3 idiots.......

Together we can.....

The above lines are aptly signified by the Valley crossing activity performed in Prof. Mandi's class. An activity which tells us to support the weakest link to make the strongest chain. This activity helps us learn the importance of roles each member plays in achieving the most difficult targets.

Why Team work is important?

Well its one thing to create a team but quite an another to create teamwork in the workplace. Just its one thing to join a team, quite another to perform as a team member. To put it in simple words, teams doesn’t work without teamwork. Creating a culture where teamwork is valued, and collaboration encouraged, is a good way for businesses, sports teams, medical facilities, and really, most all human endeavors to increase the overall chances of mutual ongoing success. There are no two human beings that have the same experiences in their lives, and it is the sum of experience that “makes the man”. Just as you can never know precisely how a given situation will actually end, you can also never know how any teams endeavors will culminate either. All that can be done is to gather your team, and assign a project. Allow the leadership to come forward naturally, (usually they are quite easy to spot-vocal and opinionated) decide who should be named formally the teams leader, and begin your bigger journey.

ACTIVITY

This simple task gives lots of learning about management principles.

First of all it involves planning – This task appears simple but execution of this require carefully thought out strategy which includes assigning  roles to individuals, setting the target and proper co-ordination between the team members.

Team work – This task shows how things can be achieved through proper team work. This task in very difficult if there is only one individual but through a team of three this can be easily done. So this is all about team work 

Contribution from every individual – There is no social loafing in this case. Each and every individual has to play its part, if they have to achieve the target.

Synchronization - This is the most important principle required in proper implementation of this task. To cross the valley each and every step of all the three individuals should be properly synchronised. The speed of moving should also be in synchronism.

Other skills involved in the task

The technical skill is to able to perform the actual task .i.e. lifting the pole on the shoulder and carrying the 50% weight of one of the person and 50% weight of the pole and crossing the valley one by one with similar process of one person hanging by the pole and the others carrying the pole on their shoulders.


The conceptual skills are required to understand the aim of the whole team ,how to reach that goal ,what are the impending problems that they may come across.Planning and organizing the role of each and every person of the team is needed to reach the goal.In this case proper coordination and synchronization of the steps are very essential.For this they need a lot of planning,practise and power.


Human skills or interpersonal skills are essential to understand the psyche of each and every individual to perform the task better because ultimately it is the human beings who will be crossing the valley not any trained machines..A human being will be working with other human being who will have emotions....

THREE MONKS- MANY LESSONS

There are lots of things from which we human can learn and for that we require that vision, open-mindedness, eagerness to learn and the most important thing- perception. Today I will talk about movies and short stories how they influence our thinking process and the values they inculcate.It is always the character that gets imprinted in the minds of people. But for management students like us, characters are important but the most important thing is what management skills we can learn. Earlier movies were meant to impart knowledge and teach people but with time the priorities have changed. Yet there are quite good movies which make a lot of sense and are filled with moral values with which we can adopt in our life.

Today I will be telling you what movies teach us or rather to say what we should learn from them and act accordingly. Three Monks is a Chinese animated short film, released in 1980 and directed by A Da. It is one of the most famous and beloved movies of Shanghai Animation Film Studio's productions, and has won awards at film festivals throughout the world. The film was one of the first animations created as a part of the rebirth period of China. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.

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." The film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk. The film tells the story from the aspect of the Buddhist bhikkhu.

To describe in short here’s the summary; 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.

To know what in-depth meaning the movie has, I will divide the movie into 3 parts (yes just like 3 monks)


Craftsmanship

The Story starts with one monk reaching the monastery.  He studies the place and finds that he has to do all the work alone and keep the place clean, he then finds that the flask kept in front of Lord Buddha is dry and the plant has also dried up. Filled with enthusiasm he runs down the hill to fetch water using bucket and wooden log (which seems to be quite a task) and preaches for the rest of the day.

But soon, fatigue sets in. The initial enthusiasm is lost but still life goes on!

This has striking similarities to our day to day lives, when we do not depend on others and all our tasks get done on time, the problem arises when we have to get things done by others and the skill set required are different from each other.

This model of overburdening a useful resource might give very good returns in the initial stage. But as time passes the returns will be diminishing and the motivation to work will be long gone.

