POM Mid Term

Mid terms for the 1st module were scheduled last week. My first non-competitive exam in three years. Studying again after such a long time is not easy, but i don't want to give that as an excuse for my poor performance. And since most of the others will be facing the same problem, it evens out the things a bit.

POM was scheduled on Wednesday morning (25-07-12) and i started studying for it by Tuesday afternoon, as i used to do in my 4 years of engineering where would start studying a day before the test. A quick browsing through the chapters, a speedy solution to the question bank provided on Dr. Mandi's Blog, discussion of answers online with friends and by the end of the night i thought i had it all covered. Well the test paper had different plan for me.

Q1)    Theory X  managers assumes that workers are lazy and don't like to work.
Ans1) TRUE... This was pretty straight forward, wrote in length  about it in my first post, i got it right.


Q2)     Flat Hierarchy organization involve greater coordination with in organization compared to taller hierarchy organization.
Ans2) FALSE... Didn't remember reading or writing about it, applied some logic, wrote true which turned out to be wrong.

Q3)   Bounded rationality principle encourages the managers to be gamblers.
Ans3) FALSE... An easy one, unbounded managers are risk takers not bounded one.

Q4)    Craftsmanship encourages specialisation.
Ans4) FALSE... Again another one directly from my blog, got it right.

Q5)  Hawthorne experiments concluded that better working conditions leads to higher productivity.
Ans5) FALSE... Didnt write about it in my posts, but remember reading about it in the book. In the book the answer was little ambiguous, i wrote True in answer sheet, turned out to be wrong.

Q6)    Organizations structures are conditioned by the organizational purpose and organizational processes.
Ans6) TRUE... It was not there in my blog, but read it from the book. got it right.

Q7)     As per SMART goals principle realizable goals may be defined as the goals that are already realized.
Ans7) FALSE...  One of my first posts in the blog, this one i got it right.

Q8)    Both scientific management and administrative management theories conflict with each other.
Ans8)FALSE... Never posted about it or read about it. Although remember a slide shown by Dr. mandi in the class related to it. Wrote true which was wrong. Guess i should pay more attention in the class.

Q9)     Technical skills emerge as critical for higher levels of managerial positions.
 Ans9)FALSE... This one i remembered from the class and wrote correctly.

Q10)   The word Scientific means in                                            &                                        Scientific management.
Ans10)  Verifiable, Objective, Involves testing and experimentation, analysis; synthesis; logic; rationality;       empiricism; repeatable

I remember  few of the above mentioned points and wrote them on the answer sheet.


Q11)     Differentiate Work - Job:

 Ans11) Job:  A group of homogeneous tasks related by similarity of functions.

            Work - Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of  something.

After taking the test i realised two things. First, I need to change my attitude towards studying. I am not in engineering college anymore. And secondly, i got all the questions right which were related to things i wrote in my blog. That means writing about lessons in the blog is not just a good way of teaching but learning too.
  

Productivity Lessons by Buddhist Monks

Productivity

What is productivity?

Productivity is the measure of efficiency of Production. In simple terms, amount of output per unit of input.

Why is productivity important?

Productivity is the scale on which one can compare two different methods of production.

Productivity Lesson

Although one doesn't expect productivity lessons to come from Buddhists monks, but an animated video shown to us in our class will show you the opposite. Since the video is copyright protected I will not be able to provide you the video and will try narrating the important part of the videos.

There is a monastery located on the top of a hill and the only water source (river/lake) is at the bottom. To collect water one needs to get it from the bottom of the hill in buckets. Initially there were 2 monks, who after lot of fighting with each other, decided to carry the bucket together using a rod/log, and share the load equally. When they collected enough water, they were joined by the third monk (a fat one), who was tired from all the climbing and finished all the water in the monastery. Later that night, there was a fire in the monastery. Now in the desperate attempt to save the monastery the monks forgot their differences and started working together. They divided the path from the monastery to the water source into 3 parts. First monk filled the buckets from the source and gave them to the second monk, who in turn ran the middle section and gave the buckets to the third monk. The third monk took the bucket to the monastery and poured the water on the fire. With lot of effort they were able to extinguish the fire and save the monastery. This fire made them realize the need for a proper way of collecting water. So the next morning they came up with a simple solution. They installed a pulley on the cliff, through which one monk can lower a hook to the river.  Another monk can hang the bucket filled with water to the hook, which can be pulled up using the pulley. The third monk can carry the bucket from pulley to the monastery.

Now as you can notice there are 3 methods of collecting water shown. 

First-When they carry the water all the way from the river to the monastery.

Second-When they divide the path into 3 parts and pass the bucket of water.

Third-When they use a pulley to lift the bucket of water.

Now lets see how the parameters differ in each method.

PARAMETERS	First Method	Second Method	Third Method
No. of Monks required	1 or 2	3	3
Interdependency	Totally independent	Slightly dependent	Highly Dependent
Craftsmanship	High	Low	Least
Communication	Negligible	Slow	Fast
Work Satisfaction	High	Low	Least
Productivity	Very low	Moderate	High

As it is clear from the narration, that the minimum number of monks required increases from method 1 to 2 to 3, and the dependency also increases in the same manner. In the first method one single monk can carry the water up. In second method, if one of the monks is not there the other two can divide the path into 2 sections and carry the water. In third method, even when one monk is not there the whole process will fail.

