Valley Crossing

Today's class is about an unconventional learning experience. Our very own  Dr. Mandi asked us to perform  a valley crossing exercise in group of three. Initially it looked more of a team building activity, but slowly & gradually I realized the importance of the same. The exercise had an hidden agenda of Organizational Management and Teamwork. 

The task at hand required a group of three people to move from left side of the valley to the right side with the help of a pole. The task demanded a good conceptual knowledge of the problem at hand & building an effective strategy to be implemented to solve the problem. 

The strategy required setting of SMART goals that were specific for each team member, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time bound.   

For the success of the Valley Crossing problem, the key ingredient was coordination among team members &efficient execution of the strategy devised. 

ISSUES AT HAND:

·         Speed of the 3 valley crossers should be synchronized.

·         Real Time Communication should be there among them - where they could communicate to each other how and what steps to be taken while crossing the valley. Also this would help them be on the same platform of thoughts which is of utmost importance in this task.

·         

      Gap Size between any pair should be uniform.

·        

           Closed Feedback Loop must be present.

      Interdependence among the crossers should be there.

    SOLVING THE PROBLEM: 

The exercise was divided into 8 steps which have been explained below:

S – Safe i.e.  the person is safely present on the land.

R – Risky i.e. the person is completely in the valley.

HS - Half safe i.e. one foot of the person is in the valley and one foot is on the land.

Step Number	Person 1	Person 2	Person 3
1	S	S	S
2	HS	S	S
3	R	HS	S
4	HS	R	S
5	S	HS	HS
6	S	S	R
7	S	S	HS
8	S	S	S

  

   

KEY TAKE AWAYS FROM THE EXERCISE:

·         Leadership – different from the tradition approach of an authoritarian team leader.

·         

       Proper Communication – Communication is the key to crossing the valley effectively.

·         

     

     

       Trust Factor – Every person needed to trust each other completely especially when their feet was off the ground.

               

·         Conflicts Management – dealing with conflict openly and transparently and not allowing grudges to build up and destroy team morale.

·         Goals – The goals were clear, defined and each member in the team fully understood the gravity of the problem.

·         Predefined Roles and Responsibilities – each team member understood what they ought to do and what they ought not do, to demonstrate their commitment to the team and to support team success. Furthermore the roles and responsibilities keep on changing depending on the situation. 

·         

        Positive Attitude – an overall team culture that is open, transparent, positive, future-focused and able to deliver success.

       Equality but not equal - every member should be given same work load but not the same work.

      

Coordination- Finally the most important of them all was coordination that was the sole reason for our success.

Grameen Bank - Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus

A video about Grameen bank

Bangladesh's Mohammad Yunus is an iconic figure, the face of microcredit. He proved that giving small loans to poor women on the condition that they create a business was profitable and also helped people get out of poverty.

A self-proclaimed "banker to the poor", Yunus is a global celebrity overshadowing the country's leading political figures, including the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, daughter of the man who is heralded as the father of Bangladesh. 

The story of Yunus as told by Nicolas Haque is an Al Jazeera correspondent working out of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Like many people who were born and raised abroad in families that had roots in Bangladesh, I admired Yunus as a teenager, not because he won the 2006 Nobel Prize, but because he had realised a dream common to many Bangladeshis living abroad: helping fellow countrymen out of poverty.

So when I first came to Bangladesh in 2008 as a journalist, Grameen was the story I wanted to pursue. With the help of a friend, I took up a loan to buy a camera, and together we travelled to villages to meet people who had taken up loans with the bank. We met women who were heavily indebted. They were having difficulties paying back the 20 per cent interest rate on their loans.

Many of them were illiterate and couldn't keep tabs on how much they owed to the bank. Some were crying, frightened of the weekly meetings they had to attend, when Grameen debt collectors would come to pick up the money due.

It was intimidating to witness; they come in groups, all men, all asking for their money back from a group of poor and frightened women. In fact, in the four years that I've been working in Bangladesh I have only ever met male debt collectors, never women. Grameen bank boasts a 96 per cent repayment rate, far surpassing the average repayment rates on loans in more developed countries.

Shocked by what I had seen, I wrote to Yunus asking him for an explanation.

Weeks went by with no response, no statements, so I sent a fax, posted the questions to his home and the bank's headquarters. Local journalists warned me that getting an interview with Mohammad Yunus would be near impossible, especially as I was requesting the interview in Bangladesh. Yunus prefers doing his interviews abroad. One local reporter told me if only I was white it might be easier.