So, the lone man standing model for Human resources is a disaster. Any company should make sure that none of its employees are overburdened.

Team Building

Then second monk comes into picture,  he is extended a warm welcome by the first monk, the second monk tries to show his superiority. The first monk is happy to have someone working at his place, but they fail miserably in sharing their workload. So as a remedy to the problem they start bringing water together. Now the next problem they face is the difference between their heights which makes it difficult for them to fetch water. After thinking for a while the first monk takes out a scale and measures the distance and their problem is solved.

Here we learn that in life we need rules and not a ruler…

In an organization there are people with different qualifications and  not everyone is same, hence work distribution should be proper.

Team work

The third monk comes to the monastery and being very thirsty he drinks all the water. Seeing this the other two monks tell him to fetch water, so the third monk brings water but he drinks it alone, without offering it to other two.

Such teams are quite common in organizations. It is up to the managers to sense this enmity in the air and weed it at the budding stages.

However, in the story, the "hand of god" does it for the monks. The monastery is set of fire by a mischievous rat and the monks are left running from pillar to post. In the spurt of the moment, they throw away all their differences and put an "emergency system into place". Somehow they turn the fire down and sit back to think on devising a sustainable system and the rest is understood.

Management Lessons:-

• No five fingers are alike. Every team comprises of people with different attributes and quality. This difference has to be channelized for the greater good.
• Standards have to be set and rules should be laid. Otherwise things head towards a haywire.
• Teams should have sustainable models. Any team is as strong as its weakest link.
• Attitude of each team member determines the fate of the task and decides the success rate.
• Synergistic roles:   Individual sums become bigger than what was there individually.
• Experiences in crisis management comes handy to come up with new innovative methods to solve a problems
• Teamwork and team interest should take precedence over the personal interest
• Synergistic roles:   Individual sums become bigger than what was there individually.

TRY TO CRAWL BEFORE YOU CAN WALK

"Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right." – Henry Ford

Business or dhanda when you hear these words the only question that comes in our mind is “how the person started the business? From where he got the money to invest?” And we just keep pondering over it. After some time we just forget about it thinking that it’s not my cup of tea. It is the basic human tendency to blindly believe the misnomer that business is solely dependent on money. But in fact it’s not the case, everything that grows big starts from a very small idea, but yes a unique one to say. All the big business houses that we see have grown from very small idea but in a SMART way.

Now what do you mean by Smart Way. For this I need to take you to Dr. Mandi’s store . Dr. Mandi’s lecture started in a unique way as usual. He took out an elephant from his bag. Wait! Wait! I am not talking about the real elephant, but a small 3D model of an elephant which was prepared in NITIE by his students. But it required a huge initial investment and they ran into losses, but some of the Nitie alumnae have agreed to help them in this field to setup their business.

The model was prepared using a 3-D printer. 3-D printing is a novel idea; it is a process of making a 3 dimensional model of any object or virtually from any shape from a digital object. The first working 3-D printer was created in 1984 by Chuck Hull of 3-D Systems Corp.  After that there is a lot of advancement and now it is being used in the field of engineering, and it has benefited them, also it is being used in the field of jewelry, education, and fashion footwear. Being an engineer I felt that our college should have a 3 D printer so that we can prepare a prototype model and experiments on that. 3 D printing is in nascent stage in India so it has a lot of scope to grow.

With this Dr.Mandi was telling us to think something unique with which we can start a business, because the main thing for a business is idea, Idea – means a new concept which can make people buy your product/service.  This is possible only if we can THINK OUT OF THE BOX. If we want to make money out of nothing a novel idea is required, all the other things being secondary. His mantra for the day was “ SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT & AIM” . This doesn't mean you need to shoot everything that comes in your way. You need to differentiate between them and for this you require to work in SMART way.

The best thing to win is to have SMART goals. With smart goals Dr. Mandi was trying to give a new dimension to our thinking.  His way to define smart was a unique one.

