The three monks

It is a Chinese animated short film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio.  It is also known as The Three Buddhist Priests.  It has been shown to us in our latest lecture which brought subtle concepts of organization management. How Teamwork and Productivity go hand in hand. So, let us start with the story of the movie first:-

The Story

Movie starts with a little monk who lives at a Buddhist Monastery at the top of a hill. Every day, he used to fetch water from a river at the foothills. The first day, the little monk used to carry two pales on either side of the stick. He used to do this in a hassle free manner thinking it as his responsibility.

The second day, another monk came up to stay at the Monastery. The little monk offered the left over water to the second monk. So, the second monk decided to fetch water down the hill but took the little monk to go along with him. Now, then lies the CONFLICT MANAGEMENT between the two, as the little monk being shorter, tries to raise the bar up making the bucket to slip over to the other monk’s end and the other doing the same on his end. So, there was a conflict in deciding the responsibility of carrying the bucket among them. Finally, the decision was made with the help of a ruler which divided the stick in two equal parts.  

The third day, third monk joined them.  After drinking the water left at the monastery, no one was willing to go down and fetch the water. Incidentally, a rat came to the monastery and knocked the candle holder lead to a devastating fire in the monastery.  The three monks then united forgetting the animosity, distributed the tasks to put out the fire by fetching water from the river, where one monk would fetch the water from the river into the bucket, the other would pull it up through a pulley and third monk would then receive the water for storage and handover the second bucket.  This increased the productivity as they worked as a team.

Was there any alternative among the monks to fetch water as a team?

As discussed in the class, they could follow any of the following alternatives:-

a) Work could have been divided on an alternative basis, where every monk could go down hills and fetch water in the buckets on alternative days.

b) Make a point at the middle of the stick and keep following the process throughout the week.

c) Divide the work into half among themselves.

But none of the points had been adopted by the monks due to lack of Teamwork and standard practices which were not followed by them.   

1) PRODUCTIVITY : It is an economic term defined as output per unit of input. Workplace productivity is about how firms can utilize labour and skills, innovation, technology and organizational structure to improve the quantity and quality of their output. For e.g. in the above example, if two monks would have carried one bucket instead of single monk carrying two buckets, would have increased the productivity.

2) TEAM BUILDING : Any team would be successful if each and every team member has mutual understanding with each other. Many organizations prefer teams to complete certain projects or assignments that are difficult to be handled by a single employee. When the project is under a team, it is certain to reach the pinnacle.  Taking example from the movie, when the fire occurred, the three monks got together, shared a common goal, forgot their dispute and worked together to save their monastery.

3) SYNERGY : Synergy is two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable. Have you ever witnessed a wining sports team or a well-rehearsed orchestra and then felt the commitment and energy the team demonstrated? What you saw was more than just teamwork – it was team synergy, a phenomenon that occurs when a team achieves greater results than the sum of its parts. Using learning instruments, hands-on activities, and an interactive team simulation, teams gain a clearer sense of direction, clarify roles and responsibilities, improve operating processes and bolster both interpersonal and inter team relationships.

The Goal of Goal setting

 Work on the theory of goal-setting suggests that it's an effective tool for making progress by ensuring that participants in a group with a common goal are clearly aware of what is expected from them.  On a personal level, setting goals helps people work towards their own objectives—most commonly with financial or career-based goals. Goals provide a sense of direction and purpose.

"There is no happiness except in the realization that we have achieved something"-Henry Ford

In business, goal setting encourages participants to put in substantial effort. Also, because every member has defined expectations for their role, little room is left for inadequate effort to go unnoticed.

Managers cannot constantly drive motivation or keep track of an employee’s work on a continuous basis. Goals are therefore an important tool for managers, since goals have the ability to function as a self-regulatory mechanism that acquires an employee a certain amount of guidance

For some time now the SMART techniques for goal setting has been used by authors, trainers, coaches, etc. to create a foundation for actualizing goals. They work and have proven themselves over time. They truly are “smart” – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and tangible or timely.

Goals that are difficult to achieve and specific tend to increase performance more than goals that are not. A goal can become more specific through quantification or enumeration (should be measurable), such as by demanding "...increase productivity by 50%," or by defining certain tasks that must be completed.

