Tuesday 7 August 2012

PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT SESSION 3

VALLEY CROSSING FUN

Above effort shows team work done by a team of ants to cross a valley . In real team also this dynamics holds where everybody works to fulfill an task to attain a goal . An task is completed with certain difficulties and conditions applied to it . So now we explain this activity in detail.

Now, here is the concept that is designed like at a particular time one out of the three people is hanging above the valley dip while other are on the land. Now for the system to be stable following are things that need to be considered:
1. Valley's lenght must be between 1 foot to 2 feet.
2. Trust among team members .

CONCEPT OF TEAM WORK:
The process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal.
Teamwork is often a crucial part of a business, as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance. Teamwork means that people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals.

CONCEPT:

In order to understand the importance of teamwork we must 1st look at the types of thoughts of respective people in an organization:

1) Theory X : The managers who assume that the people working under them are lazy and are bound to avoid work if they get a chance. The only way to make people work is by threat and use of power. More often than not this theory does not allow employees to gel amongst themselves and know each other.

2) Theory Y : Contrary to Theory X , lies the motto for Theory Y . This management style assumes that the employees are self motivated and are ambitious. A Theory Y manager believes that, given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work. This allows employees to learn from one another and have a positive attitude towards work.

We can observe in this activity that all the 3 people have crossed the valley without much of a trouble. It has been possible due to teamwork. Had they been walking alone and tried to cross individually, this couldn't have been possible or could have been more difficult and time consuming.

My observations:

In order to comprehend this task, a few things must be taken into consideration:


1. Management tasks should never be desinged for as per the person's structure or ablity, they must be designed in such a way that any one can perform them till any level.

2. Responsibility of each individual must be clear. Load on all individuals must be similar so as to allow smooth functioning.
3. Training individuals to do the task and finally executing it successfully.
Here is the final pictography of the task:

PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT SESSION 2



Living Life to Educate

Everybody is transformed into a mature human being by education . In today's world, Education has taken a new meaning of competition other than learning. All of us are running towards marks and recognition from other people , but nobody is concerned by personal development . This thought is very much prevailing in society and everyone is judged on this criteria. Still in every generation there are people who think differently and do things in a subtle which was done by a man called Mr. Salmaan Khan. Khan revolutionized the way we look at education. It all started when he started tutoring one of his cousins interactively using Yahoo Doodle images.
If talk about Mr. Salmaan Khan, he is a graduate of the prestigious MIT, born as a Bangladeshi and Haward Business School. Today his video tutorial library has more than 3500 video lessons encompassing lessons ranging from basic arithmetic to hard core complex functions and calculus, from biology to economics, from astrology to physics and what not.
The Khan Way



  How it all started:

The Khan Academy started with Khan remotely tutoring one of his cousins interactively using Yahoo Doodle images. Based on feedback from his cousin, additional cousins began to take advantage of the interactive, remote tutoring. In order to make better use of his and their time, Khan transitioned to making YouTube video tutorials.

Traditional Teacher think how a thing like this possible but it was made possible by this man . There is one illustration proving it .

 Here is a small demonstration of the genius brain in pictorial form:



 A Snapshot of the website. http://www.khanacademy.org/


                                      An Innovative Dimension to online teaching!


Our schooling system never treates a student to the amazing world of logic. Millions of children don't know that something like this exists. I was one of them until recently. But when I came in contact with it, it was amazing!! I was amazed to discover the extent to which logic decides every moment we spend the way we spend it. 

Now let's talk about the IITs. The institutions really grill the student. It's so tiring and stressful that students go into depression if they don't get a seat. But who's to blame? I say it's our schooling system. The IITs essentially test the student on the application of concepts. I never thought that I was applying when I was in my school. It's what Mr. Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, says - our teaching system at present follows "one size fits all" rule.
This system needs to change, and Khan Academy has done wonderful job in at least moving in that direction.


