My Digital CV

My Digital CV

Made by incorporating the concepts of Principles of Organisation Management taught at NITIE....

Hope u like it...!!!

My Dear Cellphone

MY DEAR CELLPHONE

The world of cellphones shrinking day by day

The feeling of togetherness left at the bay

My Samsung, my Apple, Nokia & Sony

Are more dear to me than the family's say

The playgrounds were green, my friends were fun

But now I prefer to play - "Temple Run"

And now that I have fb, twitter in my hand

I have forgot to enjoy - The Setting Sun

The headphones in my ears, say it clear & loud

"Don't talk to me. I hate the crowd!!"

The competition is no more on toys, cds or marks

But my phone is costlier, I'm so very proud

My mother now has dinner all alone

Because my new family, is my dear CELLPHONE!!!!

 - Amjad Ali

The Mandi of LIFE

THE MANDI OF LIFE

The days very long, the nights sleepless

What to do for summers, we remain clueless

There comes a man, in the midst of this

He loves you, he gives you a "kiss"

The concepts of POM, their vast universe

You must understand the concept, not mug-up the verse

Whether you cross a valley, or build a tower

Setting a SMART Goal, is the secret power

The 3 Monks of China, come to teach you coordination

You achieve efficiency with team-building and innovation

The Navrang cube has a lot to teach

The root of the organisation, is where you must reach

The methods are different in God's Own Campus

Sometimes it's I, sometimes it's US

Treat Management as your future husband or wife

And learn to sell yourself in the MANDI of life

- Amjad Ali

Toy Puzzle

Toy Puzzle

“The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead.” 
― Bette Davis 

A problem that was given to us by Dr. Mandi as part of our principal of management course. To solve this amazing toy, to take the ring out of the slit. And then the fun began. People did try, got bored and went off. Now don't underestimate the curiosity of India's future leaders, because a lot of them came back later and solved it.

Here's how I did it. 

To remove the ring:

• Raise the ring as high as it would go and hold it there.
• Move one of the wooden squares to the other side by passing it through the slit in the top part.
• Bring both the squares together by moving the thread.
• One of the balls will still remain stuck after its square block is taken to other side.
• Lower the ring, tilt it and remove through the slit and the ball.

And to assemble the toy back:

  - Pass the ring through the slit back onto the square

                                     

  - Raise the ring as high as possible.

  - Pass one of the wooden squares through the slit and to it's correct side.

So it can be said that it's not  only important to be a good problem solver, but an excellent identifier as well.

Valley Crossing

Valley Crossing

Sometimes a picture says more than words. When Dr. Prasad started discussing this picture in class, we had little idea that we can learn this much from this picture. We also simulated this activity in classroom. It was a fun filled exercise full of insights.

Organisations are made of Teams. Good Teamwork is essential for high performance in any business.

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” – Michael Jordan

Here, as we see in valley crossing exercise, 3 people have to cross a valley. It is wide enough that they can’t jump to other side. So, they form a Team. They get connected with the help of a pole (metaphor for an organisation). In the end, they are able to cross the valley. It looks simple, but it is not. When we started doing this activity in real, it needed a lot of iterations to complete it successfully. Let me list out the ingredients required for successful completion of this task. These are the same things required for a good team work.

Planning: - We were 3 people. We were provided with a pole and we had to cross the valley. Our 1^st step was  to formulate a plan. The plan should be focused on how we can leverage our strength as a team. 

Proper communication: - Communication is very important both in Planning and executing period. Everybody needs to understand their role clearly. There should be a smooth flow of communication even at the time of executing task. As, we saw during activity, assuming the solution to be simple, people didn't allocate proper time to understand their role clearly. It resulted in bad co-ordination. One person moved one step ahead while other person stood at same place. Effective initial communication can avoid this situation and proper communication during task performance will ensure a successful task 

Responsibility: - Everybody in Team needs to be accountable. Suppose, if one person either in front or back leaves the pole while 2^nd person is hanging in middle, both 2^nd and 3^rd person will not be able to cross the valley.

Trust: - As a Team member, we need to trust other team members. In the valley crossing exercise, if all three people do not trust each other, nobody will get ready to hang on pole in the valley with their life at stake. Trust is build over time and as a manager we must ensure to create an environment where one team member can trust other.