I laughed off their warning and went to the bank HQ to meet Lamya Morshed, Yunus's chief of communications. She looked me up and down unfazed and prepared herself a cup of Horlicks. Without glancing up from her desk she pushed a pen and paper my way and asked me to write down my questions. I felt like a little boy faced with a stern schoolteacher. I did as I was asked and hoped for the best. Again weeks went by with no response.

I persevered, going back to the bank, this time with my cameraman, and went straight to the banks deputy managing director.

She told me I had no right to talk to Grameen bank borrowers without her permission; she was angry and called security to have me locked up. It was frightening, and I literally had to run out of the bank. I felt like I'd had a small glimpse of what it must be like to owe money to Grameen bank.

Yunus says credit is a human right. But debt is a heavy burden to carry especially if you are a poor women living in Bangladesh. So when Hasina calls Yunus "a blood sucker of the poor", it is not just a political statement to rally support, but a statement that many people in Bangladesh understand intimately.

Twenty-two million people, mostly women, are indebted to the 600 microcredit lenders in Bangladesh that operate using Yunus's model. Overlapping debt is now a serious concern in Bangladesh, as many take out multiple loans to repay their initial loan and so they cycle deeper into debt.

It is true that thanks to these loans, many have lifted themselves out of poverty but for so many others the vicious cycle of debt and poverty continues.

Yunus is popular with Bangladesh's small intellectual elite and civil society, and of course the West. Even for the common man, he is breath of fresh air from the two leading politicians Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia who have taken turns in power over the last 22 years. Yunus flirted with the idea of going into politics but quickly backtracked.

The government has taken aggressive steps to sideline Yunus from the bank he founded - an attempt to weaken his popularity and political ambitions. Last year, the government forced him to resign as managing director of the bank. Now the president of Bangladesh has given the government appointed chairman of the bank more power to choose Yunus's successor, a move seen as a government takeover of Grameen Bank.

Problem Solving

Many different concepts were discussed in this class. Hence, rather than writing about the class in a chronological order I have decided to give a summary of the important learnings from the various topics discussed in class.

1) Problem Solving (An Introduction):

          The first and most important step in problem solving is IDENTIFYING  the problem because unless we know a problem exists we cannot convert it into an OPPORTUNITY. Basically problem solving involves using generic methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems. 

            The next part of the problem solving loop is to explore ideas and select an idea. This leads us to another important aspect of management called Decision Making.

2) Decision Making:

             Decision making can be regarded as the process resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice.

The output can be an action or an opinion of choice. But Decisions can be made in two ways : (a) Individually and (b) In a Group.

           Individual Decision making is extremely fast and simple. It does depend on the structure of the organization. However the fundamental problem with Individual Decision Making is that is tends to be parochial. There can be severe bias in the process.

         Group Decision making is a more systematic process to solve problems because a problem is EVERYONE'S not just of the one person making the decision. However it is not without its flaws. For starters it  extremely Time- Consuming. There is also a very good chance of polarization in the group which can lead to too much time being wasted in taking the necessary decisions.

3) Job Design:

            
             Job Design is the process of deciding the contents of a job. It fixes the duties and responsibilities of the job, the methods of doing the job and the relationships between the job holder and his superiors, subordinates and colleagues.   

        We must understand that Job Design is different from Organizational Design. Job Design is a MICRO level process while Organizational Design is a MACRO level process. How jobs are designed is very important and crucial to an organization. Jobs SHOULD lead to happiness and self-satisfaction which in turn MUST lead to high Productivity and better levels of Excellence. We can improve significance by giving incentives. Incentives need not be money alone. It could be recognition from higher management (like a photo with the CEO for the best employee.

Job design basically takes place by looking into 5 Aspects:

1) Skill Variant - If it is Low , Medium or High?

2) Task Identity - If it has Low , No or High identity?

3) Task Significance - Is the job least significant, most significant or of no significance at all?

4) Autonomy - does the worker have autonomy?

5) Feedback - how quickly will feedback be given?

4) Group Cohesiveness: 

                When discussing social groups, a group is said to be in a state of cohesion when its members possess bonds linking them to one another and to the group as a whole. Although cohesion is a multi-factored process, it can be broken down into four main components: social relations, task relations, perceived unity, and emotions. 

               Members of strongly cohesive groups are more inclined to participate readily and to stay with the group. The mental distances between the group shortens. Of course, some teams are more cohesive that others.

Theory X & Theory Y

An organisation is as good as its managers are. They are the ones who drive an organisation towards meeting its objectives. A manager’s job is to lead, direct and inspire the people under him. A positive manager can steer a group of subordinates towards excellence whereas a manager with negative perception even after having the same group of subordinates can create a havoc for the organisation. 

