Three Monks: Lessons Learnt

Hello friends, it’s raining cats and dogs outside and I am back with a gust of Chinese monsoon.  Here follows a short piece of beauty from the great old land. Let’s first have a look at it and then we’ll move forward.

A great piece, indeed! Released in 1980 and directed by A Da, the video is a beautiful creation of Shanghai Animation Film Studio. This time around, we revisited this and tried to learn a lesson or two about teamwork and organization skills.

Self-explanatory as it is, the video highlights various natures of team dynamics, problem solving and in turn, pointers to making a team work.

1.      Individuals v/s Team: A team is supposed to achieve what an individual is incapable of. With a conscious observation, we can figure it out in the video.

Load remains to be a vital factor to measure team performance. The video has 3 solutions with one, two and three team members respectively. Let’s try to analyze their respective loads:

·         1^st solution: The first monk carries a load of two buckets on his own:

the load of each bucket is, say, b, and that of his own weight is w. Now considering that his load efficiency is inversely proportional to his load, load efficiency per person, P₁ = k₁/(b+b)w [k1 = constant]= 0.5 k₁/bw

·         2^nd solution: Two monks share the load of one bucket:

Now by the same logic, load efficiency per person, P₂ = k₂/(b/2)w [b/2 as they share the load] = 2 k₂/bw

Moreover, although not shown in the video, we might speculate another option (Would like to have your view on this), which might reduce individual load, but enhances productivity:

·         3^rd solution: Three monks devise a pulley like structure, that almost eliminates w. So load efficiency increases manifolds.

A team, thus, signifies exponential growth in possibilities as it grows.

2.      Make It Simple:

Experts point out, there are 4 possibilities while providing any solution:

Problems Solutions	Simple	Complex
Simple	Area 1	Area 2
Complex	Area 3	Area4

We want simple solutions, irrespective of whether the Problem is complex or simple. They say, there is no complex solution – it’s just the lack of creativity.

While watching the video in the classroom, we paused it 3 times to suggest 3 solutions to the conflicts caused, and we all came up with complex solutions.

On the contrary, the monks succeeded to make the team work when they sorted their problems out in simple creative manner.

3.      With great power comes…:

Teams empower us, true. However, it’s equally important to take care of the integrity of the team members. The monks got involved in a number of conflicts, apparently because of trifle reasons. They eventually overcame them with ingenuity. However, the same might not be true always.


In fact, at the very beginning of the video, of the columns of text in Chinese that appear at the beginning: the first column reads, "one monk fetches water to drink", the second column reads, "two monks carry water to drink", and the third one merely says, "three monks". The unfinished sentence reflects the film's central question, which is whether the three main characters will learn to work together so that they can all have water to drink. [courtesy: Youtube].
So let’s make the team work at the very outset. After all, the best teams are not big in volume, but in integrity.

 Other Observations:

The video, apart from the above pointers, have many other intriguing angles to it. It actually shows some interesting characteristics of team dynamics.

For example, the first two monks (chronologically as they were shown), at first shared a good relationship. However, after the load-sharing conflict, they didn’t share the same cordiality. But interestingly, as the third monk arrived and they found that they have a common interest to rebuke the third monk, they united.

The video also highlights the need of maintain composure in times of crisis (the fire). Another interesting observation is the portrait of Lord Buddha, His reactions at different situations and the plant before His portrait.

I believe there are many other cues we can learn from in this video. I’ll definitely look for them. I’d like you also to look for them. I’d be happy to have your comments and views on this.

On that note, I'll take a pause. Happy Learning !!!

On that note

Crossing the Valley Exercise

 “The bridges that you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren't there.”

-          Gene Brown

The above quote roughly means:  barriers that are physical are reflections of the mental ones. There is an important organizational lesson to be learnt in this. Organizations are meant to facilitate the impossible, unachievable. The recipe is simple: Believe that it can be achieved, plan and deliver.

In one of my previous blogs, I made a mention of the Crossing the Valley exercise, in which three individuals wanted to cross a valley wider than the individuals. While they achieve their target, we shall try to learn a concept or two from what they did.

Let us try to define the problem first:

No of people: 3

Valley gap: 2 footsteps

The three individuals plan to cross it. The only prop they have got is a firm rod-like structure, sufficiency long.

Solution:

They hold the rod together with the gap between each two of them is one footstep and they simply walk by.  The picture below demonstrates it. Surprised? Does going get this easy? Well, I shall take you through a small dry run to answer that:

 

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

The '_______' like structure indicates the valley and Li and Ri denotes the left and right foot of the ith person.
Last year we conducted a simulation of this process in NITIE. Here are the glimpses of how it was conducted:

The steps, no matter how simple they seem, do contain a number of valuable lessons to be learnt:

1. Load Distribution: the load of each person is reasonably reduced as they organized and devised the mechanism together. Organizations are actually meant to reduce loads. What might seem as a cumbersome task for individuals, organizations are supposed to do them with ease. The system above is a perfect specimen.
2. Simple Design: The beauty of the system lies in its simple design.
3. Uniformity of roles: Similar roles for all 3 individuals. There is no differentiation among person 1, 2 and 3. In fact their tasks are designed to be easier, lighter, clearer and more systematic. The members of the group are equally responsible for their contribution to the overall task completion. The amount of risk is also equally distributed among them.
4. Need of Communication: For the successful completion of the task, it is very important to have proper communication and feedback mechanism among th 3 members. In fact,  the feedback mechanism is instantaneous and hence of paramount importance.
5. Training: There has to be a proper synchronization among the members. Moreover, they need to interact methodically. This requirement leads us to the importance of one very important aspect - training. Organizations even with exceptionally well design will fail if its members are not trained properly. We did a dry run of this system in our classroom. At that time, we felt the need of proper communication training and thus, establishment of synchronization among the 3 persons.
6. Interdependent Roles: The roles are assigned ina  way that every individual is dependent on everyone else for the successful completion of the task. An organization must have such a well-built system that no individual can loaf around. It is often because of weakly designed systems that employees get infected by negative work culture.
7. Well-specified problem statement: A very important observation is that the problem has been defined properly so that it can be acted upon likewise. The gap, the length of the rod and the gap between each two person are all well specified.
8. Neo-classical Tool of Management: This simple demonstration actually leads us to some wonderful concepts of neo-classical management. Unlike classical theory of management, wherein the roles are delegated in a pyramid-like manner as to ensure unity of command, neo-classical theory speaks about empowerment of the employees. Here underlies the concept of matrix structures of organizations, where the groups are self-managed and everyone is capable of making decisions. To explain this, I would give an example of a circus, wherein every performer is actually making commands, taking ad-hoc feedbacks and still managing to create a coordinated excellent show. So this simple experiment opens up a far wider dimension to ponder upon.   

Many more concepts might be realized from this demonstration. I tried to summarize my observations. I'll be interested in knowing your thoughts also.

Before concluding, I would like to pose an intriguing angle to this experiment. 

What exactly is the scope of this experiment? Is it limited to a gap only 2 steps wide? Can we cross any length of a gap by following the same mechanism? What modifications do we need to do, if it is at all possible?

Well, keep on thinking. On this curious note, I'll take a break. Happy learning !!!

Khan Academy: A different way to learn

Education – as they say, should be for everyone and all. However, there seems to be an endless debate on how it can be achieved and more importantly, how effectively so.

At a time when teachers are struggling to stand at the board, trying to get 50 odd students to learn the same stuff at the same pace, Salman Khan from Bangladesh seems to have a different view altogether of his own.

Salman runs a non-profit educational organization called the ‘Khan Academy’ since 2006 in attempt to make education fun and interesting to students who otherwise find it a daunting job to keep pace with their ‘smarter’ counterparts.

What is it?

It is a non-profit educational organization started by created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,200 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare andmedicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology,organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics and microeconomics, and computer science.

Quite interestingly, Salman used to work in a hedge fund and even in his own words, it is actually surprising for him to pursue something of such a social motive.

Inception:

It all started when Khan was remotely tutoring one of his cousins using Yahoo Doodle images. He found that his cousin actually found it more interesting to learn from him over the internet rather than in person. Based on feedback from his cousin, additional cousins also began to take advantage of the interactive, remote tutorial. In order to make better use of his and their time, Khan transitioned to making YouTube video tutorials. Along the same line, it occurred to him that this might actually be a better solution to the numerous educational problems students and teachers face across the world.

Relevance:

The question that might be bugging you is, why Khan? We are discussing principles of management and organization here. Well, simply because one can hardly get a better example of managerial skills merged together.

Vision: To start with, Khan has adapted a wonderful vision for his academy: a vision of providing free education anywhere for anyone. The beauty of the vision is that it reaches beyond normal achievable limits of any pre-existing educational system.

Innovation: It is a simple but a very novel idea. Teaching students in a iterative and interactive fashion. Khan provides education through free videos. The advantages are very clear. As Khan explains:

·         It makes the same topic interesting (as Khan’s cousins found their uncle more interesting in the videos)

·         Students can pause, rewind or move forward the video lessons

·         It makes education graphical and physical rather than abstract

·         Each student gets time as per his/her convenience

And the list goes on

Training: Effective training is essential for the health of any organization. Khan academy deals with the same idea for its students. They make the students go through problems repeatedly, unless every concept is actually absorbed. Students thus prepared are expected to be adept in the subject.

Theory X and Y: We discussed the theory X and Y in a previous post. This time I get another chance to explain the value if the same. Khan believes each student is equally capable of learning. Every student has his/her forte. So he provided a wide degree of freedom for the student as far as time, complexity and procedure are concerned.

                In everyday classroom scenario, we often find teachers picking out ‘brilliant’ students from the lot and focus on them while teaching. As a result, many students don’t get enough attention just because they lost out on the ‘initial edge’ opportunity. Khan’s method ensures that there is no such discrimination in students. Equal education and attention is provided for everyone. So, it is theory Y – “There is no bad student, might only be bad teacher”.

Electronic Entrepreneurship: Khan has used electronic medium to full use to implement his idea. He realized the growing importance of internet in every field of our life. Implementing his idea on the web world widened the reach of the idea manifolds.

With the hope that Khan’s example enabled us to learn something, I would like to conclude this post. Happy Learning !!!

Managers: Theory X and Y

LE03

Managers – Theory X and Theory Y

This time I’ll talk about a few interesting concepts about managers that were discussed this Saturday in our Principles of Management (POM) lecture.

This week we discussed about the Theory X and Theory Y of human motivation. It was proposed by Douglas McGregorat of the MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1960s and have so far been used in human resource management, organizational behavior, organizational communication and organizational development . 

Observation says, there are two types of managers – Type X and Type Y.

X v/s Y Managers:

X type of managers are negative in their points of view of their employees and the organization, whereas Y type of managers remain positive in their views no matter what. Now let’s see what happens when X and Y type managers interact with Lazy and Active Employees respectively:

Situation 1	Employees are Lazy	Manager X thinks they are Lazy	Theory X
Situation 2	Employees are Active	Manager X thinks they are Lazy	Theory X
Situation 3	Employees are Lazy	Manager Y thinks they are Active	Theory Y
Situation 4	Employees are Active	Manager Y thinks they are Active	Theory Y

Theory X:

Situation 1 is often found in the industries. I, while working as a team member in my previous company, observed that a number of teams have suffered because of insincere employees and more importantly, because the manager (X type) did not do much to motivate them to do it sincerely.

Situation 2 is actually worse, wherein the employees are actually sincere and active. However, the manager X does not seem to share their sense of sincerity and actually highlights their weaknesses. Even if an organization is endowed with very active employees, it is very important for the manager to appreciate them and work with them with a positive attitude towards them. The funny fact is, based on my observations, most of our experiences, especially the industry related ones, belong to this category. The reason is probably that as employees, we tend to think that we are active and the manager fails to realize it.

Theory Y:

Now let's see how a type Y manager deals with the employees. 

I’d like to highlight Situation 3 a bit later. Let’s look at Situation 4 first. Here the manager Y thinks that his/her employees are active, and quite rightly so. Questions might be asked on whether this requires any merit from the manager’s point of view at all. Well, for them, I would like to point out that even though the employees are active, it is of utmost importance to appreciate their worth, or else we might end up in a Situation 2. The ones who might have encountered Situation 2 would definitely realize the value of Theory Y in Situation 4.

Now, the curious case of Situation 3, wherein the Manager Y appreciates his/her employees and treats them as they were Active employees, although they are apparently Lazy.

If we look around ourselves, most of our parents, teachers belong to this category. However, it is even more important for a manager to be Type Y when his/her employees are not willing to contribute.

I have had two great mentors in my professional life in the form of my offshore team lead and my client side team lead (for those not familiar with IT jargons, an offshore centre is somewhere the client have outsourced their business). They were full of positive energy and I always had a share of appreciation whenever we achieved something, even if very small. The point is not blind appreciation. In fact, it is, at times, very important to criticize the employees in a constructive way. However, it is very essential to believe one’s employees and treat them as they have great potential.

Observations show, it really does not matter whether the employees are active or lazy. What really matters is whether the managers are type X or Y.

Potential

The previous section highlights the need of identifying and appreciating the potential in employees. Now, on that note, let’s try to understand a few concepts related to potential and hence, goal setting.

 They say, human potential is infinite, and quite rightly so. As an organization, we try to reach our maximum potential in every endeavour. Even if pay attention towards all the definitions in Physics or Mathematics, we always set a parameter which seems  practically unachievable. Example: we define point to be something which does not have any dimension, which seems practically unrealistic. However, this is where the beauty of potential lies. It is infinite. The mor ewe stretch ourselves, we realize that our potential is even higher.

