Goal setting -Tower building (L02)

  

The second lecture also encompassed a discussion on the goal setting procedure that is to be efficiently and effectively followed by each of the employee in any firm. For an effective manager these goal settings are of utmost importance because they are parameters with which he judges team members. These goals can be of many types as described in the figure below.

These are goals which are to be accomplished by any employee in any firm. A tower building activity   was also organised wherein 3 major designations in an organisation and their attributes were highlighted along with the relationship between Supervisory Planning & Employee Morale, which was highlighted in an aesthetically pragmatic manner.

Some of the questions the activity answered for us were:

->How classification of goals is achieved?

->How these goals are attained?

->Why do we have fatigue in employees?

-> How the manager and top management deal with it?

 All these concepts came out brilliantly and thus there was no need to learn it through books when we could actually see it in person. Overall the entire activity can be explained in following stages:

STAGE 1:

During this session, everybody was asked to volunteer for an game called DARE TO BUILD. In the game you have to build a tower of cube but you will be blindfolded and have to use only one hand. But there was a condition involved, which was whosoever wants to be a part of this game has to bet some money. Those guys have to risk that money to accomplish this task.

The situation above is similar to a company where interested people invest money to build a entity which can thus generate some profit in return .The risk involved is also shared by those people .So as a principle for any business , You need a set of like-minded people who can work together and face problems but are determined to succeed.

Any big business want founders like that , so we had three guys who volunteered by investing a mere some of Rs. 975 to start with .

STAGE 2:

Now we got three guys who invested but none of them knew the task to perform. So here comes the concept of GOAL SETTING, which in turn means that we need to set our goals and objectives very clearly. I must tell you, Goal setting for any business activity is the most important decision taken by the founders .This boils down to a question that what kind of goals we should set. I understood and wish you people to follow the concept of SMART Objective setting approach.

STAGE 3:

Group was made and objectives are set, now it was time to implement ideas into reality .These guys have to decide the structure of their organization first before moving forward:

1.     Workforce Selection:

Blindfolded guy to perform the activity who can be considered as the work force required to     perform the operation of the project.

2.    Middle Management Selection:

A guy who can help blindfolded guy to place the cubes. This represents middle management who is responsible to direct , achieve the desired objective , optimum use of resources and maintain the timeline for the project .After doing all these work, he has to report to  top management  for discussing the progress of the project.

3.    Top Management Selection:

A guy who can strategies about how to achieve goals , direct entire company and stream line the thought process of employees in favor of companies objectives .A guy was selected to do this task .

STAGE 4:

Business or activity is in progress to perform certain task which can benefit the company or that group. A lot of difficulties have been faced by this group as it happens in case of a company. In this workers were doing hard work to make the product. Middle management was managing the whole process of tower building. Top management was involved in crucial times of difficulties, where it pitched in to advice and give motivation. This benefits both middle management guy and worker to perform as per plans.

STAGE 5:

At the end of the activity, the given task was achieved and everybody in the group was feeling a sense of achievement. This association of human beings can be seen in any group activity and this is very important. It shows the human side of a profit building entity and promotes the culture of any organization. This belongingness helps an organization to grow in healthy and focused manner. Everybody should have a defined share of appreciation as it was in the activity. So it very essential to start but more important is to finish with sense of achievement and pride.

MANAGEMENT LESSONS FROM THE ACTIVITY:

·      As top management is responsible for giving direction to whole company. So first they should be themselves clear about the goal of the company and should define it on paper. We have seen that industries help build nations and they are the building blocks. So Company leader should be ethical and socially responsible to benefit both company and society

·      As middle management, you have to be approachable and should understand the difficulties faced by workforce. You have to focus on achieving the target but also decide according to working conditions, remuneration and benefits provided to the employee. For example , when I worked in TCS, I observed that every individual wants space to work and freedom to perform in his own way .It is very essential to recognize that balance of organization policy and personal freedom given to employee

·     Workforce should also have sense of responsibility towards the organization. This is shown by hard work, on time work and dedication toward work.

·      As I have seen the activity, a lot of students other than these guys were involved in suggesting the ways to accomplish task. These days in businesses, these people are called Consultants. Consultants are people who do analysis of your company and try to give you genuine feedback and suggestions to improve running of your company.

  

Theory X and Y (L02)

The second lecture started with an emphasis on theories of motivation. The discussion gradually moved towards two sets of assumptions about human nature and human behaviour that are relevant to the practice of management represented by Theory X and Theory Y.

Theory X represents a negative view of human nature that assumes individuals generally dislike work, are irresponsible, and require close supervision to do their jobs. Theory Y denotes a positive view of human nature and assumes individuals are generally industrious, creative, and able to assume responsibility and exercise self-control in their jobs. One would expect, then, that managers holding assumptions about human nature that are consistent with Theory X might exhibit a managerial style that is quite different than managers who hold assumptions consistent with Theory Y. These two opposing perceptions theorized how people view human behavior at work and organizational life:

Theory X

·        With Theory X assumptions, management's role is to coerce and control employees.

·        People have an inherent dislike for work and will avoid it whenever possible.

·        People must be coerced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment in order to get them to achieve the organizational objectives.

·        People prefer to be directed, do not want responsibility, and have little or no ambition.

·        People seek security above all else.

Theory Y

·        With Theory Y assumptions, management's role is to develop the potential in employees and help them to release that potential towards common goals.

·        Work is as natural as play and rest.

·        People will exercise self-direction if they are committed to the objectives (they are NOT lazy).

·        Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement.

·        People learn to accept and seek responsibility.

·        Creativity, ingenuity, and imagination are widely distributed among the population. People are capable of using these abilities to solve an organizational problem.

·        People have potential.

Intellectual creativity cannot be 'programmed' and directed the way we program and direct an assembly line or an accounting department. This kind of intellectual contribution to the enterprise cannot be obtained by giving orders, by traditional supervisory practices, or by close systems of control. Even conventional notions of productivity are meaningless with reference to the creative intellectual effort. Management has not yet considered in any depth what is involved in managing an organization heavily populated with people whose prime contribution consists of creative intellectual effort. 

We can view these videos to get a better grasp of the concept.

THEORY X THEORY Y-I

THEORY X THEORY Y-II

THEORY X AND THEORY Y IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

McGregor's work on Theory X and Theory Y has had a significant impact on management thought and practice in the years since he first articulated the concepts. In terms of the study of management, McGregor's concepts are included in the overwhelming majority of basic management textbooks, and they are still routinely presented to students of management. Most textbooks discuss Theory X and Theory Y within the context of motivation theory; others place Theory X and Theory Y within the history of the organizational humanism movement.

Theory X and Theory Y are often studied as a prelude to developing greater understanding of more recent management concepts, such as job enrichment, the job-characteristics model, and self-managed work teams. Although the terminology may have changed since the 1950s, McGregor's ideas have had tremendous influence on the study of management.

In terms of the practice of management, the workplace of the early twenty-first century, with its emphasis on self-managed work teams and other forms of worker involvement programs, is generally consistent with the precepts of Theory Y. There is every indication that such programs will continue to increase, at least to the extent that evidence of their success begins to accumulate.

The Triumph of Y

We are all Theory Y people now —at least when it comes to delivering or receiving motivational talks —and yet, truth be told, we all have our doubts that the world has caught up with our wisdom about it. It will have already occurred to many people, for example, that quite a few of  those companies are great places to work because they are successful, rather than the other way around. (I mean, any old company can offer free haircuts and on-site medical care if  it has a market capitalization of  US$200 billion and a fast-growing market.) There is also plenty of  anecdotal evidence to suggest that firms change their assumptions about human nature after their fortunes change, rather than before. The dot-coms, for example, were all exuberantly convinced about the merits of  self-realization in the workplace as long as the market-valuation bubbly was pouring. In the gloomy aftermath, many of  the surviving firms transformed themselves with impressive speed into gulag archipelagos, imposing harsh, Xstyle discipline on employees who were doing all those jobs that the dot-coms did not outsource.

Khan Academy - an educational miracle made in on-line heaven.

Watch. Practice. Learn almost anything—for free.

What started out as Salman making a few algebra videos for his cousins has grown to over 2,100 videos and 100 self-paced exercises and assessments covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history. 

Management Lessons : Khan Academy

As a retired teacher, fifty-two million lessons is a mind-boggling number, but even more important is value to the process of education with every child learning at their own pace. 

The concept itself postulates applause and praise.The idea aka 'The Dhandha' is not only an awesome idea to make money but it also is a very appreciable venture as far as the society and the younger generation is concerned.I believe every venture has selfish prospects but the one who delivers to the society even after satiating all the business expectations is the one which in true sense can be called SUCCESSFUL.

After what you have done throughout the day, after all the ruckus and chaos you have gone through, and it satiates you and you get a good sleep at night, only then can you call a business successful. Khan academy sure has done a commendable task redefining management perspectives of the market. Many ventures of this sorts have been started before but the kind of success enjoyed by Khan is more than expected.It serves the entire purpose of giving in your best efforts.

Khan Academy is a free educational website developed by Salman Khan. Khan stumbled into online education a few years ago when he began recording videos to tutor his geographically distant cousins in mathematics, according to Wired Magazine. The article states that even though Khan made no effort to publicize the videos, tens of thousand of people a month began to watch them — including Bill Gates, who eventually invested $1.5 million in Khan Academy. Today, the website has delivered more than 150,000,000 lessons to students around the world. 

Kids and teens can learn a wide variety of topics in math and science (as well as art history, economics, and more) from simple arithmetic to calculus and organic chemistry. Kids can watch thousands of video presentations created by experts, do math exercises, and keep track of their progress with tools that show what they've mastered and what they might want to try next. With high-quality lectures and an interactive format, Khan Academy empowers kids to set goals and learn at a comfortable pace.

Vision

To Revolutionize the world of eduction by making available the knowledge online.

A vision is an attribute which should be almost impossible to realize.
Vision is one of the most important part of the organization and it defines what an organization is and what does it want to achieve. Khan academy has a noble vision of providing education to every person in the world. It is almost impossible to achieve it but the kind of passion it induces in the organisation cannot be compared with any other passion in the world.

Mission

Providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.
Khan Academy lays down a broad roadmap by asserting to use technology to accelerate the learning of each individual of all ages. With a clear mission , each person working in this organization , knows on what core aspects , his entire effort needs to be focused on.

What is Khan Academy?

Khan Academy is an online non-profit offering free educational resources to students and teachers around the world. The website makes available more than 3,000 educational videos on math, science, finance/economics, humanities and test preparation, all recorded by the Academy’s founder, Salman Khan. In order to process and confirm understanding of the videos, students can work their way through a seemingly endless number of practice problems organized by subject, skill set and difficulty level. The site also incorporates elements of a video game, a social network and a grading system; it offers encouragement to students, a forum for good-natured academic bragging and a powerful set of evaluative tools for teachers.

Khan Academy for Students
Anyone can use Khan Academy. Students can log in through a Google or Facebook account without even registering, then begin watching videos or doing problem sets immediately. The website is easy to navigate using drop-down menus and a “knowledge map,” which looks like a Google map of a constellation, except that each star is labeled with a lesson name. The site rewards users with merit badges for meeting challenges, such as mastering their first skills and completing a series of problems quickly, which make the work feel a bit like a game. Users also have the option of creating a profile and using Khan Academy as a kind of academic social network, adding extra motivation for the Farmville generation.

Khan Academy for Teachers
What really sets Khan Academy apart from other online educational resources is the precision and complexity of the evaluative data it provides to teachers and tutors. By using Khan Academy in the classroom, teachers can gather data on exactly which concepts students are struggling with and which they have mastered. Moment by moment a teacher can know that Billy has difficulty dividing fractions, while Maria has already worked her way through basic algebra. This enables teachers to provide accurately targeted, individual help in a way not possible with traditional evaluative measures.

Khan Academy in Context
Khan Academy is a powerful, accessible and potentially groundbreaking resource for students and educators all over the world. Some teacher have even used it to “flip” their classrooms, assigning lecture videos as homework and using class time to focus on working through challenging problem sets with groups or even individual students. The site has been criticized for reducing education to rote exercises (lectures and drills), but Khan told Wired that he sees it as a more efficient way to move through these exercises, freeing up class time for more dynamic activities. While the website’s role in the larger educational world is still uncertain, the fact that more than 15 Khan Academy problems are solved each second gives some indication of its impact.

Whatever the role of Khan Academy in the larger educational landscape, its value as a resource to both students and teachers is clear. And with a complete mathematics curriculum from basic addition to calculus available for free online, it should have textbook companies re-evaluating their business plans. For students looking for a supplement or alternative to the classroom instruction they receive, and for teachers looking for interactive learning tools and more advanced evaluative measures, the academy has a lot to offer. As the world of education evolves, online and in the classroom, the place of Khan Academy will become more clear.

Revenue Generation
The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization, now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google. Several people have made US$10,000 contributions total revenue is about $150,000 in donations. Additionally, it also earned $2,000 a month from ads on the Web site in 2010, until Khan Academy ceased to accept advertising. In 2010, Google announced it would give the Khan Academy $2 million for creating more courses and for translating the core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages, as part of their Project 10 .

By choosing such a revenue model , the organization has moved further towards achieving its mission and vision, ie make education available to all. Therefore, each organization needs to  align its revenue model with the vision it has set for itself.

‘We at The Khan Academy do not believe in this multiple — we believe in optimizing student-to-valuable-time-with-teacher ratio, or even more importantly, student-to-valuable-time-with-other-human-beings ratio. A one-size-fits-all lecture is not the way to go about education says’ Salman Khan, founder of the online educational site .