Wednesday 12 August 2020

गिर गया है यह इंसान | Gir Gaya hai Yeh Insaan

 

गिर गया है यह इंसान, मज़हब ही है सबसे बड़ा गुनेहगार  |

कोई मज़हब की किताब नहीं पढ़ेगा बेवकूफ, तेरी करतूतें देंगी दुनिआ को सार ||

 

क्या इतना छोटा है यह भगवन, यह खुदा, कि किसीकी एक की सोच पर हो जायेगा नाराज़ ||

सूझ बूझ दी है तेरे भगवान् ने तुझे, गलत बात पर ध्यान मत दे, यह तो नहीं है कोई राज़ ||

 

सड़कें फूंकों, गाड़ियां फूंकों, फूँक डालो यह संसार |

जब होगा हिसाब अंत में, इस पाप के साथ कौन सी नाव लगाएगी तुझको पार?

                                                                                                                                       

रंग में, पहनावे में, ज़मीन में, नदिओं में सब जगह ढूंढे तू अपना धरम |

हर किताब में लिखी है बस एक बात, बस नेक रख तू अपना करम ||

 

इतना तुझे नहीं समझायेगा, सम्जहने वालायह तुझे खुद ढूंढना होगा ज्ञान |

रहने दे पगले दुनिआ में कमी ढूंढना, बस एक बार तू अपने अंदर झाँख ||

 

गलत को गलत बोलो और सही को सहीइसके ऊपर नहीं है कोई सच्चाई और ईमानदारी।

पर तुझे नज़र आये बस दूसरो कि गल्तीआं  , ओढ़ के उन गलतिओं की चादर तू बोले की तेरी गल्तीआं है  जनहित में  जारी ||

 

पर क्या करे आज का यह नागरिक इतना बुंद्धिजीव बन चूका है की बिना सोचे समझे हर बात पे रहता है गुस्सा।

खून की सियाही बना डाली है तूने, क्या सिर्फ कल दो दिखावे के अच्छे काम करके मिट जायेगा यह किस्सा।।

Monday 30 July 2012

MONK STORY- A TEAMWORK LESSON


The story of three Monks!
                                                     An epitome to learn true teamwork!

How can a teacher, a professor or for that matter a mentor teach you what team work really is? I supposed myself in Dr. Mandi’s place, and then I imagined that if I have to teach this concept of team work. Actually speaking that my mind was in a baffled state that how can this simple concept or rather a concept which appears to be simple be taught! But since I always believe that Dr. Mandi is like a magic man, who comes out with something extremely bohemian at times and like always he didn’t let me down even this timeJ.

The concept and insight of team work was explained to us thru this video. I recommend that anyone who is going to read this entire article must watch this video first and then proceed.

 
Now let’s get into the individual cases shown in this video.

There are three monks that are shown in this video, which are as follows:

·         The little monk (M1): inherently naughty, not lethargic towards work but avoids excess work.
·         The Taller monk (M2): again not lethargic but dominating and wants everyone must work.
·         The Fat monk (M1): A team member that would work properly but at the end wants the bigger share of pie.

So the story goes something like this:

Scene 1:


               A monastery is located on a cliff top, below the cliff there flows a river which is by far the only source of water available and if anyone needs water, that person must take the vessel to the river, fill it and then quench his/her need. In the beginning it is shown that M1 is sitting in the monastery and doing his daily activities, therein he suddenly realises that the flower pot which is kept in front of GOD’s image is falling short of water. M1 immediately recognizes it and go and collect the water. This shows that he doesn’t only care about himself but also about the monastery on the whole. Then as per his daily way of living, he continues with his prayers and then goes to sleep.

Lessons from Scene 1:

1.      Everyone has inherent ability to work.
2.      Whenever there is a need in the system, then people in the system always tend to work for the need.

Scene 2:


Then enters M2, the guys who is portrayed to be a little matured and can take good decisions at times. We see that as he reaches the monastery, he drinks water to quench his thirst. But as soon as he realises that there no more water left in the container, he immediately takes M1 along to arrange for water. But like we all know that the system must be designed in such a way that work would be done irrespective of the height or weight or body structure of the persons doing it. But here when two of them are trying to bring filled buckets back, they enter into an altercation as the weight was not evenly distributed among the two. They just stop in the middle of the way and sit down. M1 tried to show the midpoint thru his yard length, then immediately M2 showed him his yard length and gave another midpoint. The altercation was finally terminated by M1 when he showed a stick and thru that stick they could find a better point to be called as midpoint in coherence.



Lessons from Scene 2: 



1)      Whenever there is a new entrant in the existing system, there got to be some degree of turbulence in the system.
2)      There would be solutions from every end, but there would also be counter questions from other ends.
3)      But the best thing is that there is always a positive and optimum solution available and that is generally universally accepted.

