Problem Solving & Decision Making

One day Prof Mandi started a discussion on a very interesting topic called problem solving and decision making .The discussion was very productive and i got to learn a lot of new things which i will be sharing in this blog.

Problem Solving: Problem-solving is a mental process that involves discovering, analyzing and solving problems. The ultimate goal of problem-solving is to overcome obstacles and find a solution that best resolves the issue.

Decision Making: Decision making is the mental process resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternatives. Every decision making process produces a final choice in an action or an opinion of choice. If a person neither takes and action nor gives an opinion, this is also decision.

Difference Between Problem Solving and Decision Making

It is important to differentiate between problem analysis and decision making. The concepts are completely distinct from each another. Traditionally, it is argued that problem analysis must be done first, so that the information gathered in that process may be used towards decision making. A problem is a deviation from performance standards - that is, what occurred is different from what was expected to have occurred. In decision making, the objectives are first established, and a choice is made among alternatives for action or for an opinion. A decision that results in doing nothing - no action, nor an opinion rendered - is also considered a decision.

In any organization decision making and its implementation can happen in the following 4 ways:-

1.       Individual Decision, Individual Implementation

2.       Individual Decision, Group Implementation
3.       Group Decision, Individual Implementation4.       Group Decision, Group Implementation

Individual Decision:-In this case decision is taken by an individual and is a fast way of decision making.

Group Decision:-In this case decision is taken by a group of individuals and the decision is made only when they reach a mutual consensus.This way takes more time.

The Steps in Problem-Solving:-

1.       Problem Identification : In this step we identify the problems and prioritize them.
2.       Problem Analysis : In this step we define the problem statement on the basis of all the gathered data both from internal sources and external sources.
3.       Plan Development :In this step a plan is developed for tackling the problem and finding a feasible solution for it                          
4.      Plan Implementation:In this step the solution is implemented

5.  Plan Evaluation:In this the implemented solution is evaluated

Learning management by objectives

Like most of his previous classes one day Prof Mandi brought ab object in the class.This the object was simple magnet and as i was wondering that what management concept could we possibly learn from a magnet he asked us a simple question why does a magnet attracts.The question appeared a simple one as we had read about it in school and most of gave the answer for it.But the final statement we came down to was that a magnet attracts is because all the molecules align them them selves together.
Then Prof Mandi started to explain this concepts relevance in modern management.When ever management aligns itself with the human resources the tasks are successfully accomplished.

We then discussed a key concept called management by objectives.Management by objectives (MBO), also known as management by results (MBR), is a process of defining objectives within an organization so that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand what they need to do in the organization in order to achieve them. The term "management by objectives" was first popularized by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book The Practice of Management.

The essence of MBO is participative goal setting, choosing course of actions and decision making. An important part of the MBO is the measurement and the comparison of the employee’s actual performance with the standards set. Ideally, when employees themselves have been involved with the goal setting and choosing the course of action to be followed by them, they are more likely to fulfill their responsibilities.

Drucker outlined the six-step process for MBO

Some of the important features and advantages of MBO are:

1. Motivation – Involving employees in the whole process of goal setting and increasing employee empowerment. This increases employee job satisfaction and commitment.
2. Better communication and coordination – Frequent reviews and interactions between superiors and subordinates helps to maintain harmonious relationships within the organization and also to solve many problems.
3. Clarity of goals
4. Subordinates tend to have a higher commitment to objectives they set for themselves than those imposed on them by another person
5. Managers can ensure that objectives of the subordinates are linked to the organization's objectives.
6. Everybody will be having a common goal for whole organization. That means, it is a directive principle of management

What can Navrang cube teach us

One fine day Dr Mandi brought with him a colourful cube which resembled a regular rubik's cube in it shape but was differed from it in its colours and one more difference was that it was detachable.At first i wan't sure what it was and what it was for but i was excited and knew it going to be fun. Then Prof Mandi told that the cube was called a Navrang cube and posed a challenge to our class. He asked us to arrange the cube in such a way that all 9 colours fall on all the 6 faces of the cube.

1. Solve it in a ramdom manner.Try to solve it on a trial and error basis with any plan or prior analysis.

1. The other way it to solve it methodologically with a proper plan and prior analysis

All of us accepted the challenge and tried to solve but failed.We struggled for about an hour but couldnot solve it.Then Prof Mandi took the cube from us and solved it in less than 2 minutes.We were amazed that how could he solve it such a short duration.We got our answer as the lecture progressed.We failed because our method for solving it was not correct.We did not have any plan nor did we know the process of solving it.We were quite random in our approach.We didn't any prior analysis before trying to attempt to solve the puzzle.But when Prof Mandi started solving the cube he was very much organized and followed a particular method of solving it as consequence of which he solved it in less than 2 min.

