Muhammad Yunus : A artist of organizational management

 

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature,

 but by our institutions, great is our sin.”  

 Charles Darwin

 

The model used by nobel peace prize recipient Muhammad Yunus to remove the misery of the poor and  undo our sin is in complete contrast to the conventional models of microfinance.

He is the visionary who launched a research project which culminated into the Grameen Bank of today. He envisioned a credit delivery system to provide banking services to the rural population.

 

What is Grameen Bank ?

A Grameen Bank is a microfinance institution which provides loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral.

The talk by this eminent nobel laureate is memorable to say the least. In his talk he shares his experiences and sheds light on the purpose of Grameen Bank(video below)

 

A session worth remembering..
After watching the video titled " Creating a World without Poverty", I expected a lecture focused on social entrepreneurship.

To my surprise , we were first given a Navrang puzzle and Professor Mandi invited us to reassemble the cubical block such that no colour was repeated on a particular face of the cube.
Volunteers tried but were unable to assemble it...( unrealistic goal).

Eventually,Professor Mandi  assembled the nine colors to form the block following an organized approach. The time taken was one third of the expected time(attained an unrealistic goal).

Professor described the task in the following manner:
 27 elements are organized to form 9 rods which combine to form 3 plates
The three plates come together to form a single block .

My learning from this exercise was that the number of elements (symbolic of individuals)may vary from 27 to 27 million. But a clearly defined purpose will result in a harmonious organization where there would be no clash of colors.

This organization of 27 elements depicts the real world organizations where a manager works like an artist. The artist does permutations and combinations repeatedly till the purpose of the organization(which in the art of Muhammad Yunus was making poor people stand up for themselves) is achieved.

A similar harmony is observed in the magic created by A.R.Rehman who combines millions of elements into a beautiful composition.

To conclude the session we were asked to observe the contrast in the purpose,structure,target audience of Grameen bank vis a vis conventional banks. These can be summarized as below :

	PARAMETER	GRAMEEN BANK	CONVENTIONAL BANKS
	Purpose	Making poor rich	Making rich richer
	Collateral	Not needed	Needed
	Shareholders	Poor	Rich
	Target Customer	Rural , illiterate, poor woman	Urban, literate ,middle class and rich

The three monks:Technnology >> Participative Management >> Increased productivity

"Coming together is a beginning,
Keeping together is progress,
Working together is success"

 -Henry Ford

This session on Principles of organizational management focused on understanding the importance of applying technical skills and coordinating with team members to achieve increased productivity.

Students were asked to watch the animation “Three Monks” prior to the session and we were given opportunity to explain concepts related to management that could be observed in the animation.

 

 

 

 

Three Monks Animation: an brief narration

The animation begins with a young monk who goes to a monastery located on the top of a hill. The day to day requirement of water has to be satisfied from  only water source  at the bottom of the hill. To collect water one needs to get it from the bottom of the hill in buckets with a stick.

 

1 Monk

Working alone, one monk descends the mountain and fetches two cans of water at a time everyday to fill up the water. Initially enthusiastic he starts falling asleep in prayer due to fatigue.  

2 Monks

Soon a second monks joins him. They both decide to share the work after a initial fight. While bringing water, each wants to transfer the burden to other monk which leads to disagreement

To avoid unequal sharing of load, the first monk takes out a scale and measures the distance from one end of the pole to center while the other monk marks the distance . The two monks then carry the water with equal effort being applied by the two working as a team.

Here the concept of participative management was applied wherein each monk contributed to find out the correct measurement for equal load sharing.

 

 

 

 

3 Monks

When the third monk joined , the two monks think of transferring the effort to the new monk. But the third monk, being thirsty and tired, drinks the entire can of water that he bought. This leads to further disagreement.

The scenario changed when fire broke out in the monastery. The three monks started working together to save the monastery and succeeded. Disaster occurred and they worked together, but management is not only about tackling disasters.

