Three Idiots

It's not about movie! The quirky methods of Dr. Mandi taught us an important lesson through a seemingly stupid exercise.






This picture depicts the essence of teamwork. At one instance or the other, one of the team member is at risk and it is team effort that saves him.
This situation can be expounded through further analysis.

	Each Persons Moving Position	Person - C	Person - B	Person - A
1	^^^	1C Safe	1B Safe	1A Safe
2	^^^	2C Pull Down Safe	2B Fulcrum Safe	2A Half Safe
3	^^^	3C Pull Down Safe	3B Fulcrum Safe	3A Hanging in AIR - UNSAFE
4	^^^	4C	4B Fulcrum & Halfsafe	4A Half Safe Pull down
5	^^^	5C Carry Safe	5B Hanging in  AIR  UNSAFE	5A Carry  Safe
6	^^^	6C Half safe	6B Fulcrum & Half Safe	6A Pull Down Safe
7	^^^	7C Hangingin AIR  UNSAFE	7B Fulcrum	7A Pull Down Safe
8	^^^	8C Half Safe	8B Fulcrum Safe	8A Pull Down Safe
9	^^^	9C	9B	9A
		Safe	Safe	Safe

So, broadly there can be 4 situations

Safety	Situation A	Situation B	Situation C	Situation D
Safe	0	3	6	9
Half safe	0	3	2	0
Unsafe	9	3	1	0

Situation D is the best alternative.

Alum Talk - I

It is always nice to listen to someone you can identify with and sitting in an MBA classroom what can be better than listening to Alumni talk.
Thanks to Dr. Mandi, we have had our first alum interaction and those who spoke to us were Nikhil Kulkarni and Hemant Kumar Jain, both working in KPMG.
Though they talked on a range of subject from what they did when they were in NITIE and what they were doing now, one point they elaborated upon was Entrepreneurship.

"Entrepreneurship is the act and art of being an entrepreneur or one who undertakes innovations or introducing new things, finance and business acumen, in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods."

"A job is a regular activity performed in exchange for payment."

But these definition has nothing to do with what you can do in a job or by being an entrepreneur. In today's scenario everyone entering an esteemed MBA college wants to be an entrepreneur without knowing anything about the opportunities and risks involved in it. So it is very important to clear the confusion around it. The question which is significant over here is not about being an entrepreneur or going for a job, rather what you want from that. If you have a unique idea and you think you can work it out into a business idea, then you can think of entrepreneurship. On the other hand, if you want to innovate, work in a stimulating environment, don't want to work under many restrictions, don't want to do a job which is mechanical in nature and other similar reasons, don't go for entrepreneurship. A right job can provide a lot of the above things without making you an entrepreneur. A very apt question came out on the table, "Rather than working for a multinational company one can work for the country by starting an enterprise". But this thought is quite shallow because one should consider oneself as a global citizen and should work for humanity. When one starts an enterprise, you can't work freely as there are various rules and regulation to be followed to start a company and also one should have proper funding which is not that easy to get in present time. So, unless you have that burning idea to take you to the other side, don't just follow entrepreneurship for the sake of it. But if you have that thing burning inside you don't stop for anything in the world.


The experience was revealing!

Tale of Three Monks and Water

Context:

The story of the three Buddhist Monks is an anime film directed by A Da. The film has got many recognitions including:

• Won the outstanding film award at China's Ministry of Culture.
• Won the Best animated film prize at the first Golden Rooster Awards in 1981.

It is a short and beautiful movie with a wonderful message. A must watch for managers and practitioners who try to implement working-teams in an organization without looking at the other side of the picture.

Here's the film, do watch it before you proceed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rolBiHfWokY

Learnings:

The movie throws light on some important concepts of management.

1) Productivity - It is a measure of how well an operations system functions. 

This video talks about the importance of efficiency. Efficiency can be described by productivity ratio which is Total output/ Total input. 

Different processes have different efficiency levels. One of the important functions of a manager is to optimize the process, improve the work design and try to aim for the most efficient process. 

2) Design of Operations systems: So how do we increase the productivity of a system. One of the most important tool is the designing the operation systems. It includes finding answers to 4 main questions:

It is a continuous process of optimizing the work so that maximum efficiency can be derived out of it. So Now that we know the importance of efficiency and a brief idea about how to improve efficiency, let us look at the third part of the puzzle - Team work.

