DAY 8: Valley Crossing Excercise(SKYWALK)

The ‘Skywalk’ exercise demonstrated in class today somehow brings forth a wide variety of management lessons to learn. Apparently, a very simple exercise with three people trying to cross a valley( which is slightly wider for a man to cross) using a long stick quite easily demonstrates the lessons of “Shifting of Leadership”, “achieving unreal goals”, “necessity of trust in an organisation”, “power of positivity” and most importantly “ how to shift from being an underachiever to the best performer. Here is a brief description about this exercise:

The activity involved three persons crossing a valley with the support of the rod. The distance between two ends of the cliff was more than 1 step but less than 2 steps. The activity was to be performed in such a way, that at any instance of time during the crossing of valley, not more than 1 member was at risk, i.e. if one person was at risk during the act of valley crossing, the other two members would take up that person’s weight. In this way the inter dependency between the members was tightly coupled which is one of the most facets of team work.

It is also to be noted that when one of the persons is at risk, that person has to trust the other two persons to ensure that the objective is achieved. In this way, during the entire exercise, all the persons are at equal risk and need confidence and trust between the members to achieve the objective.

Shifting of Leadership:

Here each one is taking the responsibility valley crossing for a certain time, then the responsibility transfers to someone else. In this way they were able to achieve this so called unachievable task. Had it been one leader commanding other two for the same it might never be feasible as risking one’s life blindly following someone’s orders demands a huge leap of trust.

Also, if all were leaders at the same time all would try to dominate and no one would be ready to follow, thus the situation could end up in stalemate.

Achieving Unreal Goals:

The task given seems impossible to performing individually, also working in a team might not work if one was leader or all were leaders at the same time, but innovating this new methodology of leadership made this task possible and hence they achieved this unreal goals.

Necessity of Trust in an Organisation:

Although everyone gets an opportunity to lead but initiating the process also demands trust by the first crosser, this immense trust comes only when one has full passion to complete the task and considers his team to be competent and faithful enough. Thus, developing trust in an organisation could lead to achieving highly unachievable results.

How to shift from being an underachiever to the best performer:

SAFETY	Average	Valley Crosser	EXCELLENT	WORST
Safe	3	6	9	-
Half Safe	3	2	-	-
Unsafe	3	1	-	9

This thing resembles to the manager who could take the organisation across the valley either by four ways.  Most of the managers comes in Average category, most of the workman who always complain and never like to work makes the organisation end up in WORST case. Valley crossing exercise shows great performance by being six times in Safe zone. But the ultimate and TO BE Aspired for is EXCELLENT.

Hence we must try to achieve this excellence, for this first we have to become Average -> Valley Crosser-> Excellent

It would demand a lot of patience and passion but once it is achieved we would be the BEST MANAGERS 

So the final words:

              I WILL ACHIEVE THIS EXCELLENCE 

Day 7: An interaction with our Alums

Dressed up in formals, we all arrived at the classroom to listen to three of our Alumni. Our first interaction was with Mr. Nikhil Kulkarni, the innovator of India’s first online business gaming challenge  Mastishk , which is now also  NITIE’s one of the most acclaimed events (http://mastishk.nitie.net/) . Nikhil who is presently working with KPMG in Banking and Financial Services domain is a very simple personality to look at yet his ideas are so powerful that it made most of us speechless.

He started the discussion asking us how many of us want to become entrepreneurs, many of us raised hands, then he tried drilling into their reasons for this choice and figured that except a few most of us had exactly zero idea what exactly it is to be an entrepreneur, we were seeing being entrepreneur as an exit option from our mundane job lives. Most of us confused between being independent with taking zero liability. He tried to give us a brief understanding of what exactly it is to be an entrepreneur, quoting some examples he inferred that we never noticed any failed startup because their stories goes unsung, and the very few which succeed catch the limelight, and reading their stories we envisage ourselves as future billionaires without peeping into the ground realities.

“A startup demands extreme patience and passion and if you are ready for both it is THE thing for you” said Nikhil, but if you are confused even to the extent of one percent  don’t go.