Scene 3:



The entry of a little lethargic M3, the team member who will definitely work equivalent to everyone else in the group, but wants a bigger share of the pie. That is his desire and needs are on higher side compared to others. As he reaches the monastery, he finishes all the water available. When he goes to fill another lot, he finishes it again due to tiredness!

This leaves everyone’s mind in a confused state that how work would be done? At this point there is confusion about finding the way to do the work!

Lessons from Scene 3:


1)      There are instances of highest turbulence in the system at times wherein there are no option gates available.
2)      In those cases even the most innovative and complex solutions turns out meaning less.
3)      The need to solve this complex problem is not a complex solution but a simple one. We need to bring the team together. How will this be done, let’s find out further!

Scene 4:




All three are sitting alone, angry with each other no signal that they are going to come together. Then the thing that is really worth a watch that everyone is keeping a stock for themselves without worrying about others. This is a very dangerous situation for a team when team members are not thinking about other team members. In the middle of all this what really is another point of concern that M1 takes the small left over water that was otherwise getting used for a very important reason. When it starts to rain, all three thought of taking a short cut of using rain water, but as they set up the system, the rain stopped. The team work is still not established and the biggest concern.


Lessons from Scene 4:



1)      The entire system breaks without proper coherence among the team members.
2)      There is no short cut in achieving any target.
3)      There is a basic requirement of coherence among the group in case the members wish to attain a team status.

Final Scene:



In the final scene we get to know that how GOD (as per my understanding the manager here!) creates the situation in which all the 3 monks comes together and portrays only their positives and leaves behind all the negativity associated with the situation. It also portrays that in case of emergency situation which happens to be fire in this case, plays a vital role in bringing all the 3 monks together and work in harmony and coherence. They even get to set a full-fledged system in the end in the system which is:

a)      Simple to understand.
b)      Imbibed all three monks with equal efforts.
c)      Independent of size, shape or structure of the monks.
d)      Crisp and juicy.

Learning from Final Scene:

1)      Teamwork if not there can be built by making situation in such a way that it attracts a common interest for everyone!
2)      Work should be backed with a vision which must be juicy, rosy, inspirational and unachievable.
3)      Final structure’s efficiency can be achieved only when there is 100% team effort involved.

So all in all team effort has following traits:



1.      Effective team has both values and norms.
2.      Have members that both respect and trust each other.
3.      Effective team has tried and true method of problem solving.
4.      Agrees on each member’s role in the team.
5.      Members have complementary skill sets.
6.      Celebrate success together, and share both praise and blames.
7.      Members are other oriented rather than self-oriented.
8.      Members have sense of belonging towards work.
9.      Members embrace need when they need to.



Sunday 29 July 2012

Examination Experience


Examination Experience
(A regular exam with a difference!)



One fine afternoon when I was having a great roller coaster laughter ride, there came a big  bang from Dr. Mandi’s side i.e. there is a scheduled exam on 25th July 2012. We were a little confused as in what would be the content and what are we supposed to study for the exam. The reasons were simple:

1.      If I visualize it from the point of view of a non-attentive student then I would say that there is nothing taught to us in POM.
2.      If I visualize it from the point of view of a regular student then the entire syllabus won’t take more than an hour to complete.
3.      But if I visualize it from the point of view of a zealous student then the lesson taught by Dr. Mandi in his lecture would encompass around half of stoner!

But, in the middle of this confused nexus Dr. Mandi came in like a saviour and gifted us with a few sample questions which numbered around 25, including true/false and definition based questions. The interesting fact that I realised while going through those questions was that all the topics that were covered in those 25 questions were actually discussed in complete depth by Dr. Mandi. We never realized this fact because all that was taught in class was in the form of activities, but people trust me that we were able to crack all the questions without any issue and that is the beauty of this experiment based learning.



Inside the examination hall:


After the stint of not less than two and a half year, due to this MBA course which was my aspiration from a long time I was forced to sit in an examination hall again, the feeling was a little absurd and it was feeling that I am giving an exam after a long time.

The invigilator reminded me of old days of fear and fun, when we used to fear about the exam so much, in phase two we were just interested in finishing the exam anyhow and finally the fun part because we used to be pretty much sure about the results.

The questions were of the same nature as were those 25 questions and believe it or not, I never had such a weird experience of giving an exam wherein I know everything about the questions that are being asked and frankly I haven’t studied even a single page from the book. How can this thing be possible?
1)     Are the questions that are asked are of general nature?
2)     Is MBA all about common scene?
3)     Is method study the best way of learning the subject?