Therefore to examine such behavior of individuals at work, Douglas McGregor developed a philosophical view of mankind with his Theory X and Theory Y in 1960. He classified the managers in two broad categories, the positive ones are called Theory Y managers and the negative ones are called Theory X managers.Here is a video demonstrating the theories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NSCfXYhKupE

Theory X is an authoritarian style and keeps tight control over individuals. It advocates the belief that management must counteract an inherent human tendency to work. On the other hand Theory Y is a participative management style which believes that people are self-motivated and take responsibility for their work.

 Fig: Douglas McGregor’s XY-Theory 

As there are theory X and Y managers, in the same way there are 2 kinds of workers – lazy and not lazy. That makes up 4 different kinds of scenarios possible in an organisation.

Fig: Different possible scenarios 

Case A: When the manager falls under Theory X and the worker is lazy :
Such kinds of situations are generally of the worst kind. People in these cases prefer to be directed, do not want responsibility, and have little or no ambition. The organisations with such a culture will neither grow nor survive in the business environment until it gets rid of such managers and such employees.

Case B: When the manager falls under Theory X and the worker is not lazy:
Such a situation can be bad for people who actually want to learn and see their good in the good of the organisation. Instead such workers are not given good responsibilities due to the negative environment persisting in the company and they end up getting demotivated. It is harder to retain a good employee in such a scenario.

Case C: When the manager falls under Theory Y and the worker is lazy: 
In such a scenario, there is a chance of the manager having positive impact on the workers by trusting them with productive work according to their competencies. Motivations can sometimes work miracles for such an organisation. In such a situation workers eventually tend to learn and start accepting part of their responsibilities.

Case D: When the manager falls under Theory Y and the worker is not lazy:
These kinds of situations are generally a win-win situation for both the organisation and the worker. The environment is generally very constructive in such an organisation and healthy competition is promoted. Each and everyone who aspires to be a big name wants to work in such an organisation. And all the great organisations are generally a result of this positive scenario.

(a + b)2 and Goal setting

What is (a+b)2 ???

You must be thinking what sort of a question is that. Obviously it’s   “a2 + b2 + 2ab”

But today I learnt something else. Today I learnt how to visualize (a+b)2, or for that matter(a+b)3

Hello everyone, and welcome to another exhilarating class of Dr.Mandi… today the day began in one of the most unexpected ways. Today we ‘saw’ what we had been mugging up for years. And you can see my excitement in my anxiety to just tell you how and what surprise did Dr.Mandi revealed today in class. But let me start from the beginning…

For the last few days a toy was lying in one of the corners of our class that Dr.Mandi had brought with him nearly a week ago. We all were curious to know what it was but couldn’t find out. Today was the day  when finally Dr.Mandi picked it up and asked us what it was. We had no idea. It a cube made of tiny plastic pipes that could be dismantled.

Then came the hint, “what is (a+b)2?”. One of the students gave the obvious reply that we all know. But that was the surprise. One of my friends picked up the hint and understood what the toy was actually. And when Dr.Mandi asked him to explain it to all of us what he grasped, he shared that if you look closely, each of the 12 sides of the cube was made of two distinct pipes, one red and the other yellow. If we assume that the red coloured pipe is “a” and the yellow coloured pipe is “b”. Then (a+b)2 is nothing but the area of the face containing the side chosen…  to make it more clear, let me show you one of the sides of the cube with the pipes denoted as a and b. you can see how the entire surface area contains ‘a2’, ‘b2’ and two ‘a*b’… Hence the simple formula that we had been learning for so many years was nothing but an area.

Similarly he explained how (a+b)3 would mean we are talking about nothing but the volume of the cube. This is the beauty of Dr.Mandi’s class. He explained to us how small-small things carry meaning in them and how easy it is to neglect them and just be confined to their upper meaning. He made us realize how interesting education can be if shared in the right manner….   Hope you will never forget the formula now ;-)

Now was the time for some management to begin… and the agenda of today’s class was “SMART goals”. But we all knew that Dr.Mandi would not just give us a lecture on smart goals. And it was true, he began the topic with another surprise from his MAGIC BAG… He took out a snail (obviously not a live one, but only its shell) and handed it over to us… to observe!!

               

                   

The thing that we had to observe was the “SPIRAL” nature of its shell’s growth. How it began with a small centre and EVOLVED as it moved out… This is how our Goals should evolve… in a spiral… If today we have achieved 20, tomorrow we should aim for 25, then 35, then 50 and so on………. We must never limit ourselves but should evolve as a Fibonacci Series evolves… 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and to infinity…

This is known as Goal Setting. The higher you set the goad, the more you achieve. If your Goal Achieved is higher than you Goal Set, then you undermined your abilities. You must always, and always Set for more than your potential, then only you will be able to strive for better results and grow with every attempt. Dr.Mandi used a simple graph to explain to us what should be the relation among our potential, goal set, goal achieved and previous achievement.

If you believe that your potential is at B, then your Goal Set should be A…

A – Goal Set

B – Potential

C – Goal Achieved

D – Previous Achievement

This concept where higher expectations lead to higher results was derived from Pygmalion, a play by George Bernard Shaw and hence is called as the Pygmalion effect. To give you the precise definition of Pygmalion effect, The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

Finally it was the time for the class to prove that we will always follow this principle of aiming high in our managerial and personal lives. And then we again saw those interesting tower building cubes in front of us. this time again we were asked to build a tower. Last time, if you remember, we built a tower of 16 blocks and Dr.Mandi told us that till date the max height achieved was that of 27 blocks…

So we began our tower building, but this time it wasn’t ‘Craftsmanship’… this time we were coordinating, thinking, seeking help and improvising. And we surely did keep our expectations high. We kept a target of 50 in mind. And with that target set, we beat our previous record and made a tower of 24 blocks. HURRAY!!!

But that was not what we had in mind. We tried again and finally broke the previous set record by creating a tower with 28 blocks…

That is the power of Expectation and Organization…!!!!

The Three Monks - Observations & Learning

The Story with a Lesson

Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film that highlights the importance of teamwork. It was screened in the POM class to make us students understand how people react in real life situations where there are conflicts. Thus, it aimed at bringing home the value of team work and co-operation. This was yet another example of the off-the-beaten-track learning methodologies being applied in POM.

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 noticeable point is that the film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture.

PlotA teenage 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 who had recently joined the monastery, 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 candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a combined 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.

Observations
#1 Disagreements will arise when people work together due to difference in viewpoints.
#2 Work needs to be divided scientifically and objectively.
#3 The solution should be conceptual.
#4 When multiple parties with differing opinions are involved, what is required is Participative Management.
#5 The last scene of using a pulley to get water says that for success, one has to go for disruptive methods that have the power to change the game.

Creative Problem Solving

When face to face with the problem of drawing water from the lake that is quite far off from the monastery the monks devise new methods. Initially the first monk starts to travel the distance on his own to get water. But it turns out to be tiring for him. When the second monk joins him, both of them go out together to get water and through mutual understanding they come to implementing a better plan of tying the bucket to the mid of the pole that they were using to fetch water. But creative solutions become mediocre in no time. This becomes clear when the two monks have a quarrel while carrying out the job. Even in real life disputes between the participants can lead to work getting stalled.The Challenge is – To apply every time, all the time “Ever Creative Mind” in solving the stock of

problems is the principle applicable here for managers. When the monks do this they get the results immediately. This way they were working more efficiently than before as they conserve more energy. But the actual creativity comes out when three delegate the work between themselves as well as when they upgrade to a totally new solution of using pulley and bucket to fetch water.

Thus the lesson that i drew here was that to be a successful and effective manager i need to :

• Learn Problem solving through practice
• Need to develop the art and science of developing solution
• Solutions need to be drawn keeping in mind the constraints that are there

We can see in the picture here that creative problem solving is a cyclical process. The first stage is exploration of the challenge. The steps involved are -
Objective Finding - Identify Goal, Wish or Challenge

Fact Finding - Gather Data

Problem Finding - Clarify the Problem

The second stage is Generation of Ideas which deals with Idea Finding - Generate Ideas.

The next stage is Preparing for action which involves Solution Finding – Select and Strengthen Solutions and Acceptance Finding – Plan for Action. 

Productivity
Does team work increase productivity or decrease it? Rather than answering in a straight yes or no, lets go step by step. 

• Initially, a single monk could get 2 pails of water daily. High effort, high output. 
• When the second monk joins, they get 1 pail of water everyday. Now, the effort as well as output has become 1/2 of original (for a team of two). 
• The work comes almost to a standstill when the third monk comes, nobody bothers to get the water himself as all of them leave it on the other person to take care of the chore. Originally, this behavior was called “social loafing,” a term coined by a French professor, Max Ringelmann in the 1890s.

Then how can the management ensure high productivity in an interconnected and interdependent environment?

• Availability of adequate support systems and resources for teams
• High degree of instantaneous feedback and communication
• Rigorous accountability systems for teams
• Synergistic work environment will increase the productivity manifolds for a team

Thus, team work can actually increase the productivity exponentially, given that above features are incorporated in the work culture laid out by the management.

Learning
The story of the three monks teaches us that everyone is capable of being selfish and working individually, but doing so diminishes our ability to cooperate with one another.

A thought on Team Work- "If its not efficiently effective then its not useful."