A shift from a hand-made to men-made...

Imagine the era of 90’s, plethora of handmade articles could be identified all around us. Nevertheless, it was the expertise of only one person which was involved in the process of stitching the raw material to the final delivery at your doorstep! The decade had seen a prolonged increase in the number and variety of those articles but the process has shifted a leap bound. From the single worker involved earlier, it is now a group of individuals that work together to achieve that sole objective. And here comes the concept of building organizations and it is a part of modern management.

The drift from the craftsmanship to modern management can be explained by the exercise of Tower Management. Special credits to Prof. Mandi who can go into the deep insights of these activities and get a management lesson for us else had it been a few months back, I could only see a tower problem as a complicated coding case.  Tower building exercise aims to create a highest stable tower from the wooden cubes piled on top of each other. What we had in our exercise was to bid and grab a chance for building the tower. A bid of Rs.500 made by a student gave him a chance to show his skill set and he made a tower of 16 cubes. Another instance of the same exercise called a group of 8 people to build the same tower. The only constraint was that the person building the tower was blindfolded and every other person can give directions to him. And the team of 8 could only make a tower as high as in the number they were.

Tower Building Activity by a group of people

Now here lies the essence in the goal setting process and the process adhered to achieve it. The goals should be effective and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely).

Characteristics of Craftsmanship: "Doing what you Love and Doing It Right"

Ø  Only a single tower is achievable.

Ø  No parallel works.

Ø  High Dexterity is observed.  

Ø  Boss is the worker himself.

Ø  Higher skilled worker.

Characteristics of Modern Management:

Ø  Greater than 1 tower is achievable.

Ø  Parallel activities are performed.

Ø  Specialization at work.

Ø  Greater Inter-Dependency.

Ø  Boss is a non-worker.

Ø  Deskilling is observed.

Three E’s of Management:

Effectiveness can be explained in terms of what is achieved. It is about whether targets are met or not. Performing effectively means that the right work is being completed. Efficiency can be measured in terms of the inputs required to generate the outputs. It is about the way in which work is completed. Efficiency is “doing things right” and effectiveness is “doing the right thing”.

“More out of less for more is Excellence” – Dr. Mandi

The relationship between these three E’s can be establishes as:

Excellence = Effectiveness * Efficiency

Finally, the aim of any and every organization drills down to the level of achieving excellence till the lowest level of operations. I would end my learning with the following quote:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”  - Aristotle