RULERS not RULEs

Once upon a time, 100 monks meditated in a monastery. They had a regular session of 5 hours in the morning.A small kitten used used to come daily during that meditation period, and its movements and fun disturbed monks' concentration.After some days, monks were worried as what to do with the kitten as hitting or troubling the animal was against their rules.Then, they started to develop a process.They assigned duty of one monk per day to keep an eye on kitten, and when it comes, gently carry it out of the premises. Now, the process was defined, and they keep refining the process, by noting time of its arrival, putting some statistics, to get the exact times, made a duty chart, and put some eatables for the kitten.
Now, after this process, their daily meditation schedule became fixed and the process became smooth. Everything went fine.Gradually, kitten turned to cat, got old, and finally died.
But by applying PDCA cycle to the process several times, the process was very much refined till that time.
Now what to do? No one had an idea. Everyone was stunned. So just to follow the process, the monks carried a new cat, and everything went smooth again.
This is the story of several black cat processes that prevail in today's industries. Once defined, process becomes most important whether it is reasonable or not.So, we need RULERS, not RULES to kll these process. And of course, a blend of proper RULES and proper RULERS is must for any industry.


Moving to the 3 valley,

Following management principles can be learned from the exercize:

1.Proper training is essential to achieve the desired level of results

2.There should be a well defined goal and every team member should have absolute clarity about it.

3.Mutual trust and belief are the foundation of a good team

4.Leadership and team work aren’t two separate entities. Collective leadership from the team delivers optimum results.

5.Every team member is accountable and responsible for the job at hand.

6.There has to be openness in terms of new ideas and suggestion.

 Team members must know what is expected of them individually in quantitative terms and not qualitative and vague terms like "positive attitude" and "high growth", as these words are ambiguous in their meaning.What should be exact position of holding the rod..?? such reasoning will definitely help in better performance.“Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Tower Building (a prequel)

What is craftmanship? Yes...a single person doing the whole operation himself.Dr. Mandi showed the practical example,challenging the dogmatic studies methodologies.He offered participation to build the tower using single wooden cells.
And to make process more business like, he proposed an auction and the person who offered highest bid won the right to make the tower. He set the initial target of 12 blocks, and exceeded the target by making 16 block tower.
This was a typical example of craftmanship. A single person/resource doing the full operation himself.

In the second scenario, sir made a team of managers, with 5 top managers and 1 middle manager.
The resource was blind folded and was working according to instructions of managers. To the surprise of class, managers were not aware of the exact work they will do. This showed a typical condition of an organization, burdened with middle managers.As expected , the resource was able to construct a 10 block tower only.

After this activity, sir introduced the concept of SMART goals (already covered in my previous blog).

So there are four questions that we need of answer at the time of goal setting:
 
     - What is the potential?
     - What target should be set?
     - What the actual performance be?
     - What can be achieved?

The potential is always at the higher level.Everyone is unlimited with the potential.
The target to be achieved will always be higher than our achieved goals.Achieved goals will give us the confidence to raise our expectations and challenge our potential.

We have to manage organizational resources to get the desired results.

The Three Monks story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rolBiHfWokY



"No...No....I am working fine like this....I don't want to go into all this.I am just doing fine single handedly". Answered
the omlete maker standing on the road-side. There was huge line of his customers and he was making 3 omletes at one time.
All the customers as well as he himself was in trouble.And as a result, most of his customers who did not preferred to wait in queue left.
After attending the POM class, I tried to link my learning to this event.

In India, most people are involved in craftmanship. i-e- they want to work alone.They are good ion their respective art and always want
to continue like this. Either they do not realize long term benefits, have fears, or do not want to change themselves.

Management is nothing but breaking the process into parts, yes, make it complex and then churn out most of the grind.
It requires a lots of patience and hard work. But yes, outcome is better and more rewarding.

The three monks story began with one monk who arrives at the monastry and does the work as per his own needs.He was happy
and was doing just enough work to collect water just sufficient for him. When second monk joined him, they understood the
benefits of partership over craftmanship and identified the more efficient method to collect water. They showed
"MANAGEMENT BY METHODS". They resolved their internal conflicts by using standard measurement instrument,scale.
When the third monk joined them, the problems started. They fought over who two monks will go for water
collection.They wanted to stick to older methods and did not try to find the newer method as per the needs.
As a result, they did not collect water and lived without it but did not try to resolve the CONFLIT OF INTEREST.
And as a sequence, when disasters came as a resistance, they were directionless. They could not figure out where to go. So the
three monks ran to and fro to resolve the disaster and finally were able to do so.Again, as a part of curve, resistance
was followed by the innovation. They broke the process and assigned a task to each. Every operation was important and hence each job, each worker.

The short movie teaches us the following management lessons:

1) Team-work and break-up of operations into small small parts leads to better efficiency.
2) Always compare and assign the relative work using the standard circulars.
3) Disaster recovery plan must be ready beforehand.
4) Efficiency of an operation evolves after experience and over time.
 To elaborate this point, T. Prasad sir asked us in the class which method was more efficient.1 monk carring two buckets or 2 monks carrying one bucket. As expected, most students just considered the amount of water one monk was carrying in one round trip.And, hence opted for the 'one monk method' more efficient.Later on, all students realized that two monks carrying one bucket was of cource, more efficient in terms of productivity.

