Setting the 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

Today in this blog, I will discuss about the Goal setting and Goal achieving. 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. Successful organizations often set long and short-term  goals for service development, improving quality, reducing errors, becoming more focused. Individuals may set goals to achieve a personal objective such as career advancement. Goals serve as an internal source of motivation and commitment and provide a guide to action as well as a means of measuring performance.
Defining organizational goals helps to conceptualize and articulate the future direction of  the organization. Here managers of the organization plays a very important role in setting the goals. While setting the goals the managers has to identify the two factors which are Potential and Goal History. Keeping this two factor the goal setting is made. Potential is what the manpower of the organization capable to do. Managers had to identify the potential of its employees before setting the goals. While Goal History is what that has already been achieved by that organization . 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 appropiate 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 concern with the person responsible for achievement. .

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.

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.

So, This was all about discussion on Goal and achieving this Goal. I will come with another interesting concept of organization management soon.

Theory X and Theory Y

Its now time study the behaviour of the human minds. As matter of fact studying the human minds and their behaviour is also one of the important factor of Organization Management. This is so true because there are many people of different mind set and behaviour are working together to achieve an objective and hence it becomes very necessary for the managers of the organizations to coordinate and correlate their work so that best of them can be extracted. On the other hand sometime we do get some manager who do not understands their employees and as a results they tends to harm the organization structure.

In regards to the behaviour of the manager and behaviour of employees there is Theory X and Theory Y.
Douglas McGregor, an American social psychologist, proposed his famous X-Y theory in his 1960 book
'The Human Side Of Enterprise'. Theory x and theory y are still referred to commonly in the field of management and motivation. McGregor's XY Theory remains central to organizational development, and to improving organizational culture.

Theory X : It states that the managers is very is pessimistic about his employees and thinks that the people working under them are lazy and avoids work provided they get a chance. So, there is only one way to make people work , that  is by the use of power and by threatening them. Manager of type X , do not take part in the work of their employees. This theory not only proves to be counterproductive in terms of the work done, but also it creates a bad work culture inside the firm and the employees.

Theory Y : It states that manager is very optimistic about his employees and so he thinks that the employees are very active and ambitious in the organization. According to the Y manager most people want to do well and excel at the work. Managers of type Y , also work equally with the employees, analyses the problem and motivates them  to work accordingly.

So, this creates four type of situations in the organization.

 

Situation 1 : In this situation Manager is of type X i.e. lazy and pessimistic and the employees are also lazy. This means that employees are lazy and managers are also lazy. This type of situation is very harmful for the organization. There is very little scope for the growth of organization and Manager can be held responsible for not creating a pleasant atmosphere to work , thus decreasing the work efficiency and effectiveness both.

 Situation 2 : In this situation manager is of type X i.e. lazy and pessimistic but the employees are self motivated, active and loyal to their work. Manager thinks that his employees do not carry out the work efficiently and effectively and thus hampers the work culture of the organization. Here the manager is solely responsible for the failure, as the work of the hardworking and self-motivated employees will be wasted because of the poor judgement of the Manager.Consequently, the hard-working employees will loose their interest in work.


Situation 3 : In this situation Manager is very optimistic about his employees . But on the other hand employees are lazy. Manager always tries to motivates his employees to work and tries to extract best out of them. Manager have faith on his employees and there is lot of responsibility on the manager. Manager tries to create a constructive environment inside the organization so that efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved.

Situation 4 : In this situation Manager is very optimistic about his employees and actually employees are also very active, hardworking and loyal to their work. This is the ideal and best situation that a organization can have. It will have maximum amount of  efficiency and effectiveness and thus it will be the organization of excellence!!!


Overall, We can deduce that it is totally dependent on the manager to drives the organization towards excellence no matter how the employees are.
 
Though a hopeful manger get the lazy employees, he can motivate them , convince them and  work with them along to push the organization towards excellence. Where as the pessimistic manager will always hamper the work culture of the organization , no matter what sort of employees he get and thus decreasing the excellence of organization.

Craftmanships Vs Modern Management and The Concept of 3 "E's".

Today in this blog I am going to write about the differences between the Craftsmanship and Organization management as discussed by Prof. Mandi in the class. I have discussed the overview of both in the previous post with some examples. As our sessions are proceding further , the concepts of Organization and Management is getting more clear.  Prof. Mandi has very well stated the differences between Craftsmanship and Organization Management with few examples. First I will discuss the characterstics of Craftsmanship and then characteristics of Organization Management . In this way the differences between two will be more clear So, the characteristics of Craftsmanship goes like this.

1. In Craftsmanship only single person is involved in carrying out his task and that too in a very primitive way.
2. Craftsman focuses only a certain group of person , for example a shoemaker mends the shoes of person,   he is not focusing on majority of person.
3. The objective of shoemaker is just to earn his one day of living. The satisfaction level in this case
is very high.
4. There is no parallelism in the work of craftsmanship which means that the worker do not look for the optimization of resources and time efficiency. He  follows a very primitive process to complete his task.
5.  In Craftsmanship worker is only the sole boss of his work.
6. For a worker in craftsmanship,  his art of doing a work is just like black box to him i.e. he actually do not know what more he can make out of his ability. It is here , worker loses the vision to do something big.
7. There is no interdependency in work of craftsmanship since only a single person is doing.

Modern Management term is totally opposite to that of Craftsmanship.       

1. In mordern management there are group of people involved in doing a work and they work together in coordination to acheive the goal which they had set.
2. Modern Management carry out objectives which focusses the large nuber of people or which adds value to the society. For e.g. group of people working on building the bridge on the river. Now suppose when this bridge  becomes operational, it can benefit a huge mass of people . So, Modern Management contributes a lot  to the society.
3. In Modern Management alienation is high.
4. The work is distributed to each and every person in Modern Management and this brings parallelism in work. So, there is efficiency as well as optimization of resources in Modern Management.
5. In Modern Management non-worker is sole boss.
6. Here the non-worker understands the art of people or worker which is the black box to craftsman and so he decomposes the work to its lowest level, distributes the work and optimizes it .
7. There is inter-dependency involved in it because it is carried out by certain group of people in sequence. For e.g. in making car , organization has certain teams allocated for different kinds of work.Suppose, Team 1 has work of creating the body of a car, Team 2 has to install the engine in it, Team 3 has technology oriented work in the car. So, as long as Team 1 will not complete its work, it can not be proceeded to Team 2 for further development. So, this is known as interdependency of work.
8. Modern Management also Deskills the process. So that more and more people are made to do work. In Modern Management there more of process based person technique.

So this was all about the differences between Craftsmanship and Modern Management.

Prof. Mandi also gave us the concepts of 3 "E"s which means Effectiveness Efficiency and Excellence. He also gave us the simple formula which is -
                                                  Excellence = Efficiency * Effectiveness.

He told us to understands this concept like Speed * Direction. Everyone should work for excellence and for that effectiveness is much important factor . Efficiency describes the capability to produce maximum output with a minimum amount of input. Being efficient means producing results with little wasted effort. It is the ability to carry out actions quickly. On the other hand, Effectiveness is the capability to produce a desired result. When something is considered effective, it is meant to produce a deep vivid impression. Effectiveness involves achieving your goals that support your vision and mission. Therefore this brings us to the Excellence. One of the example of excellence are the Apple products.

 

Introduction Of Organization Management and Craftsmanship.

It was the another class of Prof. Mandi and I was now very much excited for his another lectures. I was hoping for another session of fun learning. This time again Professor Mandi arrived with a bag which has two boxes in it. These two boxes has several small pieces of wooden cubes. He distributed those cubes among us to observe. After that he started the bidding process , in which winner will get a chance to make the tower as high as possible by using these small cubes. The deal was finalized  in 500 Rupees. As one of the student who won the deal was busy building the tower, Professor Mandi asked that whether Organization management was involved in this process of building a tower by a single person. Most of us responded in YES.!!!. But actually according to the professor it was a NO.

Demonstrating the Example of Craftsmanship.

Then Professor Mandi told us that 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. For example, if there is a shoe maker who mends the shoes of others has no Organization Management but if there is a group of people who are constructing a bridge on the river, for the people so that they can cross the river easily definitely has the structure of Organization Management. All the jargon of the management such as society, specialization, profitability, revenue, culture etc. will not be there in craftsmanship.

So, now  to demonstrate the process of actual Organization Management, he called about seven students who will be building 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. So, by this activity he gave us lesson that too many middle manger who do nothing brings down the efficiency of a group or organization .This is the currently the scenario of most of the Organization. It is actually true. If a organization has too many middle managers and if they are contributing nothing in the favor of organization then it is better to remove them. In an company there are lower level employees, manager in the middle and top class manager. It is ideal structure of  Organization Management but if in middle we have too many manager with no or low efficiency, then this tends to disturb the structure of Organization Management.           
 

Demonstrating the Example of Organization Management.

So, this was all about the Introduction of Organization Management and Craftsmanship with examples. I will come with more lesson on this topic.

Day One

It was my first class in NITIE of communication skills by Prof. Nikhil Mehta but since our professor  was not present in the campus, it was taken up by Prof. Mandi. He has a very different style of teaching and our batch including me seems to filled with entuhusiasm of learning within the first few minutes of class. He arrived with a bag which has some toys in it . Precisely it has two small globe, two plastics butterflies and one wooden hen. To our utter surprise he asked us to play with these toys and observe them. It was then I realized that why he is so famous around campus. Later he asked us (some of the student of the class) to sell the toys as a part of small group activity. 

Prof. Mandi told us importance of creating and writing blogs. According to him every person should write a blogs because this will lead to sharing of knowledge and thus eliminating the concepts of universities and colleges from the world. I was very much impressed by his way of thinking.  Prof. Mandi has a very simple philosophy i.e. "aaj ka paisa, aaj hi kamana" which means we should focus on the per day cost of living and work accordingly to earn money per day by our own. He also gave a concept of Opportunity costs. Opportunity costs here means the total cost incurs for a person to join NITIE for MBA program. In my case the total opportunity cost turned out to be 15 lakhs. (3.5 LPA for two years which I could earn in company had I not joined NITIE. in addition to 8 lakh i.e. total expenditure in NITIE). A sense of seriousness drew in that I am  here  for the purpose of real learning. The figures also made me realize how difficult it is to earn money and how our parents are earning day and night to support a living.

Prof. Mandi also gave us idea that we should not strive to get placed rather we should start our own venture, we should be competent enough to give placements to others and this possible only when we are earning 50% of per day cost per day. He made us to sing a slogan in this very context which goes like this "socho becho,becho sikho,shiko socho".

Apart from learning and understanding the basics values of life, Prof. Mandi also made us to sing a song the popular song Another Brick in the Wall of  PINK FLOYD which takes a jab on the prevailing system in western schools .

Overall, It was very good session of learning .I had never thought that learning could be so much fun in this way!!!. There is lot more to learn from Prof. Mandi and so I will and as I learn I will post my learning here.