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…

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