An another interesting class by Dr. Mandi on Principles of Organization Management. Today, he came to class with 2 boxes of wooden cubes of about 2 cm length and asked who could build the highest tower with those blocks with a single block as base. Students eventually bid to get this opportunity. The deal was finalized at 500 bucks. The winner finally succeeded in making a tower of 16 blocks.
Interestingly, when Professor asked if there was any Organizational Management involved in the process, a lot of students answered positively. Some said about how the tower builder had to manage time, some said that he had to balance the blocks so as to make the tower as tall as possible, hence managing his resources. But then professor made us understand that craftsmanship is not same as organizational management. And even if there is any involved in it, it is negligible.
A cobbler on a road side mends shoes and makes new ones. He uses his craftsmanship to make good shoes, but there is no scalability in his work. There are no concept of sales, performance, results or objectives involved in a scalable manner in his activity. If at his maximum efficiency, he could make 'X' number of shoes, then he caters to the demand of 'X' number of customers amongst who visit him. But organizational management lies in the capability of a person to bring together resources, both human and materialistic, in an optimal amount, in this case say 'n' number of skilled cobblers and raw materials for 'nX' shoes, and manage them to create products more profitably, here, let say they make 'nX' number of shoes, that could be sold to a wider market. Such an approach not only scales up the number of items produced but also reduces the number of various kinds of non consumed goods like tools required for making shoes that could be shared amongst the cobblers, hence reducing the overall cost of manufacturing and increasing profitability.
In purview of this approach, he asked how many students more could join to build the tower in a more organized manner such that the result could be scaled to a higher level. This time eight students volunteered to do the task. He introduced a slight change in the rules and said that only one person could touch the blocks but that person would be blind folded whereas others could guide him or manage the process. Ironically, this group of eight could build a tower of only 7 blocks. After the exercise, when the blind folded person, who was making the tower, was asked about his experience, he said that the primary difficulty he faced was not in placing the blocks but rather in trying to reach a conclusion about the suggestions given by others managing the task. It was then, that professor explained about the second half of the concept that an overly managed process could again bring down the efficiency resulting in a poorer performance. This is something a person working in any industry can easily correlate to. If one has a lot of managers over oneself, then it becomes very tedious to do even a simple task and hence a flatter approach should be used, i.e. using only the optimal number of managers required such that every manager justifies the existence of his role.
These were some of the basic but interesting fundas that I learned today about organizational management.
Interestingly, when Professor asked if there was any Organizational Management involved in the process, a lot of students answered positively. Some said about how the tower builder had to manage time, some said that he had to balance the blocks so as to make the tower as tall as possible, hence managing his resources. But then professor made us understand that craftsmanship is not same as organizational management. And even if there is any involved in it, it is negligible.
A cobbler on a road side mends shoes and makes new ones. He uses his craftsmanship to make good shoes, but there is no scalability in his work. There are no concept of sales, performance, results or objectives involved in a scalable manner in his activity. If at his maximum efficiency, he could make 'X' number of shoes, then he caters to the demand of 'X' number of customers amongst who visit him. But organizational management lies in the capability of a person to bring together resources, both human and materialistic, in an optimal amount, in this case say 'n' number of skilled cobblers and raw materials for 'nX' shoes, and manage them to create products more profitably, here, let say they make 'nX' number of shoes, that could be sold to a wider market. Such an approach not only scales up the number of items produced but also reduces the number of various kinds of non consumed goods like tools required for making shoes that could be shared amongst the cobblers, hence reducing the overall cost of manufacturing and increasing profitability.
In purview of this approach, he asked how many students more could join to build the tower in a more organized manner such that the result could be scaled to a higher level. This time eight students volunteered to do the task. He introduced a slight change in the rules and said that only one person could touch the blocks but that person would be blind folded whereas others could guide him or manage the process. Ironically, this group of eight could build a tower of only 7 blocks. After the exercise, when the blind folded person, who was making the tower, was asked about his experience, he said that the primary difficulty he faced was not in placing the blocks but rather in trying to reach a conclusion about the suggestions given by others managing the task. It was then, that professor explained about the second half of the concept that an overly managed process could again bring down the efficiency resulting in a poorer performance. This is something a person working in any industry can easily correlate to. If one has a lot of managers over oneself, then it becomes very tedious to do even a simple task and hence a flatter approach should be used, i.e. using only the optimal number of managers required such that every manager justifies the existence of his role.
These were some of the basic but interesting fundas that I learned today about organizational management.
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