20th June 2012
Day Three- NITIE
This was my third day in National Institute of Industrial Engineering and 4 hour lecture in the course ‘Principles of Organization and Management’ was staring down on me. Like for everyone, this was a big turn off and we were all pretty much looking down on a long day.
“Another Brick in the Wall”
The series of events that took place in the class was a lot different than we all had imagined. Before us was Dr T.Prasad (a.k.a) Dr. Mandi, briskly strolling all over the class and keeping all of us engaged. Dr.Mandi was preaching his famous saying- “socho becho, becho seekho, seekho socho” and made all of us repeat the “mantra” many times.. Having not completely comprehended the mantra, at the same time sensing that there is a huge message behind it, I was all alive trying to understand Dr.Mandi in full. To drive home the point that there is little creativity left in the student community or for that matter, anywhere in the world, we were shown the inspiring “Another Brick in the Wall” album from Pink Floyd.
We Talk Business
Having played a small game of framing a magic square (3*3), we were shown various toys/ simple game
models, created by students with (simple) science as the logic. The point driven home was, with a bit of creativity you can really go places! That’s what the makers of these toys have done. For example, what can a person do with the knowledge of the formula (a+b)^3 = a^3 + b^3 + 3ab(a + b), you can end of creating a toy which demonstrates the formula- now this is a product and the entire school going community is it’s market! The point was, when we face an huge challenge ahead of us, at the end of the challenge, we win it or not, we will definitely be enlightened, we will end up being a lot better person after the challenge (this I felt was very resembling to Steve Jobs’ famous Connect the Dots speech). It’s for us to plunge in the world of challenges and get ourselves enlightened, to reach a new level. At this point, I realized how I have left my potential untapped, for all this time. I felt, this is a free world and I could be going places with some creativity!!
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models, created by students with (simple) science as the logic. The point driven home was, with a bit of creativity you can really go places! That’s what the makers of these toys have done. For example, what can a person do with the knowledge of the formula (a+b)^3 = a^3 + b^3 + 3ab(a + b), you can end of creating a toy which demonstrates the formula- now this is a product and the entire school going community is it’s market! The point was, when we face an huge challenge ahead of us, at the end of the challenge, we win it or not, we will definitely be enlightened, we will end up being a lot better person after the challenge (this I felt was very resembling to Steve Jobs’ famous Connect the Dots speech). It’s for us to plunge in the world of challenges and get ourselves enlightened, to reach a new level. At this point, I realized how I have left my potential untapped, for all this time. I felt, this is a free world and I could be going places with some creativity!!
Management Understood through (an amazing) game
In the afternoon session, we were talking about management as a concept. The management terminologies such as Vision and Mission of an organization, SMART Goals. We were discussing about what management is, when put into words. To understand the concepts which go into management, we played a wonderful game.
The game involved 3 people and it required building a cube tower. The 3 people concerned will be provided with the cubes and challenge is to build a cube tower as tall as one can. As simple as that? No, like in real world management scenarios, there were a couple of factors which might impede, stand as a block before our challenge. The catch was-
1) only one person can access the cubes and he alone can build the cube tower.
2) The one person who has access to the cubes will be blindfolded J
3) The blindfolded person who has the authority to access the cubes can only use his left hand (the hand which he doesn’t use normally) to build the tower.
This person who is going has access to the cubes, in a management scenario represents a grassroot level employee. Someone who has not much idea about the bigger picture of the organization and will be doing the work the way his manager directs him to do.
Person No 2 in the game represents the middle level manager who directs the first one on how to do things and is supposed to have complete control over him. This person also reports to the senior management - the person number 3 in the game. Just like a senior manager, this person rarely comes into the picture of the task at hand (for the first 2 people of the game) and looks at the situation as a whole. All in all, this game was like a prototype of a real time management scenario!
The three people who won their places to play in this game (it was decided through auctioning!) did a commendable job and built 18 block tower (bettering the record achieved by our senior batch of 17 blocks). The tower was standing tall out there, epitomizing the lads’ splendid achievement!
The game turned out to be a great introduction to “The Principles of Management”!
good work da...
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