After Dr. Mandi's first lecture, we were eagerly awaiting his lecture to witness his unusual and different way of teaching yet again. And that exactly was how his second lecture turned out to be.
He gave us a situation where one was supposed to build a tower out of small blocks. There would be two different persons assigned to do the task. One would be a normal open-eyed person and the other would be blindfolded. He placed further restrictions on the blindfolded person that he/she could use just one of his hands. But there would be 2 other people helping him/her out to build the tower of blocks. Next, all the students were asked to estimate the height of the tower in the two cases in terms of the number of blocks. The normal guy got votes around 25-30 blocks whereas the blindfolded guy got just 10-15. After that, we were asked to volunteer to do the task by paying money to do it ( Actual bidding was done :) Another way of earning money by generating interest among the participant ;) )
The first guy succeeded in attaining a height of 22 blocks after which the tower fell down. Next was the turn of the blindfolded guy. There were two people to guide him. The blindfolded guy just followed the orders of the other two guys. Surprisingly, he was able to make a tower of 25 blocks which surpassed the height of the open-eyed guy.
We would think that the open-eyed guy is preferable to the blindfolded guy. But modern management goes with an entirely opposite approach. The blindfolded person here represents the workforce which just follows the orders from the higher management without applying their own ideas. The open-eyed person would be creative but could be adulterated and would not be protected from fear and judgement. He decides what he wants for himself. However, modern management wants to remove the decision making part from the doing part. Here's a comparison between the two:
In today's times, work is divided as follows:
He gave us a situation where one was supposed to build a tower out of small blocks. There would be two different persons assigned to do the task. One would be a normal open-eyed person and the other would be blindfolded. He placed further restrictions on the blindfolded person that he/she could use just one of his hands. But there would be 2 other people helping him/her out to build the tower of blocks. Next, all the students were asked to estimate the height of the tower in the two cases in terms of the number of blocks. The normal guy got votes around 25-30 blocks whereas the blindfolded guy got just 10-15. After that, we were asked to volunteer to do the task by paying money to do it ( Actual bidding was done :) Another way of earning money by generating interest among the participant ;) )
The first guy succeeded in attaining a height of 22 blocks after which the tower fell down. Next was the turn of the blindfolded guy. There were two people to guide him. The blindfolded guy just followed the orders of the other two guys. Surprisingly, he was able to make a tower of 25 blocks which surpassed the height of the open-eyed guy.
We would think that the open-eyed guy is preferable to the blindfolded guy. But modern management goes with an entirely opposite approach. The blindfolded person here represents the workforce which just follows the orders from the higher management without applying their own ideas. The open-eyed person would be creative but could be adulterated and would not be protected from fear and judgement. He decides what he wants for himself. However, modern management wants to remove the decision making part from the doing part. Here's a comparison between the two:
1 PERSON
|
MORE THAN 1 PERSON
|
|
WORK
|
Ambiguous
|
Crystal Clear
|
SKILL
|
Skilled
|
De-skilled
|
SATISFACTION
|
High
|
Very low
|
WORK
|
Concentrated
and done not very detailed
|
Enlarged and
detailed
|
TIME
|
More time needed
|
Less time needed as work gets divided
|
In today's times, work is divided as follows:
Work -> Jobs -> Activities -> Tasks -> Elements
Thus in the present scenario, the job of the management is to take high level decisions and delegate the tasks to his team. The management should also motivate his team to extract the best performance from it. Apart from these, the management should be innovative and should come up with new ideas to improve the outcome of the task at hand. For instance the tower building exercise could be improved with techniques like zig-zag tower, a boundary for the tower, etc.
There were many lessons taken from the tower building exercise. And there are many more to come in the future.
Happy Reading and Blogging !!!
No comments:
Post a Comment