Digital CV

Alum Talk with Nikhil and Hemant

My first ever close interaction with a NITIE alumnus happened near about a month after joining. The insights that I gained from the session are priceless to say the least.

The session started with the discussion about whether Entrepreneurship is advisable or not. There is no clear cut answer to such a question. But, Nikhil and Hemant helped us in making informed choices. Entrepreneurship is advisable if and only if you are highly motivated to take it up. It would require lots and lots of patience. Possibly, you may have to shut down the business in a year or two then again start something new then again fail... and the process continues until something substantial clicks.

On the other hand, a job is not a bad deal at all. Moreover, depending upon the designation that you hold you may indirectly end up on an entrepreneurial job. There will be a sense of security as well.

Apart from this, the discussion about the establishment of "Mastishk" gave us real insights about how to go about starting something from the scratch. The difficulties faced and the way they were tackled also showed us the way to handle tough situations.

Finally, a list comprising a plethora of movies to watch and books to read ended the session on a lighter note.

Thank you Nikhil & Hemant !!

Teamwork conceptualized from Valley Crossing Exercise

Crossing the valley:

The activity below shows a group of three individuals, connected only by a pole, attempting to cross a valley.

The activity has three participants who are given a long rod which is carried by them on their shoulders, and then they have to cross a small crater as a group. There each person gets to be in motion for a few seconds without using their legs. The burden of the person in air is borne by the other two participants.

Analysis:

L1     L2     L3_______                               Step 1: All safe

R1     R2    R3

         L1     L2     L3                                    Step 2: Person 3 half safe

R1    R2     R3

         L1     L2     L3                                    Step 3: Person 3 full unsafe

         R1     R2     R3

                   L1     L2    L3                           Step 4: Person 2 and 3 partially safe

         R1     R2     R3

                   L1     L2    L3                           Step 5: Person 2 fully unsafe

                   R1     R2    R3

                             L1    L2    L3                  Step 6: Person 1 and 2 partially safe

                   R1     R2    R3

                             L1    L2    L3                  Step 7: Person 1 fully unsafe

                             R1    R2   R3

                                      L1    L2    L3         Step 8: Person 1 partially safe

                             R1    R2    R3

                                      L1    L2    L3         Step 9: Everyone is safe

                                      R1    R2   R3
L- Left foot
R-Right foot
___- Valley 

Teamwork:

The process of working together with a group of people in order to achieve a goal.
The team work is often a crucial part of a business as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying for the best in any circumstances. Team work often means people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedbacks, despite any personal conflicts between the individual.

· Effective communication: The communication between the team members should be free flowing, well channelized and directed towards achievement of project success. Also, communication between team members and team leaders should be a two way process.

· Strong leadership: The speed of the boss is the speed of the team. It is vital to have an efficient leader who can exhibit exemplary behavior. A good team leader is one who gives importance to team goals over his individual goals and is capable of showing direction and ensuring that the team members remain focused.

· Efficient delegation: Assigning responsibilities is as important as ensuring it is fulfilled perfectly. Therefore, it is essential to assign work as per the capability of team members.

· Conflict management: It is mandatory to resolve conflicts within the team. Even critical issues, when dealt with maturity, can be resolved easily without leaving a scar. Differences in opinion should not come in the way of the team’s performance.

· Trust: A term vital for any relationship also applies to a team-oriented environment. It is important to generate trust within the team. Team secrets, details of new projects or any new development within the team shouldn’t be divulged unless it is in the interest of the organization.

· Common goals: A team obviously is made of individuals with diverse opinions, often conflicting. The focus clearly is attainment of common goals. Therefore, it is vital to set aside personal points of view, be aware of organizational goals and work towards achieving targets together.

· Respect: To work in coordination, it is essential to understand and respect others in the team. Respect for each other’s competencies, views and actions will minimize conflicts, ensure smooth functioning and enhance productivity.

· Togetherness: A team signifies togetherness. As a unified unit, it should work on a common platform. It is advisable for organizations to take initiatives and organize team building exercises, excursions and monthly team meetings to strengthen team bonding.

· Avoiding negativity: Shun feelings of negativity, jealousy or ill-will. Do not participate in unproductive or unhealthy discussions.

. Setting a good example: Each team member, through his work, should set an example for others to follow. It can be done by outperforming the target, suggesting new ideas for policies and procedures or by participating in activities at the organizational level.

Three Monks - A sea of Management Lessons

Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film  produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests. When the movie starts a note appears in which first column states "one monk fetches water to drink", the second column reads "two monks carry water to drink" and the third one just states, "three monks". To get a better understanding first let us watch the movie.

The movie can be divided into 3 parts:

1. When only one monk is there - We can see that when the monk was alone he used to do the work alone i.e. bringing the water from the river to the monastery happily. He had no qualms with the way things were moving. In other words he was content with the life he was living or the work he was doing.

2. When another monk joins the first one - The attitude of the first monk changes drastically when the second monk joins him in the monastery. Initially he intimidated him into bringing water from the river but after some time the new monk demand equal distribution of work. This altercation resulted in loss of man hours as well as gloomy atmosphere in the monastery. After lot of deliberation, they decide to share the responsibility and once they started sharing the job, their productivity also increased. We can see that the method adopted in this case is much better then used in the previous one.

 

3. When the third monk joins the other two - Initially the same thing happened wherein the veterans forced the newcomer into work. After sometime it was total chaos in the monastery with none of the monks willing to go to the river to get the water. One fine day when fire breaks in the monastery then all the three monks work together in tandem thereby giving fruitful results. After this, all the 3 monks learned a lesson and then devised an efficient and productive method to get water using the pulley. The method in this case is superior to the methods used in case 1 and case 2 as it involves proper utilization of all the resources.

Learning

The movie teaches us a lot of managerial lessons. Here are a few of them that I could comprehend:

1. Team work - The work which could have been done very easily had they worked as team took a toll on them. As we have seen in case of emergency (monastery catching fire), they worked as a team and got the desired results very easily. The manager has to ensure that the employees are working in a team, individuality hinders the progress of a firm. Team work can do wonders.

2. Job distribution - The situation can be compared to an organisation which has all the resources in the world but is not able to utilise them properly. In the movie even with three monks (resources), water (end result)  was scarce in the monastery. It is responsibility of the manager to utilise the resources provided to him optimally. As we can see in the end the monks divide the job and get the desired result very effectively and easily. 
Like in a football team, to win a match, the job is divided and every player is assigned his specific role.

3. Innovation - There are two ways of completing a job, one is monotonous conventional method which every body follows and the other one being innovative method. In the movie the monks could have very well adopted conventional approach (three monks standing at regular intervals) to get the water, but it would have been very tiresome as well as time consuming. Thus they went for innovative idea of placing a pulley thereby reducing the mechanical effort one has to put which in turn increased their productivity. In a company the manager should be a Theory Y manager, always pushing the employees for new ideas, always having faith in the man power assigned to him. If the manager backs the employee then only employee can come out with a new and innovative idea. Innovation can be continuous (over a period of time), can be drastic (out of the exigency). The one which we had seen in the movie is drastic. But we should always aim for continuous innovation. If the innovation is continuous then it will be flawless because sufficient amount of time and thought process would have invested in that idea, whereas drastic innovations arises out of the emergency situation. 

4. Crisis management - In the movie when the temple catches fire all the three monks work together as a team and get out of the crisis situation. There are times when people lose their cool during emergencies. A manager must always keep a clam composure no matter what the situation is. In case of emergency, the manager should adopt a rationale thinking in getting the team of the emergency situation. He should be in a position to assign different employees in different roles so as to counter the exigencies.

An organisation can flourish only if it has cordial atmosphere as well as convivial employees. If the manager is able to bind the team together jovially, there is no stopping the company. In the movie the same set of people were fighting against each other but circumstances changed them and the same set of people started working together and with increased productivity. The manager in a company must ensure that the employees are not dependent on emergency situation to come together and work as a team, they should work in coordination from the moment they join the team.

5. Productivity - The film clearly depicts how productivity increases when the work load is shared effectively by more people. When the 2nd monk joins in, and the two monks together get 1 bucket of water, the productivity increases. Further, when the 3 monks together devise a method to get water using the pulley, the productivity increases manifolds.

Goal Setting: SMART Goals

For any organization or any person for that matter, Goal setting is one of the most important tasks that needs to be achieved.
So, how should the Goals be ?
As a popular management concept goes, the goals must be SMART.

Specific:

It stresses the need for a specific goal over and against a more general one. This means the goal is clear and unambiguous. To make goals specific, we must tell a team exactly what is expected, why is it important, who’s involved, where is it going to happen and which attributes are important.

A specific goal will usually answers the five "W" questions:

• What
• Why
• Who
• Where
• Which

 Measurable:

It stresses the need for concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of the goal. The thought behind this is that if a goal is not measurable, it is not possible to know whether a team is making progress toward successful completion. Measuring progress is supposed to help a team stay on track, reach its target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs it on to continued effort required to reach the ultimate goal.

A measurable goal will usually answer questions such as:

• How much?
• How many?
• How will I know when it is accomplished?

Attainable:

It stresses the importance of goals that are realistic and attainable. While an attainable goal may stretch a team in order to achieve it, the goal is not extreme. That is, the goals are neither out of reach nor below standard performance, as these may be considered meaningless. When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them.

An attainable goal will usually answer the question:

• How: How can the goal be accomplished?

Relevant:

It stresses the importance of choosing goals that matter. A bank manager's goal to "Make 50 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by 2:00pm" may be specific, measurable, attainable, and time-bound, but lacks relevance. Many times you will need support to accomplish a goal: resources, a champion voice, someone to knock down obstacles. Goals that are relevant to your boss, your team, your organization will receive that needed support.

Relevant goals (when met) drive the team, department, and organization forward. A goal that supports or is in alignment with other goals would be considered a relevant goal.
A relevant goal can answer yes to these questions:

• Does this seem worthwhile?

• Is this the right time?

• Does this match our other efforts/needs?

• Are you the right person?