So, keeping that in mind, let’s try to understand how we can set goals and achieve quality performance.

The above picture explains the inter-relationship of

• ·        Our past experiences
• ·        Our estimate of achievable goal
• ·        Goal set
• ·        Performance achieved
• ·        Our Potential

As managers, we must thrive to reach the potential. Hence, the goal set must be higher than our past experiences and our perception of goals achievable. In this process, we must also aspire for a performance which is even higher than the goal set.

In my previous post, I discussed about the tower building exercise that we performed. We can very well relate to that in this context.

Hence, it should the aspiration of a manager to thrive for the utmost potential, and in the process to achieve excellence.

Discussions will continue. Hope you enjoyed this little post. Happy learning !!!

Excellence

Questions:

What is Excellence? What are its Components? And most importantly, How to achieve it?

We had a very intriguing discussion regarding these in the class this Thursday. And we went on to learn a few very important concepts about excellence, and as a matter of fact, about the purpose and working principles of organizations. 

Specimens:

Before trying to define excellence, let’s first look at a few probable specimens.

Is the Tajmahal an excellence? What about Apple iPhone? And UID Adhaar?

Well to talk about Tajmahal, it cannot be regarded as an excellence. The reason being, it is not replicable. What use does a statue in the middle of nowhere serve if it cannot be used by the crores of people around? We want lakhs and crores of Tajmahals.

Apple iPhone, yes it is. It has gone places, reached crores of people beyond boundaries. Probably, it is still a bit expensive to reach many more out of its present purview. Still, the bottomline remains, it is useful and replicable numerous times.

About UID Adhaar, we are not sure yet. However, it definitely shows the potential to be an excellence, provided the issues related to it are addressed properly.

So what conclusions can we draw from the above examples?

1.       Excellence must be replicable and of use to the greater part of the society.

2.        It cannot be achieved by individuals.

3.       Organizations can be used to achieve excellence. In fact, organizations are actually meant for that. They are tools for excellence.

Now, an argument might lie in the second point. That whether one can achieve excellence individually. 

Well, the first point is, even if one can achieve it, why would he/she? The next point is: the capacity of a group is always greater than that of an individual. Of course, if the group is not managed properly, it might produce results even worse than certain individuals. However, that should in no way encourage us to believe that individuals are more likely to achieve excellence than groups/organizations.

Hence, it remains one of the primary concerns of a manager to manage the group/organization properly to achieve this excellence. We’ll be performing an experiment to analyze this even further.

Crossing the valley:

It is called 'Crossing the Valley' exercise. Three of us will have to cross the valley as shown in  the above picture. Definitely the above cannot be achieved by an individual. The challenge for the group of three is to execute the plan and walk as if they were simply walking on a plain surface. I'll elaborate more on this once we perform this experiment.

Components of Excellence:

Now let us try to have a look at the components of excellence. We learned

Excellence = Efficiency X Effectiveness

Now how to elaborate it. Well, in simple words,  Efficiency deals with whether the given work is executed properly, whereas Effectiveness deals with whether the work given was rightly estimated.

Efficiency can be attributed to engineers, whereas Effectiveness remains a managerial concern. (Without any bias, any person who is able to imbibe the two features is both an engineer and a manager.)

We performed an exercise to understand this concept. It's called the Tower Building Exercise.

Tower Building Exercise:

One of our friends won he bid to form the designated tower. He had to build a tower of small cubes (approx. 2x2x2 cube-cm each). Asked how many cubes can be put on the tower without getting it to fall down, the average estimate of the class was below 15. Very importantly, the performer himself estimated a count of only 10. At the end, he could build a tower of 18 cubes.

Obviously, efficiency was above estimate. However, the question to bother is: if one can build a tower of 18, why would one estimate only 10? This is where the question of effectiveness lies as well as does the role of a manager.

We were then asked to give an estimate in case the same experiment is performed by the person blindfolded, with another one or two giving him directions. The estimate was reasonably lower than the previous one - by almost everyone in the class.

Now, here lies the real essence of management. A manager is a person who can think, and think effectively, most importantly, beyond a normal person's limit. If an individual can build 18 cube towers, why won't a group of 3 be able to build one with more? And this is thriving for excellence.

To add value to this discussion, I would like to add that the same experiment was carried out in another class, wherein the group outperformed the estimates of the class and built a 17 cube tower, blindfolded.

Learnings:

So what I learnt is that excellence is achieved by the combination of  efficiency and effectiveness, wherein the latter serves an even greater purpose in achieving the same. As managers, we must be able to develop this effective thinking.

On that note, I'll conclude this post. Happy learning !!!