Setting goals affects outcomes in four ways:

1.   Goals narrow attention and direct efforts to goal-relevant activities, and away from perceived undesirable and goal-irrelevant actions.

2.   Goals can lead to more effort; for example, if one typically produces 4 widgets an hour, and has the goal of producing 6, one may work more intensely towards the goal than one would otherwise.

3.   Someone becomes more prone to work through setbacks if pursuing a goal.

4.    Goals can lead individuals to develop and change their behaviour.

Now that we have realized the pro's and con's of Goal setting lets get to the reason why we started talking about Goal Setting in the first place.

The Tower Building Exercise

 The tower building exercise was performed in class to teach these Goal setting features mentioned above. The goal setting in this case was to set the number of blocks that a person can put one over the other without making them fall. This is a brief description of what happened-

A volunteer was called on stage. He was made to guess how many blocks would he be able to balance. The whole class population was also asked for their number simultaneosly. The final accomplished number was 17 blocks(which was 7 higher than the volunteers' choice). However, the lesson to be learnt here is the basis of goal setting. If a person can achieve 17 blocks, it is incorrect to guesstimate that he would do only 10 goals. That's where the role of the manager kicks in. To understand what is achievable and what is important for the growth of the organisation and accordingly set a goal. So the lesson learnt here was that a Goal should be set at a HIGHER level than which is possible. only then can one cross his/her limits.

         This was just the first part. In the second part the volunteer was supposed to be blind folded and made to do the same exercise. The same procedure of guessing the number of blocks began. Obviously the number of blocks fell drastically for most of the students. But therein lied the second lesson itself. A good organisation will always try to up-scale its previous performance;irrespective of whatever the present conditions are. That is what was required here. As aspiring Managers we needed to set ourselves higher goals all the time, irrespective  of how bad the situation was. These are the two lessons we learnt from the exercise of Tower Building. And hopefully we will apply them in our future as aspiring managers and succeed. 

The Khan-daan of all Academies

This blog post is dedicated to the other Salman Khan .The one who started Khan Academy, the one who millions know as the teacher who teaches subjects ranging from math, to healthcare to finance and even cosmology. For people who are not familiar with him ,you'll  must be wondering what is so great that he has achieved. Well lets see who he really is...

Salman Khan is a Bangladeshi-American and former hedge fund analyst. In 2004, Khan, an alumni of MIT and Harvard, started Khan Academy, a free online platform with home-made video tutorials in maths and science. Khan began these informal tutorials to actually teach maths to a cousin. He first used just a Yahoo Doodle notepad for scribbling equations over which he recorded his explanations. These easy-to-understand, conversational videos were uploaded on Youtube and quickly became an internet rage. Soon, students were writing in asking for more tutorials on topics like calculus and trigonometry. Adults who needed refresher lessons in maths followed suit.The turning point came in 2009 when traffic to his website became impossible to ignore. He quit his job to work on his tutorials full time, carving out office space in his walk-in closet. And the Khan Academy was born.

This sparked a revolution in education in the US with even Bill Gates, who calls Khan a "pioneer", using the videos to teach his children. Indian students, too, have used his videos to untangle IIT JEE problems. Also lately the site has come up with different innovative ways to teach the students. An example- http://www.khanacademy.org/new-and-noteworthy/v/lebron-asks-about-the-chances-of-making-10-free-throws. 

Now that we know how it all started lets see whats in store for us as students from the Academy. First and foremost we (and anyone for that matter who has access to the net )get good quality knowledge . The quality is unquestionable because he has ''gurus '' of different subjects like art finance medicine and various other subjects talking about the subject they love. Topics discussed are as diverse as the French Revolution to the economics of a cupcake factory. Now, all the first timers who have just come to know about this website must be thinking..."Whats the catch here??"..."there HAS to be one...SOMEWHERE!!"."They'll definitely ask for my credit card number...or a small ""donation" before 'signing in'...!!". Yes there is a catch...it is that there is no catch. This beautiful creation of a website which imparts knowledge is absolutely free of cost. Yes, you read it right....it is FREE OF COST. Yes it is as simple as it sounds, no profits, just plane good quality education right in your living room.

No wonder that big names like Bill Gates mentioned him at the 'Aspen Ideas Fest' and gave him $5m. And then another $2m came from Google.

    Since its inception the Academy has built an extensive library of more than 3,000 video tutorials, over 240 exercises and a data-rich & interactive dashboard platform for teachers and students. The Academy has changed the whole ''study in a classroom'' idea up on its head. It allows students to watch the video at home, and solve problems in class, thus reducing the ''homework'' factor to zilch. A little example of a Algebra lesson.- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm98lnrlbMA&feature=plcp

     Now lets analyze what Salman Khan has achieved by launching this website.

First, he has delivered his teachings in a way which was not available to the students before. Result?All those students who were doing poorly in the ''regular'' classrooms, can increase their potential greatly. Also the students get to learn in the comfort oh their homes. No time constraint, no keeping quiet or tied down like in a classroom.

Secondly, the students can view the videos as many times till they understand the subject, plus in class they can focus on solving problems after learning from the video., which they used to do earlier as homework.

Thirdly, by allowing students to take their own time to learn, he has made sure that their base is strong enough before they move to higher levels in subjects. Without these strong bases, their self confidence can go for a toss, as the problem might keep compounding as they go from one level to the next and so on.

     When you have such useful advantages coming from a website, you can understand  what positive effect it must be having on the students. The Khan Academy is a tool which helps parents educate and develope their children without the burdens of a normal classroom weighing them down. More importantly he is helping breaking the notion that higher authorities know best,and in doing so his contribution to education will far likely go beyond the students who use the site.    

The 2nd One

(Firstly i would like to apologize by saying that i made a mistake in my gmail accounts.I wrote three blogs in two different accounts.Now that i have realized my mistake i transferred them here.)

I write today about the second lecture of our ‘Principles of management’ class, which is taken by none other than our very own Prof T. Prasad. Surprisingly this is only the second lecture and he already seems so close enough to us. Its maybe because of the informal way he teaches us . Whatever the way is, the results are already showing. Students have started taking his teachings quite seriously.

The second lecture which we had, Prof Prasad told us about a new ‘concept’ called the ‘’Pygmalion Effect’’. It was more than anything a new way of thinking things while doing any business. According to its theory if one had the true passion , the determination and mainly the DESIRE to do something, it WOULD turn out to be true. It’s something which in the world of medicine is called by the doctor’s as the ‘placebo’ effect. Point being ,again , that it’s the mindset of the person , the way of thinking that makes a huge difference if a certain goal is to be achieved. (He taught us this point very effectively in the previous class in the Tower building exercise too). He also had shown a cartoon picture in his blog which showed a cat looking in the mirror, but only difference that instead of a cat the mirror showed a Lion. Meaning it matters what you think of yourself too. If you think you can’t do it whatever you do you won’t accomplish it. But if you think you can do it irrespective of however difficult the task, you will end up crossing your limits , no doubt.

After this he taught us another concept of the ‘x and y’ managers. According to this concept manager ‘x’ was a negative thinking manager and manager ‘y’ was a positive one. So, basically all the staff subordinates working under these managers were looked or judged by X and Y accordingly.

Situation 1: All the staff working under ‘x’ are lazy.

Conclusion: X THINKS that all his staff IS lazy

Situation 2: All the staff working under ‘x’ are good enough but

Conclusion: X still being a negative person thinks that his staff is lazy.

Inference here being that irrespective of what the situation is the staff under ‘x’ will never be fully utilized to their full potential. This is because of the negative thinking manager they have.

Situation 3: All the staff under manager ‘y’ is lazy

Conclusion: Y THINKS that all the staff under him is good enough, and encourages them more

Situation 4: All the staff under ‘y’ are good

 Conclusion: ‘y’ thinks that all his staff is good and pushes them hard to their full potential.

Now here the inference is that whatever be the situation the staff under ‘y’ will be pushed hard and however small or big their potential they will perform or atleast will be pushed to perform out of their limits.

 This is what happens with many people across the world . They might be hard working and sincere but because of their not so positive senior staff they end up underperforming.