Event	Output (No. of buckets)	Input(Worker Energy units)	Productivity = Output/Input
1 Man – 2 buckets	2	2	1
2 Men – 1 bucket	1	0.5	2

5) A company's interest should win over any individual's interest.

Well, Mumbai in june means rain.The mild smell of moist soil refreshes the heart. It was one of the " not so rainy" morning.The clock striked 9, and it was all set for another Dr Mandi class. As soon as he entered, he started the discussion about 3-D printing machines. His jokes were mainly the caustic remarks on still 60-70 lacs cost of such printing machines."There is tremendous potential in the business" he said. And, gradually, he   gave an apportunity to us to work with 3-d printing team in the campus.
Slowly and steadily, his discussion went on to discuss the goals. Yes, SMART goals. In the previous tower building exercise, we saw that the longest tower was 27 blocks high. Dr. Mandi asked all the students about what we thought potential could be.After discussing for some time, we all agreed that potential should be 27+.And therefore, we realized what SMART goals are:

S = simple,super,strategic,specific,structured, sustainable,sensible.......
M= measurable,manageable.........
A=achievable,ambitious..........
R= realistic, rational,...........
T= time bound, tangible..........

So , for every of the following parameter :

1) GOAL SET
2) GOAL ACHIEVED

S = M = A = R = T

And the remaining parameters are:

3) GOAL (historical)
4) POTENTIAL
5) REAL GOAL SET
6) REAL GOAL ACHIEVED
7) PERFORMANCE

As we learned from the discussion,
a)  5) and 6) must be in harmony.
b) Potential shall lead to more potential.
c) Goal settings and goal achievements should follow the spiral trajectory. Example: Fibonacci series: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13...........

d) Potential = Goal settings * Goal Achieved
This equation must be positively looped. Positive Goal settings should lead to positive goals achieved and ultimately lead to positive potential. And, in the loop, positive goals achieved leads to positive goals setting.

Thanks.

Sometimes it does happen that various parts of your body do not give a synchronized view about an adventure. And moreover, all the parts are right in their own perspectives. On seeing the NITIE pond from the second floor of hostel 1 on a drizzling morning, heart always desires to go inside it and swim 10 rounds ,shouting and thanking god for letting me in,in her own place. But suddenly, the social pressure and the administration fear tells the mind to order heart to be in its limits. Moreover, the situation gets troublesome when some external agents ( stiches in my case :( :( ) ...yes I am the same person whom you see everyday with unshaven face decorated by some white strips that try hard to cover betadine-soaked cotton, beautifying the glory of a romantic meet between an auto and a car............so I was saying that the situation becomes troublesome when some external agents have their say too.

"So how was your start at NITIE?" When one of my friends asked the question, I was taken aback to the same  dreary collision, when the auto-rickshaw was smashed in the car. My answer was ..."it was aaaa.........."

Yes, disasters happen. In this blog, I will make an attempt to implement theory X and theory Y , trying to figure out management's and team's mind-set in the disaster recovery plan.
 - THEORY X: Managers who think their workers are LAZY.
 - THEORY Y: Managers who think their workers are GOOD.

Let us assume that whole body is an organization. Mind (M) is the CEO, all the remaining parts (P) are the technical workers, and all the actions(A) we perform are business processes. In case of a disaster (accident in my case), the mind-setup matters most.

Let us get back to the scenario when the accident or disaster just happened. Some P's stop functioning properly and some A's are hampered. And all the decisions are left to the mind manager M.
 In my case, only mouth and elbow  were wounded most with some small scratches on the legs.

Case A: Bad workers, Hopeless managers : " Hmmm...so there is a wound on mouth and elbow..." the legs ( lets give some brains to legs for some time) will say......" lets take the advantage of the situation and relax. When the organization (body) can't eat (coz of injury on mouth) ....lets not allow it to walk also." And the hopeless mind manager will say...."No one can no anything. All body parts are lazy, always looking for an excuse."

This situation is most dangerous for any organization. The disaster recovery plan requires some instant positive actions. And in  presence of so many negative thoughts and approaches, the organization can follow a downwards trajectory only.

Case B : Bad workers, hopeful managers : As bad workers "legs" already not willing to work, the motivational manager Mind will be hopeful that he can motivate the remaining parts to start recovery. He will applause the past achievements and even minor accomplishments.

This situation is better than case 1, but still manager may or may not motivate employees enough to work according to business continuity plan.

Case C : Good workers, Hopeless Managers:  "What if elbow and mouth are injured, lets try to maintain the remaining actions(or processes) intact. At least doing so will keep the organisation running"... the good workers will think......But again, the mind manager will be hopeless and will undermine the efforts of good employees. This situation is bad for good workers as well as organization. The manager's hopelessness may convert good employees into bad.

Case D: Good workers, hopeful managers : "Ok, just a minor injury, get the first aid quickly and get back to optimum operations. "....the Mind manager will be hopeful and his approach will be accompanied by good workers, always willing to work. In such a scenario, an injured body or organization may perform actions even better than some of the "healthy" organizations. I-e- It can work beyond its limits. This situation is ideal and best for an organization.

So, after attending this class of Dr. Mandi, I just called my friend back, and told him that IT WAS AN AWESOME EXPERIENCE.