Time Bound:

 It stresses the importance of grounding goals within a time frame, giving them a target date. A commitment to a deadline helps a team focus their efforts on completion of the goal on or before the due date. This part of the SMART goal criteria is intended to prevent goals from being overtaken by the day-to-day crises that invariably arise in an organization. A time-bound goal is intended to establish a sense of urgency.
A time-bound goal will usually answer the question:

• When?
• What can I do six months from now?
• What can I do six weeks from now?
• What can I do today?

However, just setting up SMART Goals wouldn't help. We need to implement these in our lives as well. And this implementation of the SMART goals is was what would lead to effective PERFORMANCE.

Tower Building: Craftsmanship-------->Modern Management

Before getting into the discussion of Craftsmanship vs Modern Management, let us first define what they are.

Craftsmanship:
When there is just one person doing each and every part of the work, it's Craftsmanship.
E.g. A cobbler

Modern Management:
When the work is divided into atomic parts and is then assigned to a number of people where one person is doing just one atomic part of the work, it's modern management.
E.g. A manufacturing plant

To start with the comparison, we had a Tower building activity in which a tower of cubes had to be built by placing one cube over the other. First, there was just one person building the tower where he was the lone person doing everything in the process signifying Craftsmanship.

Then, a team of 8 people was made to build the tower where each person had a specific job signifying Modern Management.

However, in the first case there was a tower of 17 cubes built while in the second 7 cubes. This was mostly because in the second case the person who was placing the cubes was blindfolded and the other 7 persons did not have any proper roles defined. This is not to say that Modern Management does not succeed. In fact, it does to a larger extent if the task is executed in an appropriately planned manner.

Let us have a look at some points to see why modern management is much better than Craftsmanship.

• There can be no parallel work in craftsmanship whereas it is used in modern management to save time and hence increase the scale of production.
• In craftsmanship, everything is done by a single person whereas in modern management, the work is broken down into jobs followed by activities followed by tasks and so on up to the elemental level and then each elemental level is given to a person.
• In craftsmanship, skill is the requirement, whereas modern management thrives on De-skilling so that anyone can do the de-skilled job and the organization does not have to depend on a skilled individual. So, as we move from craftsmanship to modern management, the control gradually shift from the worker to the non-worker i.e. the management.

The advantage that craftsmanship has over modern management is that there is job satisfaction in the former while there is job alienation in the latter.

There is also a concept of 3 E's in management: Excellence, Effectiveness, Efficiency
Here's the relation between the three:

                            Excellence = Effectiveness x Efficiency

Here, effectiveness signifies direction and Efficiency signifies speed. So, efficiency means "getting more out of less" and effectiveness means "for more".
Therefore, Excellence essentially means

                 "Getting more out of less for more"

Hence, when we evolve from craftsmanship towards modern management, we not only scale-up the processes and output but also generate a lot of employment in the society by employing a larger population.

Douglas McGregor's Theory X & Theory Y of Human Motivation

Douglas McGregor, one of the forefathers of management theory and one of the top business thinkers of all time had a profound influence on the management field, largely due to his Theory X and Theory Y of Human Motivation.

McGregor developed a philosophical view of humankind with this theory X & Y in 1960. Essentially these are two opposing perceptions that theorized how people view human behavior at work and organizational life.

Theory X Assumptions:
Managers falling under Theory X believe that:

• People have an inherent dislike for work and will try to avoid work whenever possible.
• People must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment etc. for getting the work done.
• People prefer to be directed, don't like responsibility and have little or no initiative.
• People seek security above everything else.

Theory Y Assumptions:
Managers falling under Theory Y believe that:

• Work comes naturally to the employees.
• People will exercise self-direction in order to achieve organizational objectives.
• People accept and, more importantly, seek responsibility.
• Creativity, Innovation, imagination are encouraged.
• People are capable of using their abilities to solve the organizational problems. 

Now, where would you work more effectively ? With Theory X or Theory Y manager ?
 A consensual answer to this would be with Theory Y managers. However, there are certain fields like large scale production operation and unskilled production line work where the work is more or less monotonous. Theory Y is more suited to knowledge work and professional services.

Moving ahead, because of these 2 types of management and, needless to say, two types of workers (Good & Bad), there are 4 cases as depicted in the image below:

 Let me analyze these 4 cases in the order of their merit as per my experience:

1. Hopeful Managers, Good Workers: An ideal environment to flourish as an organization I believe. The management's perception turns out to be correct and hence the workers would enjoy more while delivering their work.
2. Hopeful Managers Bad Workers: Ideally, not a good environment to be working in, but since the management belongs to the category of Theory Y, there will be motivation enough for the workers to work well. It could possibly lead to the change in the mindset of the workers and hence moving to case 1, i.e. Hopeful Managers and Good Workers :)
3. Hopeless Managers, Good Workers: In this case, even if the workers are willing to do well for the organization, their perception in the minds of the higher management is not good. So, there will not be proper direction in the entire work process which could eventually lead the environment to move to case 4, i.e. Hopeless Managers, Bad Workers.
4. Hopeless Managers, Bad Workers: The organization does not seem to pursue a pleasant future if the work environment is such in an organization.

So, be it as the management or as the work force, eventually it is for us to decide in which quadrant we want our organization to be ?