Doubts in and doubts out. The question paper has finally landed on my table and I was supposed to solve it in that stipulated 1 hour!

Just to make our mood a little relaxed and jolly, Dr. Mandi just could not resist speaking out his favourite jargon i.e. “Socho Becho… Becho Seekho… Seekho Socho…”. A wave of laughter passed in the class, and yeah! There was a parallel exam that was running in the same room that to of “FINANCE ACCOUNTING”. We poor engineers are almost a big zero in that. Those guys were feeling jealous of us. It took us not more than half an hour to solve the problems. When people started to leave the examination hall, the happiness on Dr. Mandi’s face was clearly visible. It was like he was getting the award for his method teaching techniques. The experience for us was also the first of its kind and we were all happy!

Then Dr. Mandi asked us to write a blog on the examination experience and this article of mine is just the outcome of that.

The examination analysis:

In his unique way this was the analysis that was given by Dr. Mandi!

1. Technical skills emerge as critical for higher levels of managerial
positions Ans. FALSE

>> Right answers - 97 %; Wrong answers - 3%

2. Flat Hierarchy organization involve greater coordination with in
organisation compared to taller hierarchy organizations - Ans.. FALSE

>> Right answers - 49 %; wrong answers - 51%

3. Bounded rationality principle encourages the managers to be
gamblers Ans. FALSE

>> Right answers - 69 %; Wrong answers - 31%

4. Craftsmanship encourages involves specialization Ans. FALSE

>> Right answers - 97 %; Wrong answers - 3%

5. Hawthorne experiments concluded that better working conditions
leads to higher productivity Ans.. FALSE

>> Right answers - 73 %; Wrong answers - 27%

6. Organizations structures are conditioned by the organizational
purpose and organizational processes. Ans. TRUE

>> Right answers - 98 %; Wrong answers - 2%

7. As per SMART goals principle realizable goals may be defined as the
goals that are already realized. Ans. FALSE

>> Right answers - 97 %; Wrong answers - 3%

8. Both scientific management and administrative management theories
conflict each other . Ans. FALSE

>> Right answers - 23 %; Wrong answers - 77%

9. The word ..Scientific means in Scientific management..

>> Verifiable, Objective, Involves testing and experimentation,
analysis; synthesis; logic; rationality; empiricism; repeatable,

10. Differentiate Work - Job:

>> 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.


You may give this exam by hiding the solutions! It would be fun for sure!

So that’s what I can proudly say is the examination experience J.

Sunday 15 July 2012

THE VALLEY CROSSING ACTIVITY! (A true management insight)

The activity named "VALLEY CROSSING"goes something like this:


In the picture shown above the case is that there is a valley, and a log of wood is need to be carried to the other side, ther are three people designated for this job. Now the concept that would help these three people to actually carry this log to the other side would be like this:

Now, here is the concept that is designed like at a particular time one out of the three people is hanging above the valley dip while other are on the land. Now for the system to be stable following are things that need to be considered:

1. Valley's lenght must be between 1 foot to 2 feet.
2. There must be a very strong element of trust.




But! the system is so perfectly designed that:

1. It doesnot even matter if there are 3, 4, 5 or for that matter any number of people.
2. The size and shape of the person doesnot even matter.
3. The system as such has to just take care of one thing i.e. holding the log. Rest the system is designed in such a way that works get done automatically.
4. The concept of team work, management designing etc are learned very well here!

CONCEPT OF TEAM WORK:

The process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal.
Teamwork is often a crucial part of a business, as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance. Teamwork means that people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals.
This video represents team work very well:



CONCEPT:

In order to understand the importance of teamwork we must 1st look at the types of people in an organization:

1) Theory X : The managers who assume that the people working under them are lazy and are bound to avoid work if they get a chance. The only way to make people work is by threat and use of power. More often than not this theory does not allow employees to gel amongst themselves and know each other.



2) Theory Y : Contrary to Theory X , lies the motto for Theory Y . This management style assumes that the employees are self motivated and are ambitious. A Theory Y manager believes that, given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work. This allows employees to learn from one another and have a positive attitude towards work.

We can observe in this activity that all the 3 people have crossed the valley without much of a trouble. It has been possible due to teamwork. Had they been walking alone and tried to cross individually, this couldn't have been possible or could have been more difficult and time consuming.

My observations:

In order to comprehend this task, a few things must be taken into consideration:

1. Management tasks should never be desinged for as per the person's structure or ablity, they must be designed in such a way that any one can perform them till any level.
2. Responsibility of each individual must be clear. Load on all individuals must be similar so as to allow smooth functioning.
3. Training individuals to do the task and finally executing it successfully.

Here is the final pictography of the task: