Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Learning from Three monks story


Division of Work

Watch this video to understand how can we increase our efficiency when we divide and work together as a team.

Stage 1, with a single monk:
Each monk has a capability of carrying 2 buckets at a time and performed his work very efficiently and his needs where also fulfilled when he carried 2 buckets of water.

Stage 2, second monk arrival:
The requirement of water is increased since the number of people are increased. So they planned to get the water by collaborating with each other. So they carried 1 bucket of water and placed the bucket exactly at the center so that the work load is decreased.
Some of you might be in an assumption that this is inefficient since 2 people are carrying only 1 bucket (Initially I felt the same :) )

But, By Calculating the energy used in each case, the 2nd case was more efficient than the 1st.

Stage 3, third monk arrived:
Since everyone consumes equal amount of water no one is willing to get the water. Suddenly an emergency situation occurred when they realised the value of team work. They collaborated effectively and make the problem resolved.

Stage 4, Introspection of the Ideas:
The three monks now started thinking to increase the efficiency which lead to new method. The idea which they generated reduced there effort drastically. They increased it to a vast extent and lived happily.

Understanding from this video:
1. There is always a scope for improvement.
2. Team work will always lead to efficiency.

3. Team work helps in generation of new ideas.
4. Technology should be used to reduce the work load.
5. Experiences in crisis management comes handy to come up with new innovative methods to solve the problems.
6. Innovation is a continuous process.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Tower Building and Valley Crossing exercises

Learning from Tower building exercise  :
     
The desire for more is one of the main thing which is moving our lives. But very rarely people realize that the desire is far less than the actual potential. We assume our power to be less and we keep lower targets for ourselves and will be satisfied once the target is achieved. But the hard reality is we can do much more than what we aimed for.

No Road is Long.. When Dreams are BIG.. and Sky is the limit...

We usually bargain with the higher officials about the goals set to us and finally land up at a medium goal which will be far less than our potential. The day when we think bigger and set our goals high then we can understand that achieving that goal is not a big challenge. If we keep on doing that then at some day we will be someone what we actually are!!!!.

The Manager would be someone who understands the real potential of the employee and motivates the employee to reach his potential.

In the tower building exercise the goals set by the person who is playing the game is very low than his actual performance for which even he could have done much better than the performance what he actually achieved. Most of the members of the class has a higher expectation than the goal what he actually set for himself and in the final performance he almost met the expectations of most of the people. May be if he would have aimed for much longer tower then he might have achieved a longer tower than what he actually built.

So if we keep our goals high for ourselves and though we couldn't meet them we would be definitely landing in a place which will be far better than what we are at the current position :)

Valley crossing exercise:

                                         
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ9q6uHvdM3bNpZ8ycSC-xZHnIXYNnlFhlN4nn3QDalcMNHIe_aA5H3bW4Im_ULTsdAOy-9ry_O4cMhYpJEqVrgKJaQiYaXpSCxGi36Ju_dRsiJ256ubQjm-vFvmaC_sK1OYe1XU_zZjc/s1600/Crossing+the+Valley+Cartoon+002.jpg 

Most of us who are seeing the picture for the first time will think that it is the cartoon which was developed for kids enjoyment. 
But there are various management techniques associated with this valley crossing. 
1. This teaches about the division of work load among the people.
2. This teaches how to help each other when one of the person is in trouble.
3. This teaches the strategies to be followed while starting a task. Even this task requires a lot much of planning before we started implementing.
4. This teaches that everyone is equally important and responsible to get the work completed.
5. This teaches that at some point or the other everyone need to be a manager in performing some tasks.
 
Everyone is unique and everyone has both the positive and negative points. It is the way we receive that person and learn from him/ her.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Learning from Khan

"An Idea can change your life

This is best suited for Khan's Academy. 

A small vision to teach his cousin has made thousands of students across the world to learn a lot many number of concepts.

