Achieving Better Control in Organisation

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

                                                                                                                                  — Albert Einstein

After a very unique start in first lecture of POM, expectedly 2^nd and 3^rd lectures led to unlearning of certain misconceptions and then learning of new Ideas of better organisational management.

 

In the 2^nd lecture students shared, what they learned from the Blogs of Mr. Mandi. I would like to share one which I found most interesting and was discussed most in the lecture. The name is SKY WALK: Using cartoon as a training tool for Teamwork. 

 In this cartoon the challenge for three members is to cross roof top from left side to right side safely, as a skywalk.  In all, there are three members. They are given a pole which is strong enough to carry the load of people as given in the cartoon. They have no access to resources other than mentioned in the cartoon. It is cautioned that the roof top gap is so much that any attempts by the group members trying to jump to the other side will lead to FATAL consequences.

There are two key issues in the cartoon.

a.       Length of the 'Walk able Gap'

b.      Minimum Number of people needed for safe crossover

It took 9 steps to complete this task and during these 9 steps we got to learn various concepts of management, which are:

Team - High performance teams - Self managed teams - Leadership in team - Team formation stages - Team norms - Cohesiveness - Independent tasks - Interdependent tasks - Outcome interdependence - Team members' roles - Competition and Cooperation - Authority in teamwork situations - Participative management- Flat team

The steps and position of 3 persons while crossing:

Persons	Front  Person	Middle  Person	Rear  person
Steps ( 1 to 9)
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risky,	Safe	Safe
3	Full Risky,	Safe	Safe
4	Half Risky,	Half Risky,	Safe
5	Safe	Full Risky,	Safe
6	Safe	Half Risky,	Half Risky,
7	Safe	Safe	Full Risky,
8	Safe	Safe	Half Risky,
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

In the 3^rd and most interesting lecture so far, Prof. Mandi employed a unique way of teaching the difference between Craft Management and Modern Management. This also led to clearing of many misconceptions we had about Modern Management.
We were provided with cubical blocks and our first task was to estimate how high the single block pillar can go in case of two different approaches:

1.       Person A :- OPEN EYED

2.       Person B :- BLIND FOLDED

As expected majority went with open eyed, saying he can build a higher block.

Next step was to perform these to operations and see what actual result is. For Person A highest bid went to 25 where as for Person B it went only up to 18.

A volunteer started making the pillar using both his eyes open and hands but was only able to make the pillar 22 blocks high.

For blind for task was more complicated. Team of 3 people was chosen, one was made CEO (Chief Executive Officer), One Manager to instruct the third blind folded worker. The positions were decided by the 3 consulting each other.

He worker started building the tower while manager was instructing him where to place the block. Their start was very shacky but slowly and slowly to our amusement, they went on to build a tower of 25 blocks.

While all this was going on we were observing a situation somewhat similar to a real life working condition that is how much an effective communication is necessary between a worker and manager. We also noticed that an open eyed person was more cautious and predictable in his approach, whereas there was no fear for blind folded. He was just doing as instructed by his manager.

Most important thing that worker wanted while doing his task was motivation and appreciation.

It was a great learning exercise, by the performance of one very interesting and unpredictable task.

Person A showed the technique of Craft management whereas Person B showed the technique of modern management

The comparison between Craft/Traditional Management and Modern Management is as follows :

Parameter	CRAFT Management	Modern Management
Work	Complete work is done by a single person. Work will be very ambiguous.	Work is shared between two or more individuals, and thus taking the pressure off from one person. It will be distributed. Work will be crystal clear.
Satisfaction	Higher	Less
Decision	The person who is working (open eyed) takes his own decision so he will be under pressure, his efficiency decreases.	Manager takes all the decision the, employees (blind folded) will not be under excessive pressure thus increasing the efficiency.
Skill	Since the person is doing all the work himself, his skill will be more.	Since the work is divided into many parts skills of the each employee is limited. Quality will be lower.
Productivity	Productivity is low.	Productivity is high.

Another important point learned during this learning session was of removing the middle management in organisational system and keeping a more streamlined higher management and grass root employees. Try to keep them blind folded so that they don’t develop higher and variety of skills. This will lead to higher production and better control.

One more important learning was about how the work further dissected in different parts:

After coming back from the class I tried to correlate the management lesson taught today with my previous workplace and was able to distinguish between the two in a better way.