Poverty in Museums....what???

“Human beings are much more than just making money”  

                                                        - Mohammad Younus

                                                                                 

Hello everyone, few days back ,while searching on the internet, I read that  Dr. Mohammad Yunus aims to place poverty in museums. I was totally astounded by his statement. I was intrigued by his idea of removing the poverty from whole world and ended up watching this amazing video. This video opened my eyes to the whole world of opportunities which earlier I couldn’t see.This video will surely broaden your horizon about doing business.

According Dr. Mohammad Yunus, poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives. If you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty. He believes that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue. 

When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole. Hence, 96% of grameen bank customers are women.

Achieving Excellence :

Excellence = Effectiveness * Efficiency

Excellence is the product of efficiency and effectiveness. They go hand in hand. One can not achieve excellence with either efficiency or effectiveness. Both things needs to happen simultaneously achieve excellence as that happened in case of grameen bank. Humans working as individuals can not achieve  the excellence. It is the organizations alone that can help in producing excellence

Effectiveness of Grameen Bank :

Where to go to, how to go,why to go to is effectiveness. Grameen  bank is very clear about its destination and how to reach that destination. They want to create a poverty less world by helping , believing in poor people.As peaceful society can not exist with poverty, they want to empower poor people by lending money to them.

Efficiency of Grameen Bank  :

How fast one should go, How one should spend is efficiency. Following are factors which improves the efficiency of Grameen bank.

• Focus on poor
• Tiny loans
• Priority to women
• Credit with social development agenda
• Trust on poor ; no need for collateral  

This is how Grameen bank achieved effectiveness and efficiency which ultimately makes them excellent organisation in the world. It is for this excellence, the whole world salutes Dr. Mohammad Yunus.

Happy Reading !!!

Learning Organisation Structure innovatively...!!!

“In a balanced organization, working towards a common objective, there is success”

                       -          Arthur Helps

Hello everyone, once again we were introduced to unconventional toy which puzzled all of us. It was a Navrang cube. Navrang cube, is slightly different than our conventional Rubik’s cube.

                                             

As the name suggests, it has total 27 small cubes coloured with 9 different colours. There are total 9 sets of each colour. Each set contain 3 small cubes as shown in the figure. Unlike the conventional cubes, this cube can be dis-assembled completely and can be assembled again as per objective. Dr. Mandi asked us to assemble Navrang cube in such a way that each face will contain all the 9 colours. As the cube could be manually disassembled, initially we thought of it as a very simple task. But, to our surprise it turned out to be a very difficult task. Then, Dr. Mandi showed us a structured way to solve the cube. Please find the link below for video explaining the process to solve the Navrang  puzzle. 

There are two key management concepts which can be learnt from this Navarang puzzle exercise.

1.       Organisation Structure : 

As the Navrang puzzle has all the different 9 colours on each side ,similarly in an organisation people with different skill sets or different qualities should be present in each division. People with same skill sets and qualities may  lead to disharmony or jealousy among them. People with different skills can come up with wonderful ideas. Hence in any organisation division, people will diverse skill sets should be clubbed together to achieve a balance in an organisation.

2.       Unity in Objective :

There should be a common objective towards which everyone should continuously strive. Without common objective, individual potential will be wasted and this will lead to organisation failure. With a common goal only individual potential can be leveraged to serve a greater purpose. Calvin Coolidge has truly said –

“ The only difference between mob and an army is organisation ” 

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Strength lies in Unity !

“Teamwork is the secret that make common people achieve uncommon result.”

                                                                                                    -Efianyi Onuoha

Hello everyone, this time I learnt about the strength of unity in a very unique way. Dr. Mandi asked us to watch a video about a story of three monks. "Three monks"  is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. After the cultural revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animations created as part of the rebirth period. The film is based on the ancient Chinese proverb "One monk will shoulder two buckets of water, two monks will share the load, but add a third and no one will want to fetch water". 

The story can be divided into 3 parts as follows:

1.Low Productivity with 1 monk :

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He gets tired with this task and takes more time to complete it.

2.Moderate Productivity with 2 monks :

After few days, second monk arrives. Both of them decide to share the work of fetching the water. But each one of them tries to reduce their share of load by changing the inclination of rod. This leads to their fighting. The normal human tendency to avoid the work is shown here.

To resolve the conflict, they decide to use measuring scale to mark the exact mid-point of the rod. This shows that technology can be used to resolve conflicts. One of them takes the measurement and other marks so that nobody can take doubt on each other.From this we can learn that participative management increases trust in the team which is very vital for the team to function properly.

3.High Productivity with 3 monks :

 The third monk arrives in the temple after some days. Each one of them thinks that somebody else will get the water and finally nobody fetches the water even though they were thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. 

The adversity unites them. They bring the water with redoubled vigour and finally succeeds in dousing the fire. After this incident they start co-operating each other and work as a team. They use a rope and pulley to fetch the water. As a result of this, they get more water with less efforts which ultimately increases their productivity. The following table clearly explains the increased productivity with increased manpower.

Variable	1 PERSON	1 PERSON	2 PERSONS	3 PERSONS
OUTPUT	1 BUCKET	2 BUCKETS	1 BUCKET	1 BUCKET
HOW	Overhead	I pole	1 pole,1 scale	Pulley,Rope
EFFORT	300KJ	100 KJ	10 KJ	0.1 KJ
PRODUCTIVITY	1/300= 0.003	2/100 = .02	1/10 = .1	1/0.1 = 10
	VERY LOW	LOW	MODERATE	VERY HIGH

My Corporate Experience :

I can relate this story to my actual work experience. As a part of my job,I used to do Simulation analysis and Report preparation for the same project. As both the tasks were tedious, it used to take lot of efforts and time.After this, my manager asked me to focus only on Simulation analysis and the task of Report preparation was given to another person.Due to this,we both became experts in our respective areas.As a result of this segregation of activity,the task which was taking 80hrs earlier could be completed in just 30hrs. We worked as a team and this led to improved productivity which ultimately earned us client appreciation.This example clearly underlines the significance of Deskilling(which is mentioned in my earlier post) and Teamwork in a real corporate world.

After attending this class of Dr. Mandi, I found the following quote more correct.

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is 

  the team.”

                                                                                                                     -    Phil Jackson

  Happy Reading !!!

Aim Higher....!!!

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

                                                                                                                       -Bruce Lee

 

Ever since I read this quote, I always ased to wonder why the goal is not meant to be achieved,why the greatest martial artist of all time has said so. I was always thinking that the goal always needs to be achieved otherwise it will be considered as failure. Yet again I was proved wrong by Dr.Mandi. This time I am enlightened by the learnings about goals.

Dr. Mandi explained us the importance of setting the goals very high.The goals should always be set very high. It should always be higher than what we consider our true potential to be. Otherwise we are simply underestimating ourselves. After setting the high goals then we should think about the way to accomplish it. It is a sequential process. First we should set the goals very high without thinking whether it is realistic or not and then we should strive to achieve it. This way only we can realise our true potential. Even though the goal is not reached, the high set goals will always get the best out of us and we will perform better than the previous. This cycle of setting the higher goals, performing better than the previous best can be related to Fibonacci spiral. As the spiral gets wider with each turn, our performance gets better with the higher set goals.

The ideal goal should not only be high but it should always be SMART. What I mean by SMART is the goal must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable,  and Timebound.

1.       Specific:

·         The target should be clearly defined.

·         The questions like What? Where ? Who? Should be answered by it.

·         e.g. To win 1^st prize Business Plan competition in Prerana 2013 at NITIE.

2.       Measurable:

·         One should be able to evaluate the goals.

·         Whether the Goal has been achieved or not can only be decided by measurable goals

·         e.g. To win 1^st prize Business Plan competition in Prerana 2013 at NITIE

·          

3.       Attainable:

·         The target shoul be feasible.

·         It should be realistic under the current circumstances.

4.       Relevant:

·         The goal shoul be in-line with vision and mission of an organisation.

·         The goal should be worthwhile to achieve.

5.       Timebound:

·         There shoul be timeframe associated with each goal.

                  ·      This will lead to accomplish the goal within time.

 

Dr. Mandi also threw light on Pygmalion effect.The Pygmalion effect is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. It also has an interesting story attached to it. Pygmalion was a sculptor who lived in Cyprus. Women who lived on Cyprus didn't stay virtuous, so Pygmalion decided to live alone and made a perfect sculpture, Galatea. During the Aphrodite feast, thanks to Pygmalion`s prayers, the sculpture turned into a real person. This was called The Pygmalion effect. This theory is being used by the the managers across the globe to improve the performance of their employees. 

 

Happy Reading!!!