The feeling of a job creator comes with its own terms and conditions. Comparing doing a job and being an entrepreneur he identified that neither the efforts nor the responsibilities are less anywhere, in job you have an advantage of switching whenever you want, in startup you are your own boss doesn’t mean that you are not answerable to anyone, your stakeholders , your customers are all your liability.

While he was just to start telling his experiences about Mastishk, Hemant entered the class, classmate of Nikhil and co-founder of Mastishk. A vibrant personality; who lightened the discussion with his smiling face, both shared their experiences about the genesis of Mastishk, the problems faced by them running it and what they learnt from it. The discussion was very involving. After the arrival of our third Alum the discussion turned more engrossing and we enjoyed a mind boggling and eye opening session.

At the end of the session, they answered many of our doubts and guided us with some TO-Dos. They concluded the session with a promise to be back soon to help and guide us with our issues what so ever they may be.

DAY6: Three Monks

The story three monks is about the three monks who finds distribution of work difficult and thus end up losing their valuable asset and in the end realizes the need to work as a team. The story goes like this:

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candleholder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again.

Now, let us  define a term called productivity: it is the amount of  output generated per unit of effort taken.

Also, the amount of effort taken to perform a task depends on the method used(or the approach).

Now, let’s observe the work patterns of the monks in different situations

1Monk:

There are two ways to get the bucket filled: going with one bucket, or going with two buckets

Person	1	1
Bucket	1	2

The method to bring two buckets by 1 monk is by tying them on both ends of the rod, which makes the net effort 

minimum (zero). Thus this method is more suitable in case of 1 monk as it provides more water in lesser efforts.

2 Monks:

Now, these two monks can work in the following different ways:

Person	1,1	2	1,1
Bucket	1,1	1	2,2

Here, one person bringing one bucket takes more effort than one person bringing two buckets(as clarified in previous case). But two persons bringing one bucket makes the job more easier as the efforts are distributed( the only concern is that for brining 4 buckets they have to go four times whereas in case of one person bringing two buckets they have to go only time.

3 Monks:

Person	1,1,1	2,1	2,1	1,1,1
Bucket	1,1,1	1,1	1,2	2,2,2

Here, the last option seems very productive as three persons are bringing six buckets of water in just one round, but the method that monks used SHOT UP the productivity much higher, they innovated a new approach, they used a pulley system , one monk stood near the water source filling up the buckets and hooking them to a string, another monk lift the bucket via pulley and third monk took  the bucket from him and carried it home.

This innovative approach made them achieve an unprecedented productivity. The effort put in this approach is handful and the output received is unimaginable.

This sort of management is called as "Participative Management".

Analyzing this story further, the issues faced here were:

1.       Reluctance to work in a team

2.       Hand over the work to other, expecting others to complete the whole job

3.       Difficulty in negotiation

4.       Subjective measurements

5.       No disaster management measures

When the monk was alone, he was happy doing all the work himself, but when second monk came they find it difficult to negotiate the distribution of work. Even when they agreed to go together and fetch one bucket they find it difficult to lift the bucket, as their measurements were subjective, then they used a scale(a benchmark) to tie the bucket on the center. This bench marking made this job easier.

When the third monk arrived negotiation became more difficult and they end up doing no work, even when they felt the need for it (felt thirsty) they did not agree on working.

The roll of mouse: I see mouse as certain unexpected fallout coming on the way, certain things that often frustrates us unnecessarily diluting our focus on the job.

The fire burning the house could be seen as the sudden change in circumstances (in the market) which could devastate our survival (business survival) and to combat them we need disaster management steps  and more importantly an archive of resources earned during the normal days. The monks had no water that time, that is no archive of resources was with them, they had to go all way down to fetch the water.

Even at the time of fire, they were facing negotiation issues, which they somehow managed to overcome essentially because of urgency of the situation.

Working in a team could actually be a savior, this thing was realized to the monks after they somehow managed to overcome the fire, eventually they innovated an entirely different approach and their productivity reached the top.