The Valley-Crossers

(Firstly i would like to apologize for making an error in the gmail accounts.I wrote all the blogs but two of them in a different account.After i realized my mistake i copied them here.) 
So we move along to the next lecture of Principles of Management.This time Prof Mandi came up with another creative and innovative idea to teach us the 'Principles" of management. The exercise which he gave us this time was to cross a valley.sounds easy?but it isn't.The tricky part was ,we were supposed to cross the valley with our whole team(of 3 people) without breaking contact with a log which all three were holding. The below picture might give you'll a clearer idea.

Now you must have understood what we were trying to achieve.The first thing that went through my head was who would be strong enough to carry a third person across the valley.All the muscle in the class got up and opted to carry out the exercise.But the motive of this exercise was not to actually cross the valley but 'how' we end up crossing it. What was needed to carry out this task was a full flegded plan. The execution of the plan was also going to be more important. If a plan is laid out, the task at hand how much ever difficult it is will start to look smaller and easier,and this is applicable everywhere, more importantly in our day-to-day life as managers.
          The second requirement which had to be fulfilled was to have synchronization among the team members, carrying out the task. Without any sync amongst the team members, the task would've gone haywire.If we wanted a smooth flow of the group from one side to the other that sync was very necessary.In fact ,linking this to a managers life ,that sync is necessary even there.If there is no match/sync amongst the team members there would be a lot of chaos,and the task would be ruined.  Team work is what is required in any group, any task.
         The third criteria that was needed was that every member should be able to perform all the different functions of the task. As we can see in the cartoon above, all the members either hung on to the log, or carried the log or carried the third member in different phases of the task.So the member should have been ready to do all these tasks effeciently.One mistake and the whole system could fall down. This is what is also required from us as aspiring managers too.Today the competition, the market is so cut-throat, that unless you have all these skills as a whole,its very difficult to become an A-grade manager.
        As a whole we might not have actually crossed a valley,but we learnt a lot by just imagining how to do it.The way of imparting this knowledge might be unorthodox but absolutely 100% effective.We know what is required of us as aspiring managers now.It is WE who have to imbibe these lessons in us and apply them in our future to become successful managers.In fact i might not be wrong in saying this...but i just realised that we are the future 'Valley-Crossers'.

Principles of management-LEC01

In our very first lecture of 'Principles of Management' Prof T. Prasad initially told us about his very own 'Mandi'. This is a concept initiated by him by which the students themselves got an opportunity to experience the thrill of direct sales of educational toys, which were made by the NGO 'Navnirmiti' for a social cause-engendering disadvantaged children. During this 'Mandi' students themselves travelled to different parts of Mumbai("to target their customers" as they say in management!) and tried selling these educational toys to children. The passion with which it was done could easily be seen in our Professors eyes through and through as he was explaining it to us. The basic thing he was trying to inculcate in us was- to have a Business mindset. To think like a businessman,to grow like a businessman, and more than anything...to THINK out of the box-like a businessman. "Dhanda" was the word which he used time and again to maybe drill that word ,that business mindset into us.
After teaching us about the importance of thinking like a business manager, he shifted to a practical group exercise. The exercise was a simple one-to build a tower out of small cubical boxes. Did not understand the purpose of it at that moment. He selected a student (in a rather Business like fashion) and told him to build the tower. But before that he made all the class guess-as to how big the tower would be. The guesses varied from as low as 10 cubes to 25(10 being the tower builder himself!!). Still couldn't make out the purpose of this whole charade. And finally the exercise began.
After a lot of huff and puff the tower ended up being 19 cubes tall after which it finally collapsed. Then after that the Prof. gave us another situation. This time the candidate was supposed to put a blindfold and make the tower. We were again made to guess the tower height;and obviously everybody's numbers went down drastically. That's when it came-the 'business part' of it. His question was basically as to why everybody had made such small numbered guesses. Point being..why everybody had set such small GOALS!Just because the situation was tougher doesn't mean you lower your goals.The whole purpose was to explain the concept of GOAL setting. To set your Goal much higher than your actual potential, so that even if you don't end up achieving your goal, you'd still end up over doing yourself, over doing your limit. At the end of it all i understood why he was not teaching straight from the book or according to the syllabus, cause the true 'Principles of Management' is not something which can be taught , but has to be inculcated....