Learnings from this exercise were that there are two ways of solving a problem

It doesn't Einstein to guess which way is a better choice.

He then told us about Frederick Taylor’s theory of scientific management.There are 4 principals of scientific management which are as follows:-

Taylor's four principles are as follows:

1.   Replace working by "rule of thumb," or simple habit and common sense, and instead use the scientific method to study work and determine the most efficient way to perform specific tasks.

2.   Rather than simply assign workers to just any job, match workers to their jobs based on capability and motivation, and train them to work at maximum efficiency.

3.   Monitor worker performance, and provide instructions and supervision to ensure that they're using the most efficient ways of working.

4.   Allocate the work between managers and workers so that the managers spend their time planning and training, allowing the workers to perform their tasks efficiently.

      In the same way in an organizational structure different positions and their responsibilities are
well defined.Every organization has an objective and all its employees work to achieve it.Every organization has a specific way of working and all its employees are allocated specific tasks that are to be performed by them and the organization also has specified methodology according to which they work.

Learning Management with 3 idiots crossing the valley

All of us know that team work is important but do we actually know how important it actually is.Just think for a second Steve Jobs a well known entrepreneur founded Apple but did he make Apple what it is today all by him self..the answers is no.He needed different people to work together to achieve a common goal.In life there are many things which cannot be achieved by a single person and can only be achieved when a group of people work together.This fact was illustrated by our Prof Mandi in our class room through an interactive exercise he asked us to do in the class with him.

The exercise of 3 idiots crossing the valley:-

·         Three people have to cross a valley carrying a rod on their shoulders.The gap between the valleys is more than one step long but less than two steps. At any time, all the three people have to hold the rod and using synchronous movements cross the valley.

·         Any person, while on top of the valley (the “risky” position to be in) will be supported by other two people. All the three members here have interchanging roles in the completion of task. As can be noticed in the above image, all the three members have equal distribution of risky, half-risky and safe situations.

·         The success of this exercise will depend upon how closely the three people work as part of a team, coordinate and communicate with each other through sound/signals and follow a synchronous movement   

      This task is impossible to achieve for a person doing it alone.It can only be achieved when a minimum of 3 people do it together with proper team work and they trust in each other.

     The explanation of 3 people doing it is given below:-

Persons	First Person	Second Person	Third person
Step
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risky
3	Full Risky
4	Half Risky	Half Risky
5		Full Risky
6		Half Risky	Half Risky
7			Full Risky
8			Half Risky
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

Half Risky – One leg in the air and the other leg has support
Full risky - Both the legs are in the air without any support
Half risky – One leg is in the air and the other leg has support
Safe - Both the legs have full support

1. Innovation:For every problem there is a solution we just need to find it.

1. Common Goal:Every organization and every task should have a common goal.

1. Trust:All the members working together in a team should have trust in each other.

1. Training:All the workers should be provided with proper training.They should be inculcated with all the skills required for the job they are recruited for.

1. Communication:The communication between all the members working in a team is really necessary.

1. Accountability:Every member in a team has a certain allocated responsibility and if that task is not done then he should be held accountable for that. 

     Safe - Both the legs of the person have full support

Hence from this activity we can conclude that the task is achievable and surety of full safety only when 3 people worke  together in a synchronous manner with each other.

Other learnings from the excercise are as follows:-

Muhammad Yunus - Concept of Grameen Bank and Micro-credit

Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi banker,economist and a Nobel peace prize recipient.To be honest i didn't know much about Muhammad Yunus before our Prof. Dr Mandi asked us to watch a speech that Muhammad Yunus had delivered in Emory University. I was curious why our Prof asked us to watch this particular speech.After watching this speech i got to learn a lot of new things which i will share here.

