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!!

MERA TOWER SUBSE OOONCHAAAAAAAA.

MERA TOWER SUBSE OOONCHAAAAAAAA.

A single man has great potential but he cannot make a big difference at a grand level all alone….. he needs others…!!!

Hello everyone and welcome to my second blog. I am really grateful for the appreciation and support. Thanks!!

Today I will try and replicate some concepts of organizational management that were beautifully explained by our very own Dr. Mandi.

Today was the day of civil engineers, a day to make some towers…. In the class!! Don’t get amazed, we were just making towers out of wooden blocks of 2*2cm. But now you’ll be thinking what sort of a management class is this where students are playing with children’s toys….. That is the specialty of Dr. Mandi’s class. You’ll never know how he’ll make you learn some of the most complicated concepts of management in the most wonderful, astonishing and simple ways.

The exercise began with a bidding for the opportunity to make the wooden block tower. And the final bid was won at Rs.500/- which we classmates will use to eat chocolates…. J Then after investing his money, he went ahead to make the tower. His sole objective was to make the tallest tower possible with only the blocks in a single column. We all thought he won’t be able to use more than 10-12 blocks but surprisingly he was able to make a tower of 16 blocks.

So far, we were just enjoying the exercise and having fun, but now was the time to learn. A simple question came from Dr. Mandi, “would you call this organization management”. He was referring to the tower making process done by our classmate. And to our surprise, it had nothing to do with organization management….. We learnt that a single man, can only be a craftsman, not an ‘organization’… There is no ‘significant’ management done in the work accomplished by a single man. A shoemaker, a fisherman, a farmer, if working only by himself for his own profit is only a craftsman and can never achieve the efficiency of an organization. Almost 90% of the Indian population is nothing but craftsmen.

It was now time for the second lesson of the day. Dr. Mandi questioned us as to how many people would we require to build the tallest tower. We guessed 3-4 people. Some of us were bold enough to say 10 people, but we couldn’t justify it. But then we were told that if we can use 2000 men for the same process, only then we will be called as great managers. The “IMAGINATION TO EXPAND” is what differentiates between ordinary and brilliant. But this does not mean that we must have people in our organization who do not have any impact on the sales. And such ‘useless’ employees are present in high, extremely high numbers in our society.

This was illustrated in the second section of the exercise, where 8 students were called on the stage to make the tallest possible tower. The only catch was that the person actually constructing the tower would be blindfolded… he would be guided by another person who could not touch him or the tower. The rest of them had to help the two students. And in the end, what came out was that the 6 people sitting down for supervision were doing NOTHING. Such is the system of many organizations. And we need to find such people and make them useful.

  

                                     

Another thing that we learnt today was the concept of “Just in Time”… whenever the blocks available with the person building the tower got used completely, the people sitting in the audience were supposed to throw the blocks available with them to the helper so that the process could continue. This is how ‘just in time’ orders are placed in an industry, i.e. whenever the stock gets exhausted, the company places immediate orders in the market and they are made available as quickly as possible. The concept of ‘inventory’ involved is almost negligible in such industries.

With this, another day in the interesting and informative class of Dr. Mandi came to an end. He reminded us not to confine the knowledge we get in the class to ourselves and share our learning and understanding with the outside world.

Thank you for your reading and do share it with others so that people who want to learn management but due to some or the other reason are unable to do so for now, can get a flavor of how and what is taught in one of the best b-schools in the country – NITIE…

P.S. – do let me know your views on my blog by writing a few words in the comments section. Suggestions, thoughts and reviews are most welcome.

What a START

What a START!!

A new sun did rise that morning, with new hopes and new dreams, after all it was my first day at God’s own campus, NITIE…

After being mesmerized by the beauty of nature at the NITIE campus, I, along with every single batch-mate of mine, was curious about how the first class, the first day at NITIE would be like!!

And just when we were waiting for our PGDIM journey to begin, we saw a simple and smiling face entering the classroom. A man who has the power to shape careers takes off his slippers and starts throwing toys at us. “What is happening?” was the first question in everyone’s mind.

And then we were introduced to the most amazing professor ever, Dr. MANDI… A man so powerful that he shook our souls, gave us a new thought, the thought to be self-dependent, the thought to make a difference, the thought to live…

With laughter, songs, poems, toys and flying kisses all around, he created an environment where the students themselves wanted to learn, to take whatever little they can from him.

He made us realize what “beggars” we were, asking our parents for feeding us. He made us realize that if we could just earn 1-2% of the Rs.2500/- spent on us daily, we could have a much better sleep and a career that would have no limits with success at our feet.

He did not sit in his chair for a single second. He was everywhere, interacting with every single student. There was a moment when we realized that if we are educated, we must talk like we are, think like we are; and act like we are.

I never thought my life at NITIE would begin like this. No formulae, no definitions, no case study; but the simple principle of a better, improved and organized life. I never thought I would share my experience like this, but Dr. Mandi has made sure that he will inculcate this habit of writing blogs in us, so that we can share the knowledge given at NITIE with the world.

With every passing day, we will be waiting to learn something new from the great minds at NITIE.

Before leaving I would like to share some of the beauties of NITIE…..

      1)      Dr. MANDI – spreading smiles all over

                                      

      2)      The beautiful NITIE pond