Craftsmanship and work satisfaction is high for first method. A monk could improve the way he carries the water and can take pride in saying that because of him people of monastery are getting water. In second method the person is sharing the work with others, he will not be able take pride in the work and will lose any rights to change the method on his own. In the third method, the use of a tool (pulley) makes the work monotonous for the monks. They are just standing at one place and doing the same work over and over again. This greatly reduces the work statistician of the monks.

Assume a situation, a monk carrying the water faints or his bucket broke on the way up. Now in first method, as only one person is working no one will come to know about the incident till it's too late. In the second method, the other monks will come to know when they will notice him missing. This might take some time. In the third method the communication will be immediate. As soon as something happen other monks will come to know.

But the most important thing in a industry is the productivity, and the highest productivity is achieved in the third method. The gthird method represents a assembly line of a industry. It works on the principles of industrial engineering. Divide the work, make one person do all the work and provide him with the tools so that he can complete the work faster. But such things kill creativity.

Let's take an example of a guitar manufacturer.

A person specialised in making guitars will take some 20 days to make a single guitar, using simple tools. But he can customise it, make a cheap one or a masterpiece depending on the demand. And if some famous musician uses his guitar, he can be proud of himself and can boast about it. His work will be satisfactory and creative but productivity will be low.

On the other hand, a industry employing 100 people making 100 guitars a day will be having a productivity 20 times that of specialist. But job satisfaction of the workers in general will be low, as they will be doing the same work over and over again. A slow or a poor worker can hamper the production line. And none of the workers will be proficient enough to make a guitar on their own

From the above example and the monks' story we can see how the high productivity is achieved by industries.

Behavior Architecture

In NITIE I attended a session on Behaviour Architecture: A revolutionary practise in influencing human behaviour by Mr. Biju Dominic, and i will like to share some important points of the session.

Mr. Biju Dominic

Mr. Biju Dominic is the CEO of consulting firm called FinalMile, Mumbai. He started his career 15 years ago in marketing and was instrumental in launching of many products and advertisements in India like Axe to name a few. Before Co-founding FinalMile with 3 others in the year 2008, he worked in companies like Mudra Communications and Lintas India Ltd, and headed DMA Branding.

FinalMile was developed on the principles of Cognitive Neuroscience and Behavioural economics. But before coming to those two principles one need to understand human behaviour.

After various studies it was observed that only 1 in 9 patients will change their lifestyle. 85% of people will leave gym after just one month of joining. Why will people risk their lives at rail crossing rather than just waiting for few more minutes? Why are the cars with anti lock braking systems more prone to accidents? And why does a guy, even after many hoardings asking him to, never stands closer to the urinal while doing his business.


Now in situations like these, the two afore mentioned principles come into play. Behavioural economics explains the inherent rationality of humans and Cognitive Neuroscience deals with mental process and scientific basis of our behaviour.


What does it mean? In simple terms it means that most of our decisions (95% of them) are made with our sub conscious mind and to understand what decision one will make one needs to understand what a person is thinking when he is making the decision.


For example, asking a guy whether he will use protection when he is sitting with his girl friend at a coffee shop is different from asking him when he is in bed with his partner.


Another example involves the little master. It was observed (captured on the stump mic) that during batting Sachin Tendulkar will say 2 or one, just before the bowler has bowled the delivery. 

What i am trying to say is that while taking decisions a human doesn't think, he acts. And understanding this action is called Behaviour Architecture. This is what FinalMile has been specialised to do.

FinalMile Works

FinalMile conducted a study about why people, even after knowing the safety rules, will cross the railway tracks when it's not safe to cross. They came up with answer that people are not able to judge the speed of the train due to lack of objects in their view against which they can relate the speed. 

They come up with the easiest and the most effective solution. Put yellow marks on the track after specific interval against which, people could judge the speed of train. This simple solution reduced the deaths on railway crossing by 70%.

In addition to this they suggested that honk of railway locos to be changed from a continues sound to a sound with breaks in it. According to their study human are more alert to breaking sounds then a continues one.

In another of their works they suggested to put a picture of a fly in the urinals of men's toilet rather than putting hoardings telling them to stand nearer. A picture of a fly will give something to aim at and they will stand closer to urinals.

Although these and many other effective work of FinalMile are difficult to understand as mentioned before; what we do is decided by 95% of our unconscious brain.
  

Valley Crossing

Crossing the Valley

Valley Crossing or river crossing is a famous exercise used to promote teamwork and bonding in a team.

This game is played with 3 people, objective is to cross a gap which is larger than a step but smaller than 2 steps using nothing but a plank or a rod as shown in the figure. 

As it is clear from the figure shown, all the three members of the group should work in perfect harmony for the completion of the task. The activities required for completion of the task is pictorially depicted below for the convenience of understanding, followed by risk analysis in tabular form

 

 

 

Persons	First Person	Second Person	Third person
Step/Action
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risky	Safe Fulcrum	Safe Pull Down
3	Full Risky	Safe Fulcrum	Safe Pull Down
4	Half Risky	Half Risky Fulcrum	Safe
5	Safe	Full Risky	Safe Carry
6	Safe Carry	Half Risky Fulcrum	Half Risky
7	Safe Pull Down	Safe Fulcrum	Full Risky
8	Safe Pull Down	Safe Fulcrum	Half Risky
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

Now as it is clear from the table each member of the group is equally at risk for equal amount of the time. And each member had almost similar amount work. This is an example of a perfect team.

Applying same concept to the organisation, one can design a task in such a way that anyone with simple training and no skills could do the task. As the saying goes, a task so easy that even a blind person can do it. That's the beauty of a perfect task, it's so elegantly designed that anyone can accomplish it.