Sunday, 17 August 2014

TOWER BUILDING : DAHI - HANDI and Class Room Execise

Its August 17, 2014 a special day to celebrate "Krishna Janmashtami" people in my college celebrated 
the Festival by organizing Dahi-Handi. The game is similar to the Tower building.

The Leader:


The leader always motivates and guide the worker in the process of building a tower.

The Workers:



The worker should coordinate within themselves in association with the managers instruction.

Only some company achieves the target where the wavelength of the Leader and the worker coincides with each-other



but many stumbles and falls off because of the non-sync


How an organisation works ?........


This was the idea  shared by Prof.  Mandi , when he discussed the tower building exercise  in the class.  Most of the students in the class came with their perceived responses.  He asked us to explain it vis-a-vis the role of a manager in the company.  In order to explain the concept, he conducted tower building exercise.

He asked us bid in order to be a part of the exercise.  Most of the student were hesitant to come forward. Finally three guys participated in the biding process. All three of them were invited by the Prof  to participate in the exercise. He then said ," This is the difference between leaders & workers". One of the most important quality of a leader or manager is to take risk and out of 70 odd students in the class only three had that capabilities.



Tower Building Exercise Description  

Task was to built tower from cubes with eyes blindfolded . Another twist was that one has to use non dexterous hand. 
Role of each member was defined :
1st member - Worker
2nd member - Middle Management
3rd member - Senior Management

Those who bid to participate were in dilemma whether they made a right choice or not.

Prof . Mandi then  invited the whole class to make  wild guess about the number of  cubes team will able to surmount.  This is what most to students thought.






Lowest height that can be achieved456
Highest height that can be achieved81216

Prof. explained what was expected  from the three members. The one who selected by the team as the worker will take upon the responsibility of making the tower. Member representing middle management will give directions to the worker. His or her would be to guide the worker whenever the need arises.  In case of difficult situation  middle manager can take help form senior management.

It was left to the  team to decide their target, The team decided to strive for  18 cubes.

Now the real purpose of the session started.  It was wholesome learning ; watching different team members  communicating , chalking out the plan to face the difficult situation.  The whole atmosphere was electric. We were clapping ,encouraging the team to do better. Prof. was explaining the intricacies & subtle behavior involved through the principle of management

I enjoyed the session thoroughly. I was able to understand why flow of right information , unity of command , unity of direction  etc are needed for company or organisation to perform better.

Last but not the least , Team was able to achieve their target of 18 towers proving the old adage " where there's a will there's a way".



Theory X - Theory Y


In response to the two sides of the debate around employee motivation and the best ways to boost productivity, Douglas McGregor argued that managers would tend to pursue the approach which was most in line with their view of their employees. He claimed that managers who viewed their employees as lazy would be more likely to follow an approach based on control, whilst managers who believed the workers could be motivated and wanted to develop themselves would be more likely to attempt to create positive working environments and opportunities for advancement. McGregor referred to these theories as theory X and theory Y.
It is important to note that, in contrast to popular opinion, McGregor did not state the theory Y was preferable to theory X, rather he held that both views had merit, and managers should not have too narrow a view of motivation. As such, he believed that scientific management approaches could benefit from focusing on the need to motivate workers, whilst motivational approaches could also benefit from greater managerial control. As such, he argued that theory X and theory Y simply represented different ends of a continuum of approaches to improving productivity, and managers should not fix themselves to one end of the continuum.

Both theory X and theory Y state that managers are responsible for assembling and organizing the various factors of production, including their employees, with the goal being to produce maximum economic benefit for the shareholders. However, they take different views around the drivers of employee behavior.

Theory X:

According to theory X, the average employee is lazy, does not like to work, and will attempt to avoid having to work as much as possible. They also have no ambition or responsibility, and do not care about the performance of the organisation. As such, they will tend to resist any organisational change, and not be particularly innovative or intelligent, only working because they have to in order to have money and security. However, it also holds that they are quite gullible and easy to manipulate. As a result, managers who follow a theory X approach can try to take a hard, controlling approach or a soft persuasive approach.
The hard approach depends on tight managerial controls and close supervision, such as proposed by scientific management, whilst also using coercion and implicit threats to prevent any soldiering. In contrast, the soft approach looks to manipulate employees with money and low levels of supervision, in an attempt to acquire employee cooperation and reasonable levels of productivity. Unfortunately, the hard approach will tend to generate hostility and resistance, whilst the soft approach will lead to workers requesting greater levels of rewards whilst working as little as possible. McGregor felt that most firms tried to use some aspect of both of these approaches, but neither were very successful.
The reason for this is that McGregor claimed that theory X would only ever focus on low level needs such as security. As such, whilst the threat of removing security, in the form of pay cuts or potential sackings, would only motivate an employee to a certain level. As such, whilst following a Theory X approach would be better than following no approach, it will never satisfy high level needs, and employees will not be motivated by their work. Instead, they will look for more money and rewards to compensate, thus allowing them to fulfil their social and esteem needs outside of work. Therefore, employees will never satisfy their high level needs through work, and thus will never work to their maximum productivity.