Mr.Salman Khan- Theory Y Manager


Mr Khan made  proves theory Y manager real . He saw an opportunity in the world of education and tried to change the status quo . He never thought that people will accept it or not but went to launch an concept which is thought provoking . Underlying concept was always to make an positive impact on student  and thought that students will take  it positively . Everyone is present to improve themselves and society as whole . This positive attitude gives strength to everybody  to change life into a better one .

All this creates an successful and happy manager who is vibrating and willing to change . He tried that everybody gets appreciation on their performance so he created following concepts 

1.     Hall of fame wall.

2.     Appreciation wall.

3.     Student of the month.

This is further aid to the motivation of students.

Conceptulisation:

Conceptualization concept states that how we can integrate small parts and creates something much bigger. Here is the biggest example that I have come across in recent time, which elaborate this concept further.

Khan has stated a vision of turning the academy into a charter school:

This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever.

A November 2011 grant of $5 million from Ireland-based The O'Sullivan Foundation, founded by Avego MD and cloud computing pioneer Sean O'Sullivan, will be directed to three initiatives:

1.    Expanding the teaching faculty

2.    Extending content through crowd-sourced contributions following a Wikipedia-style model

3.    Developing curricula to help users blend the content with physical teaching through STEM learning

Recent teaching appointees as a result of the grant include Dr. Steven Zucker, formerly of Pratt Institute and Dr. Beth Harris, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to produce art and history content. YouTube video creators Vi Hart and Brit Cruise have also joined the teaching faculty.

A series of summer school camps are planned to start in Northern California from June 2012 to test curricula for real-world schools.

Last Thoughts:

The conclusion part would be this that in case you wishes to actually do something that as a visionary educator like Mr. Salmaan Khan, then make sure that you follow the few principles mentioned below:
1.     BOUNDED RATIONALITY: As a manger one must always make sure that no crude data in full form will ever be available, you must have a visionary leader and a forecaster to make sure that with limited information one must be able to make sound decisions.

2.     Management by objectives: In organization every bit of planning is done by keeping by keeping objectives in mind. Vision must be Impossible, Crisp, Rosy, kick for anyone who reads it.

3.     Believe in Hawthorne Effect: A term referring to the tendency of some people to work harder and perform better when they are participants in an experiment. Individuals may change their behaviour due to the attention they are receiving from researchers rather than because of any manipulation of independent variables.

Monday 25 June 2012

PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT SESSION 1


 

DHANDHA –MERI JAAN

In the modern world, Human life is getting organized day by day .Every activity we do, we try to simplify it and create a logical algorithm to perform in an efficient way. By this tendency, value of management of anything you do has become very important. In case of businesses, success of every process heavily lies upon managing money, resources and humans. Business Management is both science and art , we can define steps but still the outcome of any business activity is undefined .Due to this irony  we need continuous exposure and knowledge to become better in this art . So I am trying to simplify it by giving lifetime experiences and excellent examples seen during my stay in NITIE, Mumbai.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

In this globalized world, businesses have developed from mere profit making entities to value generating entities for individuals and society as a whole. Businesses have grown bigger than before, so complexities related to it also increased many fold. Now Business Management is not only related to managing your resources but understanding the concept of organization. This can be understood by an example of an activity which is performed during a session on Principles of Management by our class in NITIE, MUMBAI.

ART OF BUILDING A BUSINESS

STAGE 1:

During this session, everybody was asked to volunteer for an game called DARE TO BUILD. In the game you have to build a tower of cube but you will be blindfolded and have to use only one hand. But there was a condition involved, which was whosoever wants to be a part of this game has to bet some money. Those guys have to risk that money to accomplish this task.
The situation above is similar to a company where interested people invest money to build a entity which can thus generate some profit in return .The risk involved is also shared by those people .So as a principle for any business , You need a set of like-minded people who can work together and face problems but are determined to succeed.
Any big business want founders like that , so we had three guys who volunteered by investing a mere some of Rs. 975 to start with .

STAGE 2:

Now we got three guys who invested but none of them knew the task to perform. So here comes the concept of GOAL SETTING, which in turn means that we need to set our goals and objectives very clearly. I must tell you, Goal setting for any business activity is the most important decision taken by the founders .This boils down to a question that what kind of goals we should set. I understood and wish you people to follow the concept of SMART Objective setting approach.

SMART Approach: 
  •  S stands for Specific, to do that we asked everybody that what should be the desired height of the tower to everybody sitting in the class. Volunteers gave specific no. of blocks to build the tower. In any business, while setting up a goal we should be as specific about the details as possible.
  • M stands for Measurable, which means we should have some numerical data to represent the goal. 
  •  A stands for Attainable, Objectives should be achievable under given circumstances .
  • R stands for Relevant, every objective should be relevant in order to achieve the goal of the business.
  • T stands for Timely, we should develop a timeline to attain the objectives.
This approach to set your objectives helps you to analyze the current situation as well as predict the future of the business.

STAGE 3:

Group was made and objectives are set, now It was time to implement ideas into reality .These guys have to decide the structure of their organization first before moving forward:
1.       Workforce Selection:
Blindfolded guy to perform the activity who can be considered as the work force required to perform the operation of the project.
2.       Middle Management Selection:
A guy who can help blindfolded guy to place the cubes. This represents middle management who is responsible to direct , achieve the desired objective , optimum use of resources and maintain the timeline for the project .After doing all these work, he has to report to  top management  for discussing the progress of the project.
3.       Top Management Selection:
A guy who can strategies about how to achieve goals , direct entire company and stream line the thought process of employees in favor of companies objectives .A guy was selected to do this task .

STAGE 4:

Business or activity is in progress to perform certain task which can benefit the company or that group. A lot of difficulties has been faced by this group as it happens in case of a company. In this workers were doing hard work to make the product. Middle management was managing the whole process of tower building. Top management was involved in crucial times of difficulties, where it pitched in to advice and give motivation. This benefits both middle management guy and worker to perform as per plans.

STAGE 5:

At the end of the activity, the given task was achieved and everybody in the group was feeling a sense of achievement. This association of human beings can be seen in any group activity and this is very important. It shows the human side of a profit building entity and promotes the culture of any organization. This belongingness helps an organization to grow in healthy and focused manner. Everybody should have a defined share of appreciation as it was in the activity. So it very essential to start but more important is to finish with sense of achievement and pride.

  

DECISION MAKING DURING THE ACTIVITY:

·         As top management is responsible for giving direction to whole company. So first they should be themselves clear about the goal of the company and should define it on paper.
We have seen that industries help build nations and they are the building blocks. So Company leader should be ethical and socially responsible to benefit both company and society
·         As middle management, you have to be approachable and should understand the difficulties faced by workforce. You have to focus on achieving the target but also decide according to working conditions, remuneration and benefits provided to the employee. For example , When I worked in my business, I observed that every individual wants space to work and freedom to perform in his own way .It is very essential to recognize that balance of organization policy and personal freedom given to employee
·         Workforce should also have sense of responsibility towards the organization. This is shown by hard work, on time work and dedication toward work.
·         As I have seen the activity, a lot of students other than these guys were involved in suggesting the ways to accomplish task. These days in businesses, these people are called Consultants. Consultants are people who do analysis of your company and try to give you genuine feedback and suggestions to improve running of your company.

 

ZEAL FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Entrepreneur are business man who try find innovative and life changing ideas , then implement them into a viable business. Whole blog was focused to induce a burning desire into minds of thousands of management graduate like me. Unless and until , we become our boss to change the face of this globe our country will not be utilize its best resource –Young People like us .
So last lines as said by Dr. T. Prasad who took the session :

Becho Seekho, Seekho Socho , Socho Becho………………..