Coordination :- Coordination is the important factor in making the crossing successful. Every team member need to be equidistant. They must move step at same time. They also need to cover equal length in every step. They must be aware of timing when they need to put extra effort, also the amount of extra effort required. For good coordination,Team need to do proper planning, have good communication,take responsibility and trust each other.

Execution and Analysis of the Solution : 

 Before starting with the analysis of the solution, I would like to describe the meaning of the states that I would be using :

·         Safe State : Safe state is the one in which both the feet of the person are on the ground and he is in no danger.

·         Half Risky: Half Risky is the state in which one leg is in the air and the other one on the ground

·         Full Risky: Full risky is the state in which both the legs of the man are in air and his body weight is supported by the other two men.

Persons	First Person	Second Person	Third person
Steps
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risky
3	Full Risky
4	Half Risky	Half Risky
5		Full Risky
6		Half Risky	Half Risky
7			Full Risky
8			Half Risky
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

1) At the first instance , the first person would take a step forward and would have one feet in the air while the other one is on the ground. (Half Risky).

2 )  In the second step the first person would be fully in air and his weight would be supported by the rest of the two persons.

3) In the next step , the second person would be have his front leg in air while the back leg on ground whereas the first person would have his front leg on ground and the back leg in air ( Both in half risky state) .

4) After this step, 2nd person would have both the legs in the air while the 1st person would have reached the other side of the valley and would be safe by now.

5) In the next step , the 2nd person would be in half risky state as one of his leg would be in air while the other one on ground and also the 3rd person would be in the same state.

6) In the subsequent step 2nd person would land on the ground on the other side of the valley whereas the 3rd person would be completely off the ground and his body weight would be on 1st and 2nd person.

7) Following that the 3rd person would now be in half risky state as he puts one of his legs on ground while keeping the other one in air.

8) Finally the 3rd person would also land both his feet on the ground and would be in safe position as would be the other two.

The Three Monks

Hello....

Today we are going to watch a movie.... A movie that has no dialogues but speaks volumes..!! A movie that came a long-long time back but teaches today's managers how to make use of their resources, improve their productivity, encourage team work and a lot more....

Before moving into the managerial part of it, let's first watch the interesting movie of "THE THREE MONKS"... it's a short animated movie. ENJOY!!!

Let me just summarize the movie before indulging in the lessons we could learn from this excellent movie.. 

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

Interpretation:

The movie can be interpreted to understand certain management principles.

1. DIFFERENTIATION:

The story illustrates that different humans excel at different tasks and it is require to realise their potentials and differentiate the work accordingly. Here third monk got fatigued when he went to fetch water the first time and started shunning the responsibility thereafter. Seeing him the other monks also avoided the work and retired to remaining thirsty. 

2. HIGHER EFFICIENCY:

We saw that when second monk joins and wants to share up the load, they end up pulling 1 bucket together. Here the load was shared but efficiency was reduced. It is important for an proficient manager to realise that though load sharing is important to maintain the harmony amongst the team members, utilisation of the available resources should be done in a way such that the overall efficiency increases.

3. TEAMWORK:

It fetches far greater output than all the individual outputs summed  up because teamwork leads to more creativity,more dedication and motivation and growth of superior decision making ability.

This was the case when all of them had put a determined effort to stop the fire.They came up with a creative idea of using a pulley and rope to lift water to such a height from below without  much effort .The scientific management came into play as they were able to find out the best technical method possible to do the work with the limited resources.

4. ALTERNATIVES

 A manager needs to analyse all the available alternatives at hand and devise the execution of a task using the best alternative. This encompasses the use of technology, wisdom and all other available resources.  In the end the use of pulley helps the monks extinguish the fire in a well-organised and proficient manner. A manager should be innovative and capable of recognising and devising the appropriate solution according to the demand of the situation.

5. RESPONSIBILITY

This story teaches a gentle, humorous lesson about responsibility. Three monks allow personal pride to interfere with the performance of daily tasks, each believing that the other two should be the ones to go downhill to fetch water. When a fire breaks out, however, they understand how silly they’ve been and work together to save the temple.