To many scientists the online instructional videos don’t work, and they will wonder how it reached to a biggest audience. But if they watches one of the videos made by Salman Khan then they will change the opinion. This is the same thing that happened to Derek Muller. He was amazed seeing the videos of Khan Academy. The Khan Academy has flooded the internet with free instructional videos from arithmetic to finance.

Vision: "Providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere"
The small thought made a revolution and through which around 3,200 videos are created. Now it is helping a wide range of people who wanted to learn. 

The main thing about Khan Academy is he didn’t neglect the suggestion given by one of his friend. He started working on that idea and every one in the family and friends liked it. Later on those videos became popular and even schools started adopting it by changing their academic schedule. Now Khan’s academy is teaching many schools of 5th and 7th classes in district level.

 "Nothing is Impossible. It is only the way we implement it."


Monday, July 2, 2012

Session 2


 Various scenarios in management
Employee are lazy and manager thinks that they are lazy (Case 1)
Employee are good but manager thinks they are lazy (Case 2)
Employee are lazy but manager thinks they are good (Case 3)
Employee are good and manager thinks they are good (Case 4)

I want to take the live example of my project where I found all the cases that are discussed in the class. The team which I worked consists of both the people who work hard and the people who don’t.
I worked with 2 managers and they are of both the kinds.

Case 1:
Our manager who is of kind X used to allocate the work equally irrespective of the capabilities of various people. The people who are already less efficient and lazy seeing the bulk of work they started postponing their work and finally at the last stage the project didn’t meet the expected deadlines.

Case 2:
Our manager who is of kind X used to always criticize the people who are doing the work and completing their tasks efficiently which resulted in number of efficient people quitting the company.

Case 3:
We have a manager of Kind Y previously and he resigned and later the manager of kind X joined the company. The manager of kind Y used to treat all the people equally and the way he maintained relationship with other people in the team was excellent and he even made the lazy people to work without they even feeling tired about the work. I would like to quote on example where I felt it was awesome about him. One day one of our team mates (he is a fresher) is waiting for someone to accompany him in playing TT. Our manager noticed this and he went and played with him for some time.

Case 4:
The team members who are really efficient made extra ordinarily well when they worked under the manager of kind Y.
The dangerous one among all the 4 is the second case as it will make some efficient people to quit the job.
Most of the teachers and parents are theory Y because even though how stupid the kid is the teachers, parents will always try to defend him in many cases.


 




    A-     Potential
    B-      Goals set
    C-      Goals Achieved
    D-     Performance

Monday, June 25, 2012

Session 1


Excellence
Excellence is what everyone need. As an engineer I know how to do the work efficiently now it is the time to combine that efficiency with effectiveness to achieve excellence both personally and professionally. 

Setting the Goals:
Goals should be set by the people or organization estimating our capability and performance in the past records and should always be higher than the past records.  Goals should also be set for a time span. The major thing in the goal setting is the ability to assess our potential. We are second to none that should be the attitude while setting the goal and that goal that we set must be realistic.
For example 3 years from now I want to become a senior manager in a company that is the goal which I set for the time span and that should be realistic and I should be able to evaluate it after 3 years.
The general assessment will be less than the actual potential which should be changed. This is what I learnt from the tower building exercise that is conducted in the class.

I am under an assumption that a blind folded person cannot build the tower same as a normal person so I decreased the number of blocks that are constructed. But at this time I forgot that the capability of the person who directs the blind folded person to achieve a bigger tower. So from this exercise I came to know that we should take all the factors into consideration and we should not under expect the capabilities of any person.

When we really love what we are doing and if we wish strongly for something nothing can be impossible (Pinocchio’s example).

Crossing the river exercise:
For the successful functioning of an organization everyone is equally important, like the river example, if all the three persons need to cross the river then the collaboration between all the three members is important.
There is no point in crossing the river alone. If it is done as a team then the enjoyment will be shared by everyone in the team. In the team everyone is equally important. The achievement of the goal is not about the individual capabilities but it is the capability of the 3 members as a group which helped them to achieve their targets