LE04: The 3 Monks

The Story with a Lesson

Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film that highlights the importance of teamwork. It was screened in the POM class to make us students understand how people react in real life situations where there are conflicts. Thus, it aimed at bringing home the value of team work and co-operation. This was yet another example of the off-the-beaten-track learning methodologies being applied in POM.


The film is based on the ancient Chinese proverb "One monk will shoulder two buckets of water, two monks will share the load, but add a third and no one will want to fetch water." A noticeable point is that the film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture.


Plot
A teenage 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 who had recently joined the monastery, 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 combined 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.


Observations
#1 Disagreements will arise when people work together due to difference in viewpoints.
#2 Work needs to be divided scientifically and objectively.
#3 The solution should be conceptual.
#4 When multiple parties with differing opinions are involved, what is required is Participative Management.
#5 The last scene of using a pulley to get water says that for success, one has to go for disruptive methods that have the power to change the game.


Productivity
Does team work increase productivity or decrease it? Rather than answering in a straight yes or no, lets go step by step. 

• Initially, a single monk could get 2 pails of water daily. High effort, high output. 
• When the second monk joins, they get 1 pail of water everyday. Now, the effort as well as output has become 1/2 of original (for a team of two). 
• The work comes almost to a standstill when the third monk comes, nobody bothers to get the water himself as all of them leave it on the other person to take care of the chore. Originally, this behavior was called “social loafing,” a term coined by a French professor, Max Ringelmann in the 1890s.

Then how can the management ensure high productivity in an interconnected and interdependent environment?

• Availability of adequate support systems and resources for teams
• High degree of instantaneous feedback and communication
• Rigorous accountability systems for teams
• Synergistic work environment will increase the productivity manifolds for a team

Thus, team work can actually increase the productivity exponentially, given that above features are incorporated in the work culture laid out by the management.

Learning
The story of the three monks teaches us that everyone is capable of being selfish and working individually, but doing so diminishes our ability to cooperate with one another.

A thought on Team Work- "If its not efficiently effective then its not useful."

LE03

This post talks about some more management concepts discussed in POM class. They include Teamwork v/s Individual work, Organisations, Work and Planning. I will be going through them one by one.

Team Work- 3 Idiots crossing the Valley


What? Why??
When several workers come together to achieve a high common goal , thereby giving more significance to collective success over  individual gains, then that is called team-work.


Since prehistoric times, man has been working in teams to realise dreams that would have been impossible for him to go alone.

Ants working in a team

The Situation at the Valley

Team work v/s Individual work

This problem was presented to us in the class while discussing about team-work. The message was self evident and beautifully depicted.
3 people have to carry a payload(a log in this case) and deliver it to the destination. But there is a problem, there is a valley like gap in between where each member has to rely on other two to cross. 
Would this have been possible had it been a single individual? No. 
What makes the difference now? Its the TEAM. Each of the member can now hang on while crossing the valley from the other two and also provides support when his team mates are endangered.


This is how the entire activity will get completed:

Observations:

• Each team member is fully safe once and half safe twice i.e. the risk is distributed.
• All of them will have to safeguard each other when they get into a risky situation i.e. the work is equitably distributed.
• All of them have to ensure instantaneous communication and cooperation to finish the task.

These 3 key points can be applied to any scenario of team-working.

Organisation, Work & Planning

The aim of an organisation is to increase Co-operation and decrease Co- ordination.

We know that management involves Conceptual, Human and Technical Management.

With the confluence of these three aspects, organisations strive to leave a lasting impact on the society.

The 3 concepts around which organisations are created are:

1. Work: Physical organisation of work

2. Authority: Identifying who is the boss. Can be centralized or decentralized

3. Control: Formal and Informal culture of the organisation. Involves standardization, formalities and systems

For these 3 concepts to be implemented, the first step is Planning.

This brings us to the 3 knobs of planning-

• Work Planning
• Authority Planning
• Control Planning

So, this is a very brief preview on how Organisations are planned.