Letter	Major term	Minor terms
S	Specific	Significant, stretching, simple
M	Measurable	Motivational, manageable, meaningful
A	Attainable	Appropriate, achievable, agreed, assignable, actionable, adjustable, ambitious, aligned, aspirational, acceptable, action-focused
R	Relevant	Result-based, results-oriented, resourced, resonant, realistic
T	Time-bound	Time-oriented, time framed, timed, time-based, time-boxed, time-specific, timetabled, time limited, track-able, tangible, timely

If I define each term, SMART can be more specifically defined as follows, which will give you in-depth idea.

 

Specific	A specific goal will usually answer the five "W" questions (What, Why Who. Where, Which)
Measurable	A measurable goal will usually answer questions such as( how much ,how many, how will)
Attainable	An attainable goal will usually answer the question(How)
Relevant	·         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	A time-bound goal will usually answer the question (When)

But yes goal setting is a tough task, because when you set a goal it should be realistic. It should be within some frame (e.g. I will lose 5 kg weight in 10 days, that’s impossible) so how the goal setting is done then. Again I will take you to Dr. Mandi’s store, Dr. Mandi took out a snail not a live one but the shell which we find in the sand or on the river side. He handed over to us to observe it closely (when we are told to observe we should observe it very minutely because there are various hidden things we can learn from it.) the shell that Dr. Mandi handed over to us was spiral in shape. What we learn from that is we should move spirally towards our goals, if we try to move directly it can be dangerous and may not take us to our defined goals. For e.g. if we achieve 20 today we should aim for 25 then 30 then 40 ten on and on. Life should be like a Fibonacci series 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21…… it moves by adding the number and the previous number and going towards infinity.

For explaining more about it we had another example waiting for us in Dr. Mandi’s Store. He had brought a cube which was made from straw, and there were various square boxes inside the big cube. He just showed to us and we all were playing without thinking anything about it. Then he asked us a simple question “What is (a+b)² ?” and everyone answered then he asked us to explain it using the cubical toy. And one of them answered the question correctly.  If you closely look at the below figure you will see that the cube is made from red and yellow straw. The red represent ‘a’ and yellow represent ‘b’, you will see that (a+b)² represent nothing but the surface are of the cube as shown in the figure. The formula can also be applied to (a+b)³ and we get the volume of the whole cube. That day I learnt that these two formulas were nothing but area of a square and volume of cube. From this we learn that we should grow from a small thing and eventually we can end up doing one of the best thing or even a bigger thing.

First we need to set our goals then strive to achieve it, if we achieve what goals we have set or more than that it can determine our capabilities. And we can aspire to go for more and also for a person sky is the limit. Just try to go beyond your boundaries and try to fly to achieve your goals but of course working smartly and effectively.

Then again it was a time for tower building because the record was not broken. Dr. Mandi wrote on board

1.Goal Set:
2.Goal Achieved:
3.Goal(Historical):
4.Potential:

And everyone wrote his goals and potential. I too wrote in my note book

1. Goal Set:35
2. Goal Achieved:?(yet to achieve)
3. Goal(Historical):27
4. Potential:50

But according to Dr. Mandi the goal was not realistic the goals was far too big to achieve in the first attempt.

To this, Professor Mandi explained, "the Goal should always be strategically set. Goal Set should always be greater than the Historical Goal, Goal achieved should always be less than or equal to the Goal Set and the Potential should always be greater than the Goal Set". which means:

Goal Set > Historical Goal
Goal Achieved >= Goal Set
Potential >= Goal Set

If after the final result, any of the above equation goes wrong, it would mean that GOAL was not SMART.
He further explained, "Performance and Excellence are the product of Realistic Goals Set and Realistic Goals Achieved". Putting this in equation form:

After this students again wrote there goal and target

1.Goal Set: 30
2.Goal Achieved:?
3.Goal(Historical):27
4.Potential:35

Now it was the time to build the tower again and 2 students volunteer came forward and started building the tower. Placing one block over the other and to add in the record book they placed 31 blocks one over the other, the final figures where

1.Goal Set: 30
2.Goal Achieved:31
3.Goal(Historical):27
4.Potential:35

A new concept was learned from this activity “THE PYGMALION EFFECT”

"When teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not so encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways."
         -by James Rhem

The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. The effect is named after Pygmalion, a play by George Bernard Shaw.

To get more into this watch this video

To sum up, in corporate world:

·         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.

That’s all for the day
more dose coming up in next……