Video Link of my Digital CV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2YHyohrGmA

3 Idiots crossing valley

The cartoon on the right depicts that there are 3 persons on a construction site trying to cross over from one beam to other with only one prop and that is a pole. 

Classical Approach

This is one of the best example of teamwork. It is clearly visible in the cartoon that each one is in a vulnerable position in one instance and the other two is carrying him/her. We can infer that in a team, there is a high probability of one of the team being in a vulnerable situation and that is where the teamwork comes in. The team should help their team member in the time of difficulty.

The situation can further be dissected and analyzed with 9 situation:

Front Leading person is A, Middle person is B, and Last person is C. 

	Each Persons Moving Position	Person - C	Person - B	Person - A
1	^^^	1C Safe	1B Safe	1A Safe
2	^^^	2C Pull Down Safe	2B Fulcrum Safe	2A Half Safe
3	^^^	3C Pull Down Safe	3B Fulcrum Safe	3A Hanging in AIR -UNSAFE
4	^^^	4C	4B Fulcrum & Halfsafe	4A Half Safe Pull down
5	^^^	5C Carry Safe	5B Hanging in  AIR  UNSAFE	5A Carry  Safe
6	^^^	6C Half safe	6B Fulcrum & Half Safe	6A Pull Down Safe
7	^^^	7C Hangingin AIR  UNSAFE	7B Fulcrum	7A Pull Down Safe
8	^^^	8C Half Safe	8B Fulcrum Safe	8A Pull Down Safe
9	^^^	9C	9B	9A
		Safe	Safe	Safe

So, broadly there can be 4 situations

Safety	Situation A	Situation B	Situation C	Situation D
Safe	0	3	6	9
Half safe	0	3	2	0
Unsafe	9	3	1	0

Situation A is the worst possible and situation D is the best possible. So, our aim is to travel from situation A to Situation D by exercising excellent management skills.

Distributive Leadership

Here the concept of distributive leadership can be understood. As the person leading from the front can be considered as leader initially, but as his position becomes vulnerable next person should take on the leadership and it can be further passed on. So, every person in this team should have quality of a leader and should also have the tendency to take over. This can be related to flat management style with no hierarchy and everyone can assume the leadership.

Pre-planned exercise

Another perspective here can be that the crossing may be planned in such a manner that the team can cross over with just following standard procedure. The procedures should be extremely clear and to the point, in order to follow without hesitation or ambiguity. 

Our Take in Class

Alumni @ COllege

Before coming here, I heard a lot from many of my friends from IIMs and ISB that the alumni base of NITIE is the best and after coming here I realized why. The two revered ones were:
1. Nikhil Kulkarni, Manager, KPMG India
2. Hemant Kumar Jain, Manager, KPMG India

Entrepreneurship vs Job

After introduction and various questions thrown from our side, the talk began.

"Entrepