An art to make others know about you - Digital CV

By this time , you might be acquainted about who Prof. Mandi is. To mark the end of our course in a diligent way, he asked all of us to record a video telling the world about yourself.

The task was to make our Digital CV so that it can be the medium for the organisations to judge the skill set of the students sitting at their desks. So here is my part:

In the end, I would thank Prof. Mandi for all the learning imparted to us in a unique way. The course holds a special mention in the entire MBA journey. 

The Social Business Concept

"By defining entrepreneurship in a broader way we can change

the character of capitalism radically" - Prof. Yunus

Within our economic system, there are currently two prevailing approaches to organizations. The first is that of the private sector where companies sell products or services to make money. However, there are important issues in our society which are not addressed by the private sector because they do not offer profit-making opportunities. This usually leads to government interventions to create legal and institutional frameworks to advance the common good and to protect the interests of weaker members of society. Where both governments and the markets reach their limits, charities may fill the gap.

The problem is, of course, that the system does not work well enough. We live in a world of terrible injustice and widespread poverty. Governments and charities have the will to improve it, but they lack the efficiency and innovativeness of the private sector. So why not combine the two sides? Let's bring the methods of business to the task of solving social problems such as poverty and create - social businesses!

It will be an entirely new kind of business. Until now running a business has always been self-focused, founded for the purpose of making money. Unlike traditional business, social business operates for the benefit of addressing social needs that enable societies to function more efficiently. Social business provides a necessary framework for tackling social issues by combining business know-how with the desire to improve quality of life. Therefore instead of being self-focused social business is all about others.

Prof. Yunus has already shown the effectiveness of this new type of business: his clear focus on eradicating extreme poverty combined with his condition of economic sustainability has created numerous models with incredible growth potential.

The Grameen Project’s vision is to serve society’s most pressing needs. They think that:

 The difference between rich and poor is not wealth, but opportunity.

The poor are the world's greatest entrepreneurs. Each day they must innovate in order to survive. They only remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income.

The Grameen Project believes that the economic system in which we live does not create enough opportunities for the poor. This is because it lacks a vision.

Many of us have grown up in a society that believed in the "invisible hand" and the "trickle-down effect": if we all pursued our own economic interests, society as a whole would benefit, and if there is economic growth, this growth will eventually benefit the poor, too.While this has been true for some, it has failed others. We want to make it work for everyone.

This means creating a type of business that is not just about private interest but about collective benefit: the health, happiness and security of all and especially the less privileged. This type of business is social business.   

           

The Grameen Project's mission therefore is to accelerate social business. They have set for themselves the following ambitious goals:

• Create broad awareness for social business
• Establish Grameen as a worldwide brand for social business
• Create movement for social business worldwide
• Establish social business as mainstream university case
• Enable access to corporate knowledge
• Enable access to funding for social business
• Ensure quality control for social business

 Finally I leave you with one of the best Ted-talks YouTube video:

Grameen - the mother of Social Business!!

"We will create a poverty museum by 2030. We will start with Bangladesh"

 - Prof. Yunus

It all started with USD 27. This was the original amount of money Muhammad Yunus lent to 42 poor villagers in Jobra, Bangladesh so they could repay their debt to local money lenders and start little businesses. The small experiment had a large effect. The money was paid back. New loans soon followed. Life in Jobra changed.

Inspired by the experience of how much can be achieved with such a small amount of money, Prof. Yunus founded the Grameen Bank for the purpose of lending money (micro-credits) to people who otherwise do not have access to capital. Grameen is the Bengali word for "village" and therefore describes the very character of the social business philosophy - starting small. The Grameen Bank grew and became a great success and enabled an enormous number of people to get out of poverty.

The Grameen Bank also happened to be a social business.The microfinance business model soon spread from Bangladesh around the world. Through the Grameen Trust, Grameen has supported other organizations who have wanted to replicate their model.

At the same time, in Bangladesh, Grameen has constantly been devising new entrepreneurial solutions to the problems of the poor. They not only need access to capital, but many other things to work their way out of poverty: Health and education, clean water, good food and access to electricity - to name just a few. Various kinds of social businesses are dedicated to address these issues. Any profits generated by these companies remain with them for expansion and improvement.

Through this innovative model, Grameen has managed to improve the living conditions of millions of people.

The 7 principles of Social Business

1.      Business objective will be to overcome poverty, or one or more problems (such as education, health, technology access, and environment) which threaten people and society; not profit maximization.

2.      Financial and economic sustainability.

3.      Investors get back their investment amount only. No dividend is given beyond investment money.

4.      When investment amount is paid back, company profit stays with the company for expansion and improvement.

5.      Environmentally conscious.

6.      Workforce gets market wage with better working conditions.

7.      Do it with joy.

And here comes the best part : the original draft of the above 7 principles in Prof. Yunus own writing.

Original document developed by Muhammad Yunus at the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 2009

Configuring Organisational Structures

Following the importance of organisations in our life from the last post, I continue here on the different types of organisations which exists. However, these are not exhaustive and any company may come up with a new structure. 

TYPES OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

Functional Organization

• Brings together in one department everyone engaged in one activity or several related activities that are called FUNCTIONS.
• This leads to operational efficiencies within that group. However it could also lead to a lack of communication between the functional groups within an organization, making the organization slow and inflexible.
• Mainly used by the smaller firms that offer a limited line of products.
• Makes supervision easier as each manager must be expert in only a narrow range of skills. It also helps to group a particular set of people with the specialized kind of skill set.
• 
  
  

 Disadvantages:

• As each department functional managers need to report to central headquarters (President), it can be difficult to make quick decisions.
• Harder to judge performance because which department to blame when a new product fails.
• Difficult to coordinate the functions of members of the entire organization as each department may have difficulty working with other departments in a unified way to achieve organizational goals.

Product/Market/Divisional Organization

• Brings together in one work unit all those involved in the production and marketing of a product or a related group of products, all those in a certain geographic area, or all those dealing with a certain type of customer.   

i) DIVISION BY PRODUCT

• Employees have in effect 2 bosses i.e. 2 chains of command. One chain of command is functional or divisional and the second is a horizontal overlay that combines people from various divisions or functional departments into a project or business team led by a project or group manager who is an expert in the team's assigned area of specialization. For example, many large companies have a corporate human resources division, with individual HR representatives stationed at local facilities. At the local level, the HR representative may report to the operations manager charged with responsibility for that facility.
• Bring together the diverse specialized skills required to solve a complex problem.
• Problems of coordination are minimized here because the most important personnel for a project work together as a group. They come to understand the demands faced by those who have different areas of responsibility.
• Gives the organization a great deal of cost-saving flexibility because each project is assigned only to the required people and unnecessary duplication is avoided.
• To be effective, team members must have good interpersonal skills and flexibility and cooperation.
• 
  
  

 Disadvantages:

·         Everyone fails to adapt

·         Without proper outlining of hierarchy it will not function

ii)                  DIVISION BY GEOGRAPHY: Grouping jobs on the basis of territory or geography

iii)                DIVISION BY PROCESS: Grouping jobs on the basis of product or customer flow

iv)                DIVISION BY CUSTOMER: Grouping jobs by type of customer and needs

This is all about the organisational structure followed generally. There exists another level where a company may enter into a hybrid model of these structures which can be a combination of any two or more. 

Creativity fostered by organizational structure

“The only difference between a mob and a trained army is organization.”

Ken Robinson has written much on creativity in the organization. I was reading something by him the other day where he was talking about how to foster creativity in the enterprise. It struck me as a very lean way of thinking:

“The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued. So it’s much more about creating climates. I think it’s a big shift for a lot of people.”

This is so the key. Taylorism is such a blow to any creativity in an organization. Rather than pulling value and innovation from the bottom up, it is the norm in organizations today where we see strategists at the top, worrying about the future, with little idea what is really going on outside the glass-walled conference room. 

Today, I will be talking about the aim of learning this POM course. Finally, we all will either land up in an organization or eventually start of our own. Either way, there lies an underlying concept which is of prime importance i.e. the structure of your firm. It paves the way ahead of how the short term goals translate into future prospects.

Organization Structure:

An organizational structure consists of activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision, which are directed towards the achievement of organizational aims. It can also be considered as the viewing glass or perspective through which individuals see their organization and its environment.

Learning Organizational Structure:

The definition mentioned above may sound intimidating to some. Also, people have a notion that such structures are only found in organizations.

Basic elements of Organization Structure:

a) Span of Control: Number of people directly reporting to the next level in the hierarchy. Width of span is affected by:

1.               Skills and abilities of the manager

2.               Employee characteristics

3.               Characteristics of the work being done

4.               Similarity of tasks

5.               Complexity of tasks

6.               Physical proximity of subordinates

7.               Standardization of tasks

b) Centralization: Degree to which formal decision authority is held in a small group of people, typically those at the top of the organizational hierarchy.

c) Decentralization: Organizations in which decision-making is pushed down to the managers who are closest to the action.

d) Formalization: Degree to which organizations standardize behavior through rules, procedures, formal training, and related mechanisms.

e) Departmentalization: Organizational charts that specifies how employees and their activities are grouped together.

f) Work specialization: The degree to which tasks in the organization are divided into separate jobs with each step completed by a different person. However, over specialization can result in human dis-economies from boredom, fatigue, stress, poor quality, increased absenteeism, and higher turnover.

g) Chain of Command: The continuous line of authority that extends from upper levels of an organization to the lowest levels of the organization and clarifies who reports to whom.

·         Authority- The rights inherent in a managerial position to tell people what to do and to expect them to do it.

·         Responsibility- The obligation or expectation to perform.

·         Unity of command- The concept that a person should have one boss and should report only to that person.

Importance of Organizational Structure:

Organizational structure affects organizational action in two big ways.

a) Provides the foundation on which standard operating procedures and routines rest.

b) Determines which individuals get to participate in which decision-making processes, and thus to what extent their views shape the organization’s actions.

Learning exponentially by cubes...

“Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution.

If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.”

I can very well say it now – “Every new session of Prof. Mandi brings a new fun for us”. Wait, Wait...you might be thinking about the fun involved in the last two activities which had a lot of analysis. Rest assured this activity will put your nerves to get into it and at the end of it, you yourself can bring about the analysis and that too from a manager perspective. So here comes my experiment of building a colorful structure.

Aim: To reassemble the Navrang cube into its original form.

Requirements: 9 different colored cubes (3 each), a logical mind, positive thought process, capacity to join two individual cubes.

Constraints: Every face of the cube should have each of the 9 colors.

Recommendations: Learn a managerial perspective of approaching the problem for FREE.

Steps:

1.We were all given a cube to play with. Not quite a Rubik's cube - this one was a 'Navrang' cube with 27 removable sub-cubes.

2.      Remember one Management Lesson: Identify, Organize, Solve and Communicate.

3.      The key to solving any problem is building organization. You organize your problems and their sub-problems in order and you are done with the major part of the job.

4.      Segregate the similar elements of the problem - the like-colored cubes - together. Once you have done that, everything else falls into place, and your coming out successful is simply a matter of applying simple logic and common sense in each level, and avoiding any mistakes while you do so.

5.      Group all the 3 colored cubes into one place and start picking up individual cubes and arrange them in the following order. (Example: For colors Orange(O) , Green (G) , White(W))

6.      One row corresponds to one ROD and three rods form one PLATE. Finally combine all the plates to form a cube.

Caution: Degree of Randomness = 0. If in any part of the process you are going randomly, the problem cannot be solved.

Result:  There is a cycle involved in solving the problem –

Small Cubes  ->  Rods  ->  Plates  ->  Navrang Cube

Managerial Concepts involved:

1.      Not all organizational problems are as difficult as they might seem at first look, and even the very difficult ones can be managed, provided you apply principles of organizational management to them.

2.      Another concept in all of this is the importance of effective communication. The better you are at communication, the better you learn how to do things.

3.      You will get to know “What to do” from the person who has win anything. But, “What not to do” can only be told by someone who has failed it once. So, watch some YouTube videos, learn from the experiences of your seniors, or the mistakes of your peers, and nothing can teach you better. Unless the name is Prof. T Prasad.

4.      Now you have learnt the concept, go and record a video in your native language. It will help the local people of your area, from the corner paan shop to the highest graduation colleges. Reach out to as many as you can.

5.      Communicate well; don’t be confused in the videos. Our one glitch shatters all the confidence of the beginner. So talk like a leader conveying exactly what you want to.

The experiment ends here. I leave you with the video to demonstrate the process of Navrang cube.

Learn, Practice, Implement!

Crossing Valleys, Building Trusts - A Transition from 6,2,1 to 9,0,0

Here comes another cartoon as a case study for learning management lessons. It is an anonymous cartoon; its author states that it is not created by him and does not know who made it, but only used as a prop for creative learning. The picture is not simple because it invokes thinking and allows the management students to open up their thought process.

A picture speaks more than a 1000 words they say. Well, a video speaks even more. So, I will first share a video made by our senior batch (IM18) of when they went through this exercise in their POM class. Yes! These activities have been a legacy for Prof. Mandi and NITIE. 

              

Valley Crossing is an exciting simulation used to illustrate the concepts of effective team work and strategy. I will now share that cartoon to begin explaining what the exercise is all about.

The task appears fairly straight forward (it actually isn't). Three co-workers with the help of a plank need to crossover from one side to another of a bottomless pit. The width is greater than one standard walking step and less than two steps (this is a crucial dimension that makes the task feasible).

Following image depicts the strategy employed to accomplish the task:

Description of the key used:

Safe: Both legs on the ground

Half Risky: One leg on the ground and the other over the pit

Risky: Both legs over the pit

It is clear that there are in total 6 safe positions, 2 half risky and 1 risky position. And here the title gets justified. The role of a perfect manager is to make this activity in full safe mode i.e. 9 safe positions and no risky or half risky states.

As shown in the cartoon, it was a deep valley and three people have to cross the valley from left side of the valley to right side.  There is a fixed distance between two edges (left to right) of the valley. The distance between two edges of the valley when it was measured was little more than single step for one person to cross the valley, but less than two steps. Effectively, the distance between two edges of the valley is something like more than one step but less than two steps.  

Key Lessons learnt from the exercise

Trust

A key enabler of success in such exercises is the trust between the participants. In organizations, where teams are much bigger, and tasks much more complex, the TRUST between team members and the between various teams becomes a key deciding factor towards success.

Communication

Whenever there are teams involved in accomplishing a task the importance of communication is implicit. The effectiveness of communication between the various stakeholders defines the levels of success that are achieved. Measuring and continuously enhancing communication channels and processes is a key focus area for businesses today.

Support systems and strategies

An important focus area for organization, that this exercise very effectively illustrated, is the importance of robust support systems and strategies.

Process Enablers

Tasks and roles - Three people take variety of roles as they cross the valley. They change their roles in tandem with given accuracy.

Equal Task - Overall, each of the three persons were undertaking equal and similar work without any variation.  However, important point to be noted is that all though same and equal work is being done by the three people, the sequence of the same work varies among the same three persons. This variation in distribution of work has its own implications for the individuals.

“Excellence is a combination of three words - Effective Grand Surprise. Three people crossing the valley satisfy the three words Effective Grand Surprise.”

Epilogue:

This was one of the most memorable classes of my first module here at NITIE. The prime reason being the potential lessons that were embedded in an exercise are so basic. It is evident that when unmystified, management is learnt not through jargons and power point presentations but through such practical and engaging exercises.