3) Teamwork

Without Cooperation, 1 monk can fetch 2 buckets of water, 2 monks can fetch 1 bucket of water and 3 monks will fetch no water at all. 

With cooperation, 3 monks can increase the efficiency of the process to a level previously unattainable. (Innovation, creativity etc plays an important part).

Thus every manager who profess the importance of team work should also look at the flip side and the negative effects by having an imbalanced team.

 

Tower building - What's there to learn!

It ain't no real tower! As Dr. Mandi has this knack of imparting knowledge through his unique ways, we were asked to make the tallest structure possible with wooden cubes. And let me tell you it's not as easy as it sounds.

The objective of the session was to learn modern management and differentiate between traditional way of managing the things and modern way of managing the things.


The task of tower building was performed in two ways:

1. A single person made the tower
2. A blindfolded person working in a team of 7, six of which were helping him, made the tower.

Astonishing as it may sound, the team of seven made the taller structure despite the fact that person making the tower was blindfolded and he did it with the instructions given by his team members.
What's here to learn pertaining to management :

This task clearly differentiates between traditional and modern way of doing things. The first team is a prototype for traditional management, where the expert like to do the things individually. The second team is a prototype for modern management , where we segregate the responsibilities to different person.
We can say that modern management i.e segregating the responsibilities leads to higher productivity.

Theory X and Theory Y

We come from diverse professional areas, we know many people, we are familiar with their approach and attitude towards work and on many occasions we have categorized them informally. Dr. Mandi introduced us to the idea of Douglas McGregor which is known as Theories X and Y.

What are these theories?

Theory X and Theory Y have to do with the perceptions managers hold on their employees, not the way they generally behave. It is attitude not attributes. [source: wikipedia]

As it has been said that these theories are perceptual in nature, they are more of an attitude of one person towards another rather than attribute of the other person.


Theory X is an authoritarian style whereas Theory Y is a participative style of management.
According to Theory X, management assumes that employees inherently dislike work and this hostile attitude leads to close supervision and comprehensive system of controls.

A Theory Y manager believes that, given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work. They believe that the satisfaction of doing a good job is a strong motivation.This attitude leads to healthy superior-subordinate relationship, comfortable work environment and open communication.

Diagrammatic representation of  theories X and Y

First Class (Pun Intended)

“Rebel children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory” – Russell Brand

And in those two hours I had my “glory” re-kindled!

After working for three years in a software firm, the prospect of becoming a student again was alluring, exciting and unnerving. A few sessions of deliberation and persuasion, a few month of hard work, a customary round of GD-PI later I was at NITIE, in company of equally excited and nervous bunch of recently turned students waiting for our first lecture on a life changing Monday morning.

An unassuming personality entered our class and conjured from his satchel a few toys, handed them over to us and almost requested us to play. So far so good!

“Main desi hoon, mujhe zyada angrezi nahi aata…”! His proclamation took us by surprise as he, supposedly, was teacher of Communication and Negotiation Skills. As whole class, still stunned, looked at him yet again, a familiar jingle seemed to play in the background.

“Socho, socho, becho, becho, becho seekho, seekho, becho, socho”

And we recognized the creator of this jingle – T.Prasad aka Dr. Mandi as he is popularly known among student fraternity. As it turned out, he was to teach Principles of Organization Management and he taught and he taught in such a way that no one will forget him, ever.

He dished out nuggets of learning while letting us play, sharing a joke, posing for a photo, having a hearty laugh with us, telling us his story of humble background and sometimes embarrassing us at our thought process. I did not open the notebook and he did not hold the chalk and yet that was the best class I have ever had in terms of learning.

If someone has humorously defined Professor as a provincial mind confined within an academic discipline then Dr. Mandi is an antithesis to this definition. We sang Pink Floyd together and he passed on his philosophy of life. He laughed at the state of education system and we could not agree more. He suggested novel ways of learning and earning and we admired in unison. His ways are quirky and their impression indelible.

We are a generation of smartphones and social media but to what good use they can be put was taught by him who comes from a generation that is considered old-fashioned. This blogpost is manifestation of his spirit, his charm, his endeavor.