I got to learn about a concept called Microcredit and its importance.Muhammad Yunus was a professor of economics in USA when his country Bangladesh became an independent country after attaining freedom from Pakistan.The economic condition of his homeland was grim as there was a lot of poverty.One of the big factors to fact why poor people were still poor and why there economic condition was not improving was the fact that they were not given big loans by the banks.Hence they were not able to start their businesses or to afford good education for their children and were finding it hard to improve their financial condition.This motivated him to start a new institution called Grameen Bank which had a sole aim of upliftment of the poor people in Bangladesh.Grameen Bank was different from conventional banks in the following ways:-

1. Conventional Banks lended money to people who were already rich and hence could easily repay it with interest where as it thought that poor people were not credit worthy and would not be able to repay the loans.
2. Borrowers from conventional banks were mostly men where as most of the loan borrowers from Grameen bank were women(nearly 97%)
3. Unlike conventional banks, Grameen banks are free from lawyers as they do not need collateral to give loans to people neglecting the past issues of these people

       The main aim of Grameen Banks was to eradicate poverty from Bangladesh and give opportunities to poor people to start their own business and create subsequent employment and to make poor people provide their children with good education so that they can get good jobs when they grow up.All the above mentioned things would not have been possible if the poor people were not given loans.The lesson to learned here a a good system results in a flourishing society where as a bad system ruins the society.

        Grameen Bank concept has also been implemented in the USA with the name Grameen America 

        In 2006 Yunus and Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts through microcredit to create economic and social development.

       In February 2011, Yunus together with Saskia Bruysten, Sophie Eisenmann and Hans Reitz co-founded Yunus Social Business - Global Initiatives (YSB).YSB creates and empowers social businesses to address and solve social problems around the world. As the international implementation arm for Yunus’ vision of a new, humane capitalism, YSB manges Incubator Funds for social businesses in developing countries and providing advisory services to companies, governments, foundations and NGOs.

        Now let us try and define what micro-credit is after what what i have written so far.Micro-credit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history. It is designed not only to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty, but also in many cases to empower women and uplift entire communities by extension. In many communities, women lack the highly stable employment histories that traditional lenders tend to require. Many are illiterate, and therefore unable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans.

      

        The concept of micro-credit was given birth by Muhammad Yunus and he has earned our respect for that.Helping the helpless is what we all should strive to do as well.We should not just learn economic concepts from him we should also learn that we should help those who need it.

The story of three monks and what can we learn from them

We were given an assignment by our Prof. Mandi to watch the movie three monks and i was wondering how can a movie teach us concepts of marketing.I started watching the with a lot of expectations and i was not disappointed in the end.

Three Monks 
It  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. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests

Backgorund

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 film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk.The film tells the story from the aspect of the Buddhist bhikkhu.

Story

The movie tells a simple tale of a monk who lives in a temple on the top of a hill.Every day he brings 2 buckets of water up the hill by balancing them on a wooden pole.One day he tries to share his work with a second monk and both of them carry only one bucket together up the hill by balancing it on a wooden pole.One day a third monk arrives and the monks try to share their work with him but everybody tries to shun their responsibilities and a result of which no one goes to bring water in the bucket and everybody becomes thirsty.At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder and this leads to a fire in the temple.The three monks then work together to extinguish the fire and learn the valuable lesson that strength is always present in unity.

Learning from the three monks:
1.) The maximum efficiency can only be achieved when a group of people are working as team with the objective to achieve the end goal.
When the temple catches fire the three monks work together to extinguish it.They build up a process using a pulley for faster transportation of water to the top the hill.Hence when the number of people in a team increases the productivity increases and the effort involved by every individual decreases.

2.) Personal egos and selfish behavior is always detrimental for work and never produces the end results.
The three monks had the task of bringing water up the hill using buckets but each monk thought that the other two monks should do it as a result of which no work was done and they did not have any water.

3.) A person should not shirk his responsibilities by thinking that someone else will do his work for him.

4.) While working in a team we should realize the potential of other team members by understanding their strengths and weaknesses and try to realize our own potential.

Goal Setting and its effects on performance

Goals are the future outcome of that individuals and organizations strive to achieve whereas goal setting is the process of stating goals towards which individuals,teams,departments and organizations will strive to achieve.
Setting the right goal is very important.

The importance of goals are:-

1.)Goals guide and direct behaviour.

2.)Goals provide standards and challenges against which individual and organizational performance can be judged.

3.)Goals define the basic organizational design.

The Pygmalion effect can also be used to emphasize on the the fact that goal setting is important.
The Pygmalion effect is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.and conversely low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.

So our goals should be smart

Creating S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Specific: A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal.

Measurable - Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set.

When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal.

Attainable – When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.

Realistic- To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. A goal should be realistic

Timely – A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency.

Performance is a function of goal setting and if the goal setting is done smartly the outcomes are bound to good.

Hence goal setting should be done by putting a lot of thought.

Happy Reading :)

Management lessons learnt through cubes...

After the first lecture from Prof. Mandi,which was very innovative and fun my expectations from the second lecture were huge and  I was not disappointed.The class started with Prof Mandi distributing a few cubes to the students and I was very excited about what the task was going to be this time.Then sir explained to us that we have to build a tower using these cubes putting one cube over the other vertically with no support provided to them.He then asked us to predict how many cubes can be put over each other before the tower eventually falls down.

Then started a series of predictions by students ranging from 12-28 and my personal prediction was 18.Then came a surprise from Prof Mandi.He told us that one student will make the cube tower with his eyes open and one will make it with his eyes closed.The closed eyed person was only supposed to use one of his two hands but he will be guided by a second person who can't help him physically but can only guide him and motivate him.The blindfolded person will be the worker,the person guiding him will be the manager and besides these two there will be one more person who will the CEO but he would not do anything other than watching the manager and worker do the required work.

Tower Building by the open eyed person

Prof Mandi initially asked the student doing the task how much cubes can he use to build the tower and the student then gave Prof. Mandi a number but then Prof Mandi told him to bet Rs 350 on it.If the student makes a tower using the exact number of cubes as he had mentioned earlier then he would get his money back otherwise he would not.After hearing this the prediction of the student doing the task came down and he then predicted that he will make a tower of 14 cubes which was much lesser the number he had mentioned earlier.

This teaches us when the risk goes up we tend to lose confidence in ourselves and lose faith in our capabilities.But when the student started doing the task then he made a tower of 22 cubes exceeding his own expectations.This teaches us that we should never lower our expectations when the risk goes up.We should have confidence in our capabilities.

Tower Building by the closed eyed person

When the closed eyed person started building the tower almost all of us had very less expectations from him.We were sure that there is no way he can build a tower higher than the one made by open eyed person.Then the tower building began.The blindfolded guy did what the guy guiding him was telling him to do.At very single step the manager motivated him,told him what to do,where to move his hands and to ensure that the tower didn't fall when it was about to fall.When the tower buiding was finished we were amazed to see that the closed eyed person made a tower using 27 cubes which was 5 more than the cubes used  by the open eyed person.The lesson learnt here was that when ever a person is being guided and motivated by his manager the results obtained are always better.

Lessons learnt from the tower building game

Craft vs Modern Management

The two scenarios of tower building can be related to craft management(old management) and modern management.When the open eyed person building the tower it was craft management.In this type of management a single person has to do the entire work for e.g a cobbler,although in this case the work satisfaction and the skills will be more but the productivity will suffer.In the case of  closed eyed person i.e modern management different people are doing different work.The worker is making the building,the manager is guiding and motivating him and the CEO is just a mere observer.In this the work satisafaction will be less,the skills will be less but the productivity will be high.The following table summarizes the comparison between the two.

Parameters	Craft Management	Modern Management
Work	Ambiguous	Crystal Clear
Skill	Increase	Decrease
Productivity	Low	High
Satisfaction	More	Less
Innovation	Less	More

Role of Middle Management

The role of middle management is to support,guide and motivate the workers.They don't have to do any other work.However if they are not able to do the above mentioned things then they are dispensable in any organization.

Goal Setting

When the blindfolded person was building the tower almost everyone has very low expectations from him.The lesson learnt here is that we should lower our expectations in time of adversity and have in potential of the person doing the task.

happy reading :)

It was my second day at NITIE and a lecture on subject Principles of Organization and Management was about to start.I had attended a lot of lectures in my life before and I was expecting this lecture to be similar where a teacher would come in the class and immediately start telling the students about the course details and the books to refer and then start teaching the course related topics.But i was surprised when our teacher Dr T Prasad aka Prof. Mandi walked into the classroom and told all students to sit down on the floor with him.I was amazed and was not sure what was going to happen next but Prof Mandi in his trademark way made all the students feel comfortable just within minutes of entering into the class.

Prof Mandi then gave a lecture that i will not forget for the rest of my life.He told us that he will teach us business.He told us about Mandi,an exclusive NITIE event where students apply management concepts learned in the college to make money and donate to a NGO.

I was in awe already but then he used certain toys to teach us the subject.He used a Newton's cradle to teach us consumer behaviour.When a spherical ball at one extreme end is made to hit the other balls then all the balls are triggered into motion and ball at the other extreme end is moved and it hits back the balls which triggered it into motion and sets them into motion and the ball that initially started the motion is swung back to postion from which it initially started and the cycle continues.In the same way when value is created and delivered to customers it brings back customers.Every oraganization to be successful has to create products and services keeping customers in mind.This helps them in retaining existing customers and getting new ones.

He also brought balls and a butterfly to told us to have fun while studying.

The first lecture by Prof Mandi was very innovative and fun in which i learned a lot.I hope to attend all his future lectures.

Happy reading :)