Management should have a foresight and even under normal working conditions a manager should ensure that the entire team works in coordination to complete the tasks assigned

 

 

                               Car assembly Line..Less skill..combined effort..High Productivity

Working together.. applying technical mindset

The three monks now started using a pulley to fetch the water. Each person had to do a particular task. The tasks were equally important to fetch the water. Least amount of skill and effort was required. Productivity increased exponentially and the task assigned to each individual was simple and easy.

 

 

APPROACHà	INDIVIDUAL	PARTICIPATIVE	TEAM WORK
Variable	1 PERSON	2 PERSONS	3 PERSONS
How	I pole	1 pole 1 scale	Pole scale pulley
EFFORT	100 KJ	10 KJ	.0001 KJ
OUTPUT	2 BUCKETTS	1 BUCKETT	1 BUCKETT
EFFICIENCY ( E )	2/100 = .02	1/10 = .1	1/.0001 = 10000
PRODUCTIVITY	LOW	MODERATE	VERY HIGH

To me , the importance of handling technical issues in order to achieve increased productivity was the focal point of the lecture and I hope to look at each business case keeping in mind the concept of participative management explained in this lecture.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goal Setting..lets imagine

 

"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another" 
John Dewey

SMART Goals
The class on goal setting focused on importance of using the SMART framework for setting goals.
SMART refers to specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely goals. Each aspect is described below:

 

Specific

• Well defined tasks in order to reach the goal
• Easily understood by a layman
• E.g. My goal is to publish two research papers related to principles of organizational management in 2 years at NITIE

 

Measurable:

• There should be a way to  measure extent to which tasks involved in achieving the goal are completed
• Evidence must be there to confirm successful achievement of goal (this can also be useful to celebrate the achievement of a goal.
• E.g. : "...increase productivity by 50%,"

 

Achievable:

• The goal should be within the capability of the individual/organization
• One must ensure availability of  resources necessary to achieve the goal
• Annual turnover of my company is 10 crore. My goal is to achieve a turnover of 14 crore the next financial year.

 

Relevant:

• Is the goal sensible enough in the current scenario
• Does the goal fit with the work pattern of the individual/organization working to achieve it

 

 

Timely:

• There should be a deadline to complete different tasks involved in achieving the goal
• One should analyze whether working towards the goal is appropriate at present or not

 

We were asked to imagine words starting with S,M,A,R and T which captured the 

meaning of SMART goals.

The one that I liked the most was Simple (starting with S) because according to me ,

the lecture was focused on simplifying the concept of goal setting and teaching it

to the students in such a manner that they can apply this concept to real life 

situations.

 

Relationship Between Goal Set , Goal Achieved, potential and History:

The relationship between Goals set, goals achieved, potential and history was further explained. Goal set should be greater than historical performance. As long as the individual accepts the goal, has the ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.

In addition, if the goal set is high (yet achievable),  the potential is the worker is utilized more efficiently. Such a relationship between higher goal set ,higher goal achieved , higher historical data(past performance for the next cycle) and again higher goal set results in a vicious circle that can be represented by the famous Fibonacci spiral

Pygmolian Effect and its application to organizational management

In addition to SMART goal setting , proper understanding of the pygmolian Effect and its application in organizational management results in better performance by the individuals/teams

Pygmolian Effect has its roots in the Greek Mythology wherein a sculptor named Pygmolian fell in love with the statue that he created. His hope and desire to bring the statue to life became a reality and reflected the effect of expectation and desire in real life.

The effect is used in the organizations and can be summarized as follows:
Our actions towards others impact others beliefs about us
Others beliefs about us cause others actions towards us
Others actions towards us reinforce our beliefs about us
Our beliefs about us influence our actions towards others.
Our actions towards others impacts others beliefs about us.
....
....
Above cycle becomes a self fulfilling prophecy with positive beliefs in turn resulting in positive results