in either case. Assuming 1 Man uses 1 unit of energy to lift 1 bucket.

Event	Output (No. of buckets)	Input(Worker Energy units)	Productivity = Output/Input
1 Man – 2 buckets	2	2	1
2 Men – 1 bucket	1	0.5	2

Productivity is Important. Productivity is about how well an organization converts resource inputs into goods or services. Workplace productivity is about how firms can utilize labor and skills, innovation, technology and organizational structure to improve the quantity and quality of their output. Once a consensus is formed on the process, people management can be looked into.

2.       Complex Problems, Simple Solutions : Scientific Thinking

There should be a scientific approach to solve any problem. This should be the motto of decision making for any manager or team member in an organization. This also highlights the need of engineering brains in management arena. The productivity analysis as shown above is one method. Innovative thinking is required.

3.       Division Of Work and Synergy among roles:

As soon as the new monk entered, the old monk tried to put the whole responsibility on the new monk hence trying to avoid any efforts. Consider a similar situation in any organization, if that is done every employee will have to spend more time in learning new things than implementing the things that he already has learnt so minimizing possible output. So, effective division of labour and synergy among the roles is important.

4.       Discipline and Team Work:

When the third monk went downhill to fetch water for the first time, he came back and drank water all by himself, exhibiting a selfish tendency not aligned to the goals of the team i.e. To have water stored at all times. This led to further animosity among the 3 monks and the task never got completed. Hence even in an organization, selfish motives should be discouraged. There should be a discipline in the workings of the organization, which can be enforced only through management. A team working towards a common goal is the best direction to head to.

Summarily, it's about exploring all the ways that can make a working environment more efficient.

Organizational management with Scientific management will avail new, and the most effective ideas and ways of performing the most difficult tasks, in the easiest of manners.

 

 

 Of Goals and Managerial Skills....

“The only source of knowledge is experience.” - Albert Einstein

Prof. Mandi's lectures on Principles of Organization and Mangement truly follow this spirit of education.

In the previous post, I had mentioned a tower building activity being carried out in the class. Prof. Mandi derived further insights from that.

Some of the important concepts learnt were:

Goal Setting and SMART Goals:

Prof. Mandi explained the importance of Goal setting and Goal achievement.  We should set goals that are  SMART- Specific-Measurable-Achievable-Realistic-Time Bound. 

The SMART way of goal setting is a useful tool, but our thoughts should not be restricted to these five keywords only. The interpretation and relevance may vary from situation to situation. The following graphic explores a few more ways of defining smart goals.

Pygmalion in Management:

J. Sterling Livingston named a 1969 article after the mythical sculptor who carves a statue of a woman that is brought to life. His title also pays homage to George Bernard Shaw, whose play Pygmalion explores the notion that the way one person treats another can, for better or worse, be transforming. In his article, Livingston notes that creating positive expectations is remarkably difficult, and he offers guidelines for managers: Focus special attention on an employee’s first year because that’s when expectations are set, make sure new hires get matched with outstanding supervisors, and set high expectations for yourself. These cases and other evidence available from scientific research now reveal:

·         What managers expect of subordinates and the way they treat them largely determine their performance and career progress.

·         A unique characteristic of superior managers is the ability to create high performance expectations that subordinates fulfill.

·         Less effective managers fail to develop similar expectations, and as a consequence, the productivity of their subordinates suffers.

·         Subordinates, more often than not, appear to do what they believe they are expected to do.

 Skills of a Manager 

The above picture or diagram shows the managerial skills which are required by managers working at different levels of management. The top-level managers require more conceptual skills and less technical skills. The lower-level managers require more technical skills and fewer conceptual skills. Human relations skills are required equally by all three levels of management.

1. Conceptual Skills

Conceptual skill is the ability to visualise (see) the organisation as a whole. It includes Analytical, Creative and Initiative skills. It helps him to solve the problems for the benefit of the entire organisation.

2. Human Relations Skills

Human relations skills are also called Interpersonal skills. It is an ability to work with people. It helps the managers to understand, communicate and work with others.

3. Technical Skills

A technical skill is the ability to perform the given job. Technical skills help the managers to use different machines and tools. It also helps them to use various procedures and techniques.

The interplay of these skills and goal setting was perfectly exhibited in the tower building exercise, where there was a goal setting on the number of blocks used for the tower and then over-performing and exceeding the goals. Also, the conceptual, human and technical skill requirements were effectively demonstrated when the blindfolded person was supervised by a person and both of them were in turn, guided by a third (top) person.

Happy to Learn!  :) 

Division of Work

 

This was just my second lecture of the course, but the learning that I am deriving out of this course is startling me.  It is helping me to unlearn and learn, negate my existing assumptions and providing deeper insights on management principles.

Prof. Mandi in line with his philosophy of ‘learning by doing’ carried out the following activity:

The activity: We were asked to build a tower using wooden blocks. It was done in two parts:

Method 1: He gave chance to one student to build the tower using the blocks. The height which he was able to attain was 22 blocks.

Method 2: The task had to be done by a blind folded person. Three people were chosen who played the role of a CEO, manager and a worker respectively. The worker was blindfolded and Manager gave instructions to him. CEO supervised the entire activity. Contrary to the expectations, the tower was built with 25 blocks!!

This highlighted the importance of two things:

1. Importance of Division of Labor: 

The work is divided and divided to achieve maximum efficiency. The order is: Work-Jobs-Activities-Tasks-Elements..

2. Craftsmanship vs. Modern Management:

The case 1 of the activity was based on craftsmanship whereas case 2 of the activity was on the principles of modern management.

A craftsman may be very skilled but he is not organized and has lower productivity. This is the old style of management. The advantage of craftsmanship is that, satisfaction is the most and skill is the highest.

Case 2 of the activity was based on Modern Management philosophy. It used division of labour and managerial skills to improve productivity. The worker was doing a mechanical job. But, that helped him develop few skills perfectly. Due to this division, tasks are well defined and large scale production is possible. By blindfolding, management is able to keep the decision making power in its hands, which in turn leads to better organization. The downside is the satisfaction level of workers is the less. This can be catered to by better management of human relations by the lower management.

There could have been no better way to explain such elaborative and practical concepts in such a practical manner.  It helped me understand the philosophy of the management at my previous workplace. I was able to penetrate deeper into their minds. I hope that this course continues to evolve my concepts further more as it progresses …

A Novel Start to Management Journey!!!

My official journey at NITIE began yesterday only, but my second day at NITIE made me feel that, this is the real beginning of my management education. Having worked for 2 years in a corporate environment, I had forgotten the struggle with which I used to attend the morning classes during my B.Tech. But then, I managed to reach the class at 9 AM.As per schedule,I was expecting a class on Communication Skills, but as the professor was absent, unexpectedly Prof. T. Prasad walked in to teach the course on Principles of Organization and Management. Prof. Prasad is fondly known as Prof. Mandi and is much famed for his innovative methods of teaching the management principles.

I was excited to attend his very first class and that too unexpectedly!! And the experience and surprises of Prof. Mandi's teaching began....With Prof Mandi walking in, removing all the formal setups of chair, table and asking all of us to sit (or even lay down comfortably ) on the floor. And this was his first learning... to be proud of what you are and to be grounded to your roots and Desi ideals, even today.

Later on, Prof. Mandi taught us in a truly experiential manner the real meaning of education and management. He demonstrated a few educational toys and told us about the 'Mandi' initiative at NITIE. Mandi is an annual event at NITIE, where students go to the streets of Mumbai and sell educational toys. Mandi is the brainchild of Prof. Mandi which again reinforces his philosophy of personal internalization of management principles and experiential learning.

Some of the interesting toys that he demonstrated:

He demonstrated a basic scientific toy known as Newton's Cradle, which was built by two engineers turned entrepreneurs. Surprisingly, none of us had ever used the toy for learning purposes. This made us ponder over the current state of education in India, where students and teachers believe in rot learning that lacks creativity. 

Then, he asked us to assess the potential market for selling this toy and the pricing.

In addition, he showed us a butterfly and a stress buster ball with a globe imprinted on it. He demonstrated that how fun it can be to learn geography for a child while playing with the globe in the form of a rubber ball.

Again, we assessed the price and market for this product. He made us realize that we are stuck by a beggar mentality where today most of us employment seekers and not employment generators. We also discussed ways to make the event ‘Mandi’ even bigger.

On Prof. Mandi's blog, he highlights the philosophy of the course as :

Soacho.. Becho !  Becho.. Seekho ! !   Seekho .. Soacho ! ! !

Behatar Padhai ke Liye... Kamai !

Earning by Learning & Earning for Learning  !

Aaj Ki roti...Aaj hee,  kamyaenghae  !

True to his words, Prof. made us realize the cost which we are incurring for our management education and inspired us to earn by learning, while learning. He made us realize that the spirit of 'Dhanda' or business is best learnt by implementation. He envisioned an education system where students have entrepreneurial minds, where learning is fun and where students actually learn by doing ...I wish that this philosophy gets integrated in our Indian education system. The sooner it is, the better it is for the nation.