6. THEORY X AND THEORY Y:

Here, it is proved that monks are like theory X employees as they did  not want to work when others are present displaying lazy attitude.They will only work when there is someone with a stick in his hand in front of them. Similar thing happened in this story when there was disastrous fire in the temple, it led to a dangerous situation which gave them a virtual kick in their back to bring water.

6.  INNOVATION:

The transformation of the first method to the second method shows continuous innovation and the third method shows drastic innovation.

Continuous innovation does need  fundamental change in the dynamics of  the process ,it updates or enhances the existing one whereas Drastic innovation is the complete out of the box thinking that can altogether add a new dimension to the overall efficiency.

Similarly in a business scenario,continuous and drastic innovation can spur an organization towards success by integrating business,organizational,process,technology,marketing and product innovation.

What is (a+b)2 and Goal Setting...

What is (a+b)² ???

You must be thinking what sort of a question is that. Obviously it’s   “a² + b² + 2ab”

But today I learnt something else. Today I learnt how to visualize (a+b)², or for that matter(a+b)³

Hello everyone, and welcome to another exhilarating class of Dr.Mandi… today the day began in one of the most unexpected ways. Today we ‘saw’ what we had been mugging up for years. And you can see my excitement in my anxiety to just tell you how and what surprise did Dr.Mandi revealed today in class. But let me start from the beginning…

For the last few days a toy was lying in one of the corners of our class that Dr.Mandi had brought with him nearly a week ago. We all were curious to know what it was but couldn’t find out. Today was the day  when finally Dr.Mandi picked it up and asked us what it was. We had no idea. It a cube made of tiny plastic pipes that could be dismantled.

Then came the hint, “what is (a+b)²?”. One of the students gave the obvious reply that we all know. But that was the surprise. One of my friends picked up the hint and understood what the toy was actually. And when Dr.Mandi asked him to explain it to all of us what he grasped, he shared that if you look closely, each of the 12 sides of the cube was made of two distinct pipes, one red and the other yellow. If we assume that the red coloured pipe is “a” and the yellow coloured pipe is “b”. Then (a+b)² is nothing but the area of the face containing the side chosen…  to make it more clear, let me show you one of the sides of the cube with the pipes denoted as a and b. you can see how the entire surface area contains ‘a²’, ‘b²’ and two ‘a*b’… Hence the simple formula that we had been learning for so many years was nothing but an area. J

 

Similarly he explained how (a+b)³ would mean we are talking about nothing but the volume of the cube. This is the beauty of Dr.Mandi’s class. He explained to us how small-small things carry meaning in them and how easy it is to neglect them and just be confined to their upper meaning. He made us realize how interesting education can be if shared in the right manner….   Hope you will never forget the formula now ;-)

Now was the time for some management to begin… and the agenda of today’s class was “SMART goals”. But we all knew that Dr.Mandi would not just give us a lecture on smart goals. And it was true, he began the topic with another surprise from his MAGIC BAG… He took out a snail (obviously not a live one, but only its shell) and handed it over to us… to observe!!

                       

The thing that we had to observe was the “SPIRAL” nature of its shell’s growth. How it began with a small centre and EVOLVED as it moved out… This is how our Goals should evolve… in a spiral… If today we have achieved 20, tomorrow we should aim for 25, then 35, then 50 and so on………. We must never limit ourselves but should evolve as a Fibonacci Series evolves… 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and to infinity…

This is known as Goal Setting. The higher you set the goad, the more you achieve. If your Goal Achieved is higher than you Goal Set, then you undermined your abilities. You must always, and always Set for more than your potential, then only you will be able to strive for better results and grow with every attempt. Dr.Mandi used a simple graph to explain to us what should be the relation among our potential, goal set, goal achieved and previous achievement.

If you believe that your potential is at B, then your Goal Set should be A…

A – Goal Set

B – Potential

C – Goal Achieved

D – Previous Achievement

This concept where higher expectations lead to higher results was derived from Pygmalion, a play by George Bernard Shaw and hence is called as the Pygmalion effect. To give you the precise definition of Pygmalion effect, The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

                      

Finally it was the time for the class to prove that we will always follow this principle of aiming high in our managerial and personal lives. And then we again saw those interesting tower building cubes in front of us. this time again we were asked to build a tower. Last time, if you remember, we built a tower of 16 blocks and Dr.Mandi told us that till date the max height achieved was that of 27 blocks…

So we began our tower building, but this time it wasn’t ‘Craftsmanship’… this time we were coordinating, thinking, seeking help and improvising. And we surely did keep our expectations high. We kept a target of 50 in mind. And with that target set, we beat our previous record and made a tower of 24 blocks. HURRAY!!!

But that was not what we had in mind. We tried again and finally broke the previous set record by creating a tower with 28 blocks…

                                  

That is the power of Expectation and Organization…!!!!

Hope you enjoyed the long post and were able to learn a thing or two… Do let me know how you found the post and please comment… Thank you!!!

speak softly and carry a big stick - X 'AND' Y

The mighty will take it, the timid will be lost!!

-          Dr. Mandi

Hello and welcome to another adventurous journey of understanding and learning the concepts of “Principles of Operational Management”.

Today we go into the real world, into the organization, into the minds of people. Today we are going to discuss the mentality of a worker and that of a manager; and how the two are related.

This complex relation between how a manager perceives his employee and what effect it can have on the organization was explained way back in 1960 by Douglas McGregor, in his book “The human side of enterprise”. His idea is famously known as “Theory X and Theory Y”.

The only thing that differentiates human beings from other animals is our thought process. We think, we perceive and we draw conclusions. This perception is what drives the relationship between a manager and his employee. It is the way how a manager sees his employee that he comes to a conclusion how to handle the employee… To make it clear, let me put it more objectively.

There are two types of employees

1)      The one’s who are lazy, who do not want to do the work.

2)      The other who are not lazy, who are willing to work.

Now, according to the perception of a manager, McGregor devised two theories:

Theory X (Authoritarian Management Style) : 

This theory makes the primary assumption that the average person is unwilling to work. They must therefore be persuaded, rewarded, punished, controlled – their activities must be directed. Without some sort of motivation, the employee would be passive, even resistant to organizational needs.

In adopting the theory X, two situations would arise:

1)      The Manager assumes ‘LAZY’ workers as ‘LAZY’ and makes them work.

2)      The Manager assumes ‘NOT LAZY’ workers as ‘LAZY’ and makes them work.

While in the first case, the manager’s approach would lead to increased productivity and better profits, the second case will not result in desired outputs. Employees who are willing to work for the betterment of the company might take the behavior of the management as a demeaning gesture. Their self esteem and dedication to the company might fall drastically.

Theory Y (Participative Management Style) :

This theory assumes that people are inherently self-motivated and responsible. Which I suppose most of us are! J The management hence applies motivational tactics to encourage such people. They aim at creating better opportunities, removing obstacles, encouraging growth, etc.

However, in the adoption of this system also, two situations may arise:

1)      The Managers assume ‘NOT LAZY’ employees as ‘NOT LAZY’

2)      The Managers assume ‘LAZY’ employees as ‘NOT LAZY’

Again the first situation will be extremely beneficial for the company. The employee would see his potential being given due credit and would strive to work harder for the welfare of the company. However, in the second situation, the company might incur huge losses as the employees who were not willing to work are not forced to do so. Moreover, they are encouraged and appreciated for the work they have not done. This situation must be avoided.

Theory X and Theory Y can be summarized as follows:

  

Finally, what becomes the question of the day is how to handle all these situation and all the different scenarios.

The HARD and SOFT Approach:

In the hard method the management is strict, keeps a close supervision of all their employees and uses threats to get their work done. While on the other hand adopting the soft approach involves satisfying the needs of the employee and obtaining harmony. While both the methods are extremes, none of them would work successfully in handling all sorts of employees. As we discussed earlier, some people need force and persuasion while others need motivation and appreciation to work. Hence, a good manager needs to be ‘firm but fair’…

As Teddy Roosevelt once said, “speak softly and carry a big stick”.

Hope the post was informative and it’ll someday help you in making the right decisions when it’ll come to handling people and situations.

Thank you for your time and let me know what you think of the post!!