The three E's and the difference between craftsmanship and modern management!!

"The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor."

Vince Lombardi 

Continuing the gyan, Dr. Mandi continued to amaze us in yet another of his ‘innovative’ class.
This was the time to educate us about the difference between craftsmanship and modern management.

Talking about craftsmanship, a person executing a task single handedly is a craftsman and he will not have any processes to achieve his objectives. He will be doing every task small or big by himself and thus will be happy but effectiveness and efficiency of the task may not be great, however high the satisfaction level maybe. There is no division of work involved.

But if we study about modern management, pipeline processing is the order of the day.
The organization is not dependent on a single person and there are multiple people executing small tasks. This leads to dexterity where the whole process is dependent on each component.
To ensure that process is given more importance than the people, deskilling is implemented whereby tasks are being fragmented into minor tasks . Each of these minor tasks requires very less or no skill at all.

All of this was demonstrated to us in the class by Dr. Mandi where one of the student volunteered to build a tower from small cubes.  He built a tower with 17 cubes which was a very good job.
However, he was limited to only such a number and could not go on even though he wanted to.

The similar thing was to be achieved through 8 people where the person executing the task was blindfolded and only others were simply giving directions. He could only build a tower of 7 cubes.
The reason was explained that there was no organization in the team and every one was uttering directions at will, thereby creating confusion.

These demonstrations clearly showed that to achieve excellence, you need to combine effectiveness with efficiency as without any of the two, chaos may occur or a product may be created which is not much effective.

What I could make out was that any organization, to be a success needs three E’s of management, namely effectiveness ,efficiency and excellence.
Excellence=Effectiveness*Efficiency.
Efficiency is “more out of less” while excellence  is “more out of less for more”.



In the end, I would just say this:-

Happy learning and happy reading !!

Theories of Human motivation and management- X or Y??

Are you a truly committed worker? Are you motivated by a desire to work hard and help you and your co-workers achieve innumerable objectives – however those outcomes might be measured?
I’m sure you have just answered in the affirmative.
Now consider the following….would your manager describe your commitment in the same way?
We all recognize that some people work ‘harder’ than others. That is the case in just about every walk of life and is only natural in a world where we all have slightly different priorities. The lines between the different levels of commitment to a profession are often blurred and highly nuanced with a range of factors that should be taken into account – some people work long hours but are not as productive, whereas some leave earlier but use their time at work better. The point is that is is virtually impossible to divide workers into ‘Workers’ and ‘Shirkers’. However, studies have found that workers often feel pigeon holed into one of these categories.
To explain this we can draw upon Douglas McGregor’s (1970) Theory of X and Y. This draws upon Abraham Maslow’s (1943) Hierarchy of Needs and states two basic suppositions about human nature and, by extension, employees. Theory X assumes that employees are inherently lazy, must be coerced to achieve objectives and are incapable of self-regulation. Theory Y assumes that employees are highly motivated, capable of self-direction and want to accept responsibility. Most would doubtless describe themselves as being Theory Y. However, many feel that the perception their ‘bosses’ have of them is more Theory X and this assumption is based upon how they are treated in the workplace.



But, let us see what will happen if the below combinations are found in an organization.

1. Manager-Theory X, worker-Lazy:Highly unproductive environment will be created in the organization with a deadlock kind of situation. Possible dissatisfaction among workers will be there and needless to say it is not desirable at all.
2. Manager-Theory X, worker-Hardworking:For the organization, this situation is also not very desirable as even though the worker is diligent and performs his tasks, the manager simply fails to see his work and is not willing to reward him. In the long run, this will only lead to a internal conflict thereby productivity will be harmed.
3. Manager-Theory Y, worker-Lazy: Have you seen a typical father and a son relationship in India. This is it. The son does not study, never works hard and is not willing to finish the homework but the father always believes ki ‘Mera beta ek din mera naam roshan karega’. The son will either soon realize his mistake and  improve his mistakes or he will ignore his father’s expectations even more knowing that he will not say anything. The first case is always more likely as a positive attitude can shake even the best of foundations.
4. Manager-Theory Y, worker-Hardworking: Ah, the perfect situation and as you know perfect human beings are non-existent, this kind of situation is also virtually non-existent or is very rare. The worker works hard, manager appreciates, both are happy, go home movie over.

 

In my life, I have come across theory X managers who did not want to reward their subordinates however hard they may be working. Those managers were always interested in fault finding instead of focussing  on increasing the productivity of the organization.
I have also met theory Y manager who always motivated, encouraged and trusted his workers. He also awarded them with deadline extensions when he felt that the person was being overburdened and also gave commendable speeches .This produced benefits when our team got star team award.

Now talking about myself, although I have never been a professional manager but we all are managers in our daily lives and I am no exception. I have traits of case 3 as well as case 4. Most of the times, I tend to be relaxed whenever people under me are not ready to work and show a positive attitude because I know that they will eventually realize their mistakes. One of the instances which I can recall is that when I was working on my final year engineering project and my team members showed a carefree attitude and did not do any task which I assigned to them. I, however remained relaxed and kept on working myself and after a few days, they all realized that I am not a fool who is working on the project alone so they joined me and helped me out J.
I have also experienced a situation like case 4 when during my school days, I used to teach Maths to my younger cousins and they refused to complete the work I assigned to them. I used to get angry and insulted them which resulted in them showing even more casual attitude and they stopped doing homework altogether. They were also not willing to listen to my lectures.

Similar to these, many of us may have encountered many real life examples which we can now introspect and categorise. !!

First day first show at NITIE Mumbai

They say that the first day first show is always a unique experience. Well unique it was, in every sense of the word.  The first day in Mumbai, the first day in NITIE and also the first lecture in NITIE all have been enthralling experiences.  The rainy season coupled with the serenic beauty of NITIE seemed like a perfect match. My expectations from the first class were only getting bigger.

I entered the class all excited in the morning and waited anxiously for the professor to arrive. Enter a professor with a smile on his face and he seemed like a man on mission.  He bowled every one over with his friendly nature and way of teaching.  Soon each and every student was pledging to earn his roti with the slogan:-
‘Aaj ki roti aaj hi kamana’.
The students were made to realize that instead of thinking about the ‘ROI’ after 2 years of MBA, earn back the money today itself. They were also told to write a blog everyday so that thousands and lakhs of students benefit from it. I was thinking that what a fool I was that I did not update my personal sports blog regularly. (Oh, I made a sports blog few years ago but could only write 2-3 articles before my laziness drove me off the track).
Soon, we were also taught about the organizational structure and about what forms the basis of any organization be it small or huge. Two of our classmates were made to market a ‘toy’ to each other turn by turn and realised that how difficult it is to build an organization even though how small it may be.
 More than the teaching methods however, it was his enthusiasm and the persona which caught everyone’s attention. I was forced to  think that principles of management are more found in life experiences than in the textbooks and if we can keep our senses open everytime and are willing to have a knack towards learning,  there is no stopping ourselves.