VALLEY CROSSING..

Dr. Mandi asked us to perform  a valley crossing exercise in group of three.

The exercise had an hidden agenda of Organizational Management and Teamwork. 

The task at hand required a group of three people to move from left side of the valley to the right side with the help of a pole. The task demanded a good conceptual knowledge of the problem at hand & building an effective strategy to be implemented to solve the problem. 

  For the success of the Valley Crossing problem, the key ingredient was coordination among team member & efficient execution of the strategy devised. 

ISSUES: 
Speed of the 3 valley crosser's should be synchronized.

·       Real Time Communication should be there among them - where they could communicate to each other how and what steps to be taken while crossing the valley. 

·         

      Gap Size between any pair should be uniform.

·      

      Interdependence among the crosser's should be there.

The procedure followed is shown below:

  

    At one point of time each one of them will be in different situation either safe, half safe and fully unsafe. There come nine steps which they have to follow to cross the valley.  

    KEY TAKE AWAY FROM THE EXERCISE :
    Leadership – different from the tradition approach of an authoritarian team leader.
   
    Proper Communication – Communication is the key to crossing the valley effectively.
   
   Trust Factor – Every person needed to trust each other completely especially when their feet was off the ground.
   
   Conflicts Management – dealing with conflict openly and transparently and not allowing grudges to build up and destroy team morale.
     
   Goals – The goals were clear, defined and each member in the team fully understood the gravity of the problem.
    
   Coordination- Finally the most important of them all was coordination that was the sole reason for our success.
     

THREE MONKS- silent film with so much saying...

Three Monks is a Chinese feature film directed by A Da in 1976.

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."






                                                                         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rolBiHfWokY

lessons that film contains....

some disputes are unavoidable - when person work for himself, there is no problem.

 when joined by second, there are some but can be solved. 

But if one more joins then the major problem begins "who will take responsibilities".

 It is evident that in an organization and in a team, its important to take personal ego out of the equation and to perform the duty for the greater good. In an organization, selfish motives must be detected and discouraged for the good of the many.

Reunion at the time of tough situations- after seeing fire, started by mouse. all three monks started running randomly to get the water. There was only one target- to stop the fire. when monastery is on fire they realize that it is better to think in terms of team goal rather than individualistic goals.  

Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life.

 Team work leads to innovation- 

When two monks were there they also invented the method for carrying water(measuring by scale), hanging bucket exactly at center of stick, so that no one is dissatisfied, although output was less than first case where one monk was carrying one bucket. But still there was a innovation.

More innovation occurred when all three monk started working as team, they invented pulley system. 
The monk at the bottom fills the buckets, the middle monk works on pulley and third monk at top carries bucket inside in reservoir. 

Relating to management- 

All human beings most basic tendency is to get everything done without any effort, i.e. be lazy. If you can manage to get your work done by someone else you will be most happy. Mostly, prey to this will be the junior most member in the group. This is what has happened with the monks too. I am sure that  it might have happened to most of us.  It is the responsibility of the manager  to divide the work efficiently and effectively among the team and to ensure that it is done. 

Managers have to be innovative also.They need to make drastic changes depending on the changes in the system. 

They continuously improved the system with the addition of the resources and finally reached a set up where maximum efficiency is achieved. Thus continuous improvement is also a key to success.

Thus small clip has shown us the importance of the role of a manager, continuous improvement in the system and team work.

 

S.M.A.R.T GoAL SeTTiNG

 "Goal" is very important word of our life. Knowingly or unknowingly we sets goals    

 everyday, it may be small like " i have to complete my assignment till Saturday(so i can enjoy Sunday)" or big like "i want placement  in good firm" and list goes on, and we start working hard to achieve these goals.Goal setting is a powerful way of motivating people, and of motivating yourself.
In class of professor Dr.Mandi i learned about SMART goals, goal achievement and many more interesting and motivating things which i would like to share with all.

Activity - Again building a tower, but this time we told to set target of how many blocks(GOAL SETTING), taking consideration of last tower build(GOAL HISTORY).
Ambition- goal setting > goal history.
Learning- for achieving new goals we have to look in our past and adding few learning and more improvement we can increase our performance.
        goal setting * goal achievement= performance
  

  SMART Goals

                     
Meant to create a SMART goal is to win half the battle, and lose not get made. You have to win the other half of the plan how you will achieve this goal.





Setting goal is not difficult task, but effective execution is difficult but not impossible. only thing is that, that we have to do in smarter way. Goal setting and goal achievement should be in spiral manner(spiral is in form of fibonacci series i.e 1,1,2,3,5,8..... ), i.e whatever we do should be better than previous one.

Pygmalion Effect- making useless person, use full.

Your expectations of people and their expectations of themselves are the key factors in how well people perform at work, Known as the Pygmalion effect. The power of expectations cannot be overestimated. These are the fundamental principles you can apply to performance expectations and potential performance improvement at work.

Or in simple way, the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

The corollary of the Pygmalion effect is the golem effect, in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.

Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) report and discuss the Pygmalion effect in the classroom at length.In their study, they showed that if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from some children, then the children did indeed show that enhancement.

  SMART GOAL + PYGMALION EFFECT = SUCCESS.