In addition, McGregor argued that modern developed societies, with their abundant and cheap food, high tax rates and social safety nets, already satisfied most of the physiological and security needs of people. This meant that providing monetary rewards and punishments would not motivate staff as their discomfort at being controlled would outweigh the monetary benefits. As such, employees under theory X will tend to dislike their work and take no interest in the goals of the organisation, thus fulfilling the assumptions made under the theory. As such, McGregor argued that theory X was a self fulfilling prophecy, and that managers who followed it would end up demotivating even the most intrinsically motivated workforce.




Theory Y

In contrast to theory X, theory Y assumes that working can be made as natural to people as play and rest. As such, people will motivate themselves to fulfil their work objectives, provided they commit to them, and they feel they will fulfil higher needs by achieving them. In addition, if these conditions can be fulfilled, people will seek additional challenges and responsibility, and will handle them well because humans are naturally creative and innovative: their talents just need to be encouraged in their work.
The most important aspect of theory Y is that it focused on the cycle of managers providing interesting work, which motivates employees to achieve, which allows managers to provide them with more interesting and challenging work, thus fulfilling the higher level esteem needs, and allowing people to approach self actualisation in their work. As self actualisation is a continually evolving need, it will thus continue to motivate employees throughout their working lives.
This allows managers to align employees’ personal goals with the goals of the organisation, by allowing the employee to fulfil their needs as the organisation succeeds. For example, a firm can decentralise its control structure, providing employees with more responsibility and harnessing more of their skills to drive success. Companies can also consult employees as part of the planning and decision making processes, giving the employees input into the organisation’s success whilst benefitting from the employees’ creativity. Participative performance appraisals are also often used in theory Y, as when employees participate in setting and monitoring their objectives, they are more likely to strive to reach them.
If such a system can be properly implemented, it would result in very high levels of motivation, with employees working ever harder as their personal needs develop and their job develops to satisfy them. However, Theory Y management cannot be seen as a soft approach as it is easy for employees to manipulate the system by pretending to be de-motivated and hiding their true motivations. Indeed, McGregor argued that some employees may not have developed sufficient emotional maturity to embrace a Theory Y style of management, and may believe the managers are trying to manipulate them or are being weak. As such, managers may need to develop an initial system of control for employees, and relax that system as the employee matures and develops.



Sunday, 10 August 2014

Maha Mandi = Discover your SELF (Sell + Experience + Learning + Finance management)


                Maha Mandi of NITIE will make you Discover yourself within you!! Since my orientation day I have heard of the event. My perception was its just the event for certificate or so. But its way beyond the certificate.

@Flash Mob:

                 Never had taken part in the flash-mob before but the experience was awesome. It helps you to act as a team player within a huge size of team member. The application of the Valley crossing can be experienced in real, (i.e) how one should co-ordinate and sync in the LIVE project or reality, how to balance and support your team when your team member did a mistake, how to balance and recover your mistake by learning from your peers. I am proud to say that We did it!!. This made me to come out of the comfort zone. A snap of the flash mob is attached below.




















@Maha Mandi Event:
                 The dice filled with the Pillar of NITIE, Pillar of Mandi and Pillar of Marketing and fame. The pillar of NITIE is none other than the DEAN in charge, Pillar of MANDI is none other than our own Dr. Mandi Prasad, and Pillar of fame is none other than the Glamorous and Miss India finalist Sonam Bajwa. It all started with the inspiring and motivational speech of Dr. Mandi Prasad and speech followed by Sonam Bhajwa.





@ Street of Mumbai:

               We Started the Event by Ribbon cutting, We marched through the Street of Mumbai hailing SOCHO,BECHO,SEIKO.
                Have you ever insulted a Sales Representative without listening to them? Have you ever shut the door on the face of the sales rep? Have you ever looked awkward seeing a Sales Rep? Then you are the Right candidate to Participate in Maha Mandi.
                With all that I have done which I stated as question above I felt shy and un-comfort in approaching my first customer and When I approached the reply I got was "Nahi Chahiye". After consecutive same reply from three such customer, I got a booster from one of the family who supported me by becoming my first customer. They bought the product without caring about the prize. It kept me going and am done.

@Suggestion for Next Year:

·         Future NITIEans should participate else you miss the fun and learning
·         The product are little over priced, it is better to minimize the cost and increase the Inventory level so that we will have a long experience
·         Flash Mob can be done 2 days before the Maha Mandi in 2 different places and can be made as video and shared in social network before Maha Mandi.