Lecture 01: 20-Jun-2012

The Initiative

The general response when people are told about a new venture, only 10pc come up with capital to invest as risk is involved in a new enterprise.
As investors join hands to launch a startup, a point to be noted is that there is an equal chance for them to succeed or fail.

Chalking out the plan

First things first, there needs to be a plan in place. After the team has come together, the mission and vision have to be written down very clearly. Roles need to be defined. Requirements like logistics, inventory, resources, raw materials need to be notified and fulfilled.

There might be some data about the past performance which helps in setting targets. Here in the Tower exercise, the conditions were that a person will be blindfolded and he will have to create a tower of cubes by only his odd hand and 2 other members of the team can only guide him by telling directions but cannot help in any other way. It was also told that previously a tower of 17 cubes had been created in a similar fashion.
In this way it was an analogy of a startup coming in shape with a team with some capital in hand and also risk factor.


SMARTER Goals


Firstly skill mapping should be done to identify who would be the best candidate to perform a task. After selection of the candidate, he should set a goal for himself that is in agreement with SMARTER goals.
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time bound
Evaluative
Re-evaluative

What they mean has already been defined and discussed well in the lecture and Dr Prasad's blog link :  Dr Prasad's blog on POM

A point that can be added here, goals should not be so low that they diminish productivity and are not compliant with the employee's ability and skill and on the other hand, they  should not be so high that they are not realistic anymore and appear to be demotivating. The middle management should make sure that competent goals are set keeping in mind the past performance, average standards. This is done in all companies at the start of the appraisal cycle where we are supposed to do the goal setting for the next cycle in conformance with our skill, experience, past performance and project requirements.

The management should also ensure that the work conditions are ambient for the employee to give his maximum output. For eg, when people are working in odd shifts, they are provided with adequate arrangements for food, conveyance like cab services, maybe some relaxations along with some extra allowance for odd shift.


In Production: Interaction amongst the top brass, mid-level management and employees

As the production/work starts, the top managemnt defines a strategy and assumes a role where it exercises control over day to day operations at an arm's distance i.e. overseeing it but not regularly interfering in them. Their work is to interject at crucial points in the process. Their invlovment can be in the form of direct communication, media/market interaction, consulting with experts, govt, or industry as per the situation. They should not be doing the micromanagement as their prime duty is to decide on higher level questions and strategies of the business.

The middle management is entrusted with this important job of constantly monitoring the employee, progress and motivating them to achieve the goals. Its their duty to keep a track of the performance and make sure that the estimates are met. Alongwith that, they also have to ensure that the employee satisfaction and motivation levels stay high and do not deteriorate as the work pressure peaks.

Management Practices


There can be two approaches for getting work done from employees.
They come under 'carrots and sticks' policy. A management can follow any of them or a combination. What it basically means it either employees can be assumed to work out of motivations of greater responsibility, rewards, appreciation& respect ie Carrots.
OR
It can be assumed that as nobody by nature wants to work or take responsibility so some kind of threat or force need to used to get the work done, in other words, Sticks.
It depends on the employee rather than the management that which approach should be applied.

End Result (or a Continuing Process?)


As checkpoints are covered gradually, the estimates might need to be revised in accordance with the progress made. Upward revision indicates that the management has been successful in making the employees reach the best of their potential. This is an achievement and source of professional satisfaction for both the employees and the managers. Managers therefore always expect the employees to surpass their goals, they are aware of the Pygmalion effect, so they try to motivate employees with rewards, appreciation, recognition, which in turn instills the desire in the employees for excelling beyond their set goals. This was demonstrated in the class when the last couple of blocks were being placed over the stack in Tower building game.

Upward revision of goals

Downward revision means faulty management practices and are a symptom of a gap b/w the organisation and the employees.

This was my learning from the lectures conducted by Mandi Sir during last week. It was an opportunity to learn by doing, while doing and by observation about the nitigrities of  business and management.