Rich Job x Poor Job , Manager-Individual-Group

Today, Dr. Mandi gave us a new insight knowledge on Job, its varieties and difference between Individual decision and group decision. It was quite interesting to learn about such basic topic from the point of management.  Now moving on with the description of job, job is the set of task which is done periodically by the employee. It is comprehensive, complete, homogenous. We do not put unrelated task in Job, because it unknowingly creates problem of synchronization and hampers the efficiency.There are two types of Job i.e. Rich job and Poor job. It is very important to note that job are not divided on the basis of pay or earning , but there are certain criteria in the management field on the basis of which job are rated. These are :

1. Autonomy
2. Skill
3. Variety
4. Task Identity
5. Feedback

The job with the high rating in all the above fields will be considered as High Job and low rating will be considered as Poor Job. The above terms are not new to us. We are quite familiar with all of them. Autonomy means the power to exercise own's plan and decision. Skill is the  competency of one own's. Variety means diversity. Task identity denotes the level of its visibility of task or How much task is substantial while Feedback is loop like structure where the views points of end customer reaches to Employees. For example Job of Pilot has absolutely no autonomy, has high Skill, has some variety, has good task identity and has proper feedback process. So, here we can conclude that it is close to Rich job. Rich Job and Poor Job has their environment variation also. Rich Job has High Job Involvement, High Satisfaction, High productivity. While it is just opposite to the Poor Job. Rich Job is also known as intrinsic reward and Poor job is known as extrinsic reward, which in turns means that more money is paid in Poor job.

Now we come to the discussion of Individual decision and Group decision. A good manager is the one whose difference between the its own decision and group decision is as minimum as possible. We can otherwise say that for a good manger Individual Decision should be equal to Group Decision. There is another concept of Expert Decision. Expert is the benchmark where each and every manger wants to achieve. So, A expert decision also plays a important role and thus the equation becomes
Individual Decision = Expert Decision = Group decision. Taking an example of organization, It is a place where group of people works together in coordination to achieve a desired goal. It has a manager to control the group of people and each organization have certain pattern of doing the work. Each organization tries to accomplishes the task in six sigma platform or want to achieve CMMI Level 5 certification. So, These standard are regarded as Expert Decision . Manager Decision are regarded as Individual Decision and Organization decision are regarded as group decision. So, Now for our understanding we can scale the rating of manager.Manager Decision should match with six sigma method or CMMI Level 5 standard. If the difference with these i.e. Expert results and manager results minimum then we can say that manager has sound knowledge about the field of organization and now manager has to turn the group decision towards himself i.e. he should also try to keep the individual decision and group decision as minimum as possible. Then only a manager can be regarded as best manager.

Mohammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank...

The Grameen Bank 
Before coming to class we were asked to watch a video. Against all odds – for the first time in my life – I actually completed a homework before going to class!! Of course, there is a good reason why I watched the video. It was a speech by a person I was well aware of – Mohammed Yunus of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh. Before delving into what I learnt in class, I believe a small introduction is required.

          The Grameen Bank is a community development bank started in Bangladesh. They give small loans (known as micro credit or "grameencredit" ) to poor people without asking for collateral.The system of this bank is based on the idea that the poor have skills but have no chance to use their skills without some money, that is their skills are under-utilised. Most of the banks loans go to women.

                                                                                 

                                                                                   The Grameen Bank was started 1976 when Professor Muhammad

Muhammed Yunus at the World Economic Forum

Yunus, a Fulbright scholar and Professor at University of Chittagong, researched how to provide banking for the rural poor. In October 1983, the Grameen Bank Project was made into an independent bank by the government.The group and its first member, Muhammad Yunus, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Grameen Bank is owned by the people who borrow the money, mostly women. The borrowers own 94% of the bank, and the other 6% is owned by the Government of Bangladesh.

I am embedding the video we were asked see below. Watch it, it's worth your time. It will also give some context to what happened in class and the key learning I had.

 

Our class did not focus solely on aspects of social business. Instead – being a Principles of Management class – we focused on the difference in style of management and in delivery of product. We started out by discussing the difference between a traditional banking system and the Grameen micro-credit system. For the sake of simplicity, I am tabulating the differences below:

  In my last blog, I wrote about Management by Objective and Organisational Structure. Both these contribute to another phenomenon – Organisational Culture. Basically, it is the behaviour of humans who are part of an organisation and the meanings that the people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organisation values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits.

                       The culture at Grameen Bank is to find ways to eradicate poverty. The Managing Director of the bank is not asked, “Why are Profits down?”. Instead he is asked, “How many people have you taken out of poverty today. It is precisely this culture that has allowed the Grameen Bank to achieve so much.

              This is the most important take away from this class. It is the Organisational Culture that motivates employees to perform well. It is the Organisation Culture that affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. It is the Organisational Culture that gives the organisation Branding.

Organizational Structure Part 2

Any operating organization should have its own structure in order to operate efficiently. For an organization, the organizational structure is a hierarchy of people and its functions.The organizational structure of an organization tells us the character of an organization and the values it believes in. So when we go for a  business with an organization or getting into a new job in an organization, it is always a great idea to get to know and understand their organizational structure.Depending on the organizational values and the nature of the business, organizations tend to adopt one of the following structures for management purposes. Although the organization follows a particular structure, there can be departments and teams following some other organizational structure in exceptional cases. Some organizations may follow a combination of the following organizational structures as well.

Organizational Structure Types

Following are the types of organizational structures that can be observed in the modern business organizations.

Bureaucratic Structures

Bureaucratic structures maintain strict hierarchies when it comes to people management. The fully developed bureaucratic mechanism compares with other organizations exactly as does the machine compare with the non-mechanical modes of production. Precision, speed, unambiguity, … strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs- these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration. Bureaucratic structures have a certain degree of standardization. They are better suited for more complex or larger scale organizations, usually adopting a tall structure.

Functional Structure

The organization is divided into segments based on the functions when managing. This allows the organization to enhance the efficiencies of these functional groups. As an example, take a software company.
Software engineers will only staff the entire software development department. This way, management of this functional group becomes easy and effective.
Functional structures appear to be successful in large organization that produces high volumes of products at low costs. The low cost can be achieved by such companies due to the efficiencies within functional groups.
In addition to such advantages, there can be disadvantage from an organizational perspective if the communication between the functional groups is not effective. In this case, organization may find it difficult to achieve some organizational objectives at the end.
   

Divisional Structure

These types of organizations divide the functional areas of the organization to divisions. Each division is equipped with its own resources in order to function independently. There can be many bases to define divisions.Divisions can be defined based on the geographical basis, products/services basis, or any other measurement.As an example, take a company such as General Electrics. It can have microwave division, turbine division, etc., and these divisions have their own marketing teams, finance teams, etc. In that sense, each division can be considered as a micro-company with the main organization.

Matrix Structure

When it comes to matrix structure, the organization places the employees based on the function and the product.The matrix structure gives the best of the both worlds of functional and divisional structures.

In this type of an organization, the company uses teams to complete tasks. The teams are formed based on the functions they belong to (ex: software engineers) and product they are involved in (ex: Project A).

This way, there are many teams in this organization such as software engineers of project A, software engineers of project B, QA engineers of project A, etc.

Organizational Structure Part 1

The organizational structure defines the organization's hierarchy of people and departments as well as how information flows within the organization. It also defines how job tasks are formally divided, grouped and coordinated. The Organizational Structure is important because it ensures that there is an efficient operation of a business and it clearly define its workers and their functions.

Benefits of Organizational Structure

The organizational structure also helps define the hierarchy and the chain of command

1. Structure helps influence behavior and relationships of jobs and function.
2. Structure defines recurring activities and processes. 
3. Structure provides a purposeful and goal-oriented behavior 

  

Components of Organizational Structure

Management decisions and actions that result in a specific organization structure and work specification including:-

1.  Work Specification: Specify to what degree the tasks are subdivided into separate jobs

2.  Departmentalization: The basis in which jobs will be grouped together

3.  Chain of Command: To whom do individuals and groups report to.

4.  Span of Control: The number of people that a  can a manager efficiently and effectively direct.

5.  Centralization and Decentralization: Where is the decision making authority?

6.  Formalization: To what degree will there be rules and regulations to direct employees and managers?

 

 

A Lesson on Entrepreneurship by our seniors...

Today was one of the exciting day at NITIE. Our Mandi sir had invited our seniors from batch the PGDIM20 to interact with the students of section B. They carried an experience of a decade and  are achieving heights in industries, we were eager to know how was their journey till this point of time. We wanted to learn from their experience, thought process, new developments.Being the Class representative I got an opportunity to receive them. The alum were Hemant Kumar Jain, Nikhil Kulkarni, Arbit Choudhary.

