Tower Building Activity.

In this blog I will write about the SMART Goals and i will give the clear picture of Smart Goals with the help of a activity i.e. building tower. Ofcourse it was explained to us by Prof. Mandi in the very same way. He brought a bag which has two boxes in it. These two boxes has several small pieces of wooden cubes. With this pieces we had to build the longest tower possible. These small pieces of cubes were given to us in some of the previous classes also , but this time we are going to learn something different according to Prof. Mandi. These small pieces of cubes could gave us so much to learned , I have never thought about it.

With this small pieces of cubes and building the tower activity , I learned about Craftsmanship, Modern Management , some of the loop holes in modern management (which is prevailing in some of the organization) and setting the smart goals.

If a single person is building the tower with the help of cubes, then he is doing more of a Craftsmanship kind of work.
Craftsmanship :- There is no Organization Management in craftsmanship. If a single person is doing conventional work to support his per day living , then he is known as craftsman and this type of work is known as Primitive Work. Since it do not involve a group of person and he is doing no good for the society,  it is not an Organization Management.All the jargon of the management such as society, specialization, profitability, revenue, culture etc. will not be there in craftsmanship.

Modern Management :- Now to make us to understand the modern management, Prof. Mandi called some of the student, to be precise seven students to build the tower. But he kept one condition that only one person building the tower with his eyes blind folded , rest all others member will guide him to build the tower.
The process started, after few minutes a tower of seven cubes high was made, while in attempt built it more big it felled. Prof. Mandi then asked the experience of  the person who was blind folded and building the tower, he told that there was lots of suggestion from the different people that eventually it converted into noise and created confusion and as a result the objective of building big  tower failed.

Similar type of situation was also faced by me in my organization. Before joining to the institute I was working in TCS. I was working in TCS as Assistant Systems Engineer. It was my work to accomplished the coding part (most of the time) associated with the project. Systems Engineer was also there to help me. But in the hierarchy above me here there were Mentor, Team Lead, Project Lead, Program Manager. Some of times , it happened such that Program Manger would tell me to do something different than what had
been told by my Team Lead. It put me in dilemma to what not to do and what to do. Though there is always a way to worked it out,  but then it affects our efficiency. As Performance =Efficiency * Effectiveness , So decrease in efficiency by any amount lowers our performance. This kind of system still prevails in our organization. But then it totally depends on our managers to coordinate the team, implement Smart Goals to increase the performance Of Organizations.

Smart Goals :- “You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra
This time Prof. Mandi has asks us to implement the Smart Goals rules in Tower Building activity. Goal setting is very much important from the organization point of
view. It is because goal is the factor for which organization works for. Goal setting is one of the basic tools used by organizations to assist in setting a direction
and achieving it. Defining organizational goals helps to conceptualize and articulate the future direction of the organization.
Managers had to identify the potential of its employees before setting the goals. While Goal History is what that has already been achieved. So, Keeping this view
in mind manager has to define goals for the organization.
Here ,It is very important to note that Goal set should be more than Potential, Goal History and Goal Achieved. If this conditions are met then only it is known
as SMART GOAL.

S=Specific

A goal is specific when it provides a description of what is to be accomplished. A specific goal is a focused goal. It will state exactly what the organization intends
to accomplish. While the description needs to be specific and focused, it also needs to be easily understood by those involved in its achievement. It should be clearly
mention:

 What is to be accomplished?

 Where is it to be done?

 When is it to be done? 

M=Measurable

A goal is measurable if it is quantifiable. It will also have a target toward which progress can be measured, as well as benchmarks to measure progress along the way.
A measurable goal will answer questions such as:

 How much?

 How many?

A=Achievable

There should be a realistic chance that a goal can be accomplished. This does not mean or imply that goals should be easy. On the contrary, a goal should be challenging.
The organization's manager and employees agree that the goal is important and that appropriate time and appropriate resources will be focused on its accomplishment.
An achievable goal should also have some space for flexibility.

R=Relevant/Realistic

Goals should be appropriate to and consistent with the mission and vision of the organization. Each goal adopted by the organization should be one that moves the organization toward the achievement of its vision. As discussed earlier, goals are set by or in concert with the person responsible for achievement. It is important that all short-term goals be relevant (e.g., consistent) with the longer-term and broader goals of the organization.

T=Time

Finally a goal must be bound by time. That is, it must have a starting and ending point. It should also have some intermediate points at which progress can be assessed.
Limiting the time in which a goal must be accomplished helps to focus effort toward its achievement.

As a result of this activity this time our class has been able to build the longest tower (as compared to earlier attempt) as high as 24 cubes.So, in this way I have seen the practical examples of setting the smart goals and how the performance of the organization can be increased through it.

Goals should be spiral in nature and it should expand constantly.

Apart from this a very famous theory i.e. Pygmalion Theory was also discussed. According to this if we expect something more from any person then that person tries to do its best to meet our expectations. So, this in a way motivates a person to do something better and better.