Prof. Mandi introduced us to the Nikhil Kulkarni and then he passed the proceeding of session to him. Nikhil  Kulkarni is very decent person, I observed him as simple living and high thinking person. Before starting the session he liked to took our views,  that what we are expecting from this session, and what questions does he really need to answer during the session.  In response to this there were several question out of which few of them were - What are the learning from NITIE, which we have to implement in our jobs. What is the scope of starting a our own business venture. How is life post NITIE. These were some of the questions. It was then our  session officially started. The very first topic he talked about is entrepreneurship or starting of one own business venture. There was a clarity of thought in the manner, he was speaking out.

The whole class seemed to be lost in his discussion. They explained entrepreneurship with a great ease. They tried to analyzed our thought that why some of us want to take it up as a career. Basically in my opinion , the were trying to instigate a fire among us to start a business. They helped to us to realise the purpose and satisfaction that we will get. It was not about the glamour or money, It was about what I can. Then they talked about the difficulties arising out of starting a business. The capital we will be require for starting a business could possibly be too high, might be 50 crore would be very little figure for statring a company. It is not easy to raise a capital of such amount and more over it requires more dedication ,personal time. According to him getting a good profile in good company and starting a business is more a like same thing. He told us that there is good amount of earning involved in job which is at par, there is big responsiblity involved as in entrepreneurship as same here in job also, there is lot of big tasks available which gives us the same feel like we are managing the business of our own. In Entrepreneurship we have to make people work in such a way that they are able to generate the revenue three times of their salary. The employee who is working for the company not only generates the revenue but also generates the salary of the manager/people who are above him in the company hierarchy till CEO's. Hemant sir's target as set by his company is to genrates the revenues ten times more than his salary and we can imagine what kind of hard work and managing activities it would involve while doing a job. So, in no way we can say that entrepreneurship is better than doing merely a job.

At some point of time people need satisfaction and motivation and we can derive the maximum satisfaction level from entrepreneurship , we must go for it and on the other hand if we are more satisfied in doing our job for company then , it is not bad either. After giving us the realization of the similarity and differences between  the two he proceeded with the his own experience in NITIE. He told us that there will be plenty of time, we would be getting in NITIE to work upon idea of starting a business , then if we find feasible , we can absolutely go for it.
I thank and express my gratitude to the effort of our Prof. Mandi sir who had arranged such an insightful session with the alumni . Thanks a lot sir.!!!!!

Lessons from three idiot crossing the valley

After going through the topic of the this blog, my readers might feel that what I am talking all about..Three Idiots are crossing a valley and I am drawing lesson from this, that to a Management lesson...But ,Yes my readers...I am drawing a very important lesson, a lesson or you can say a practice that is being followed throughout the world.
Now the challenge is:

•       Three people have to cross a valley from left side to the right side of valley.

•       There is fixed distance between two edges of the valley.   

•       Crossing the valley neither by jumping or by walking on a pole placed on the two edges.

      

             The process of crossing the valley in shown in the figure. We can analyze there are three different situation that are depicted. But in all one person is always safe, one person is half safe and the other one is in dangerous situation.

The same thing can also be explained through process flow diagram. In the below figure we see the role of each person playing, when they are in risk and how the whole process is carried out.

So, my readers now lets come to learning part...

    


               1. Team work: It can explicit that valley could not be crossed by the single person. In the same way an organization can not work individually,every person should give their best to achieve excellence.

2. Communication: In an organization ,it is very important to have a proper and effective flow of communication. A clear communication can help
to bind the team together and achieve the task or goal in efficient manner.

    
 3. Trust: It was clearly visible that each person in the activity was trusting each other and trust was one of the most important ingredient. This is also the case for organization , where trust among the members is important in order to coordinate and achieve the objectives of the organization.


  




 4.Shared vision: It is important to have a shared vision, which is clear and informs about where the organization  wants to head in the future. Vision needs to be shared with all the members of the organization so as to enable the members to work collectively in achieving the organization’s defined goal.






5.Neo-classical Tool of Management: This activity demonstrate us some of the wonderful concepts of neo-classical management. Unlike classical theory of management, wherein the roles are delegated in a pyramid-like manner as to ensure unity of command, neo-classical theory speaks about empowerment of the employees. Here underlies the concept of matrix structures of organizations, where the groups are self-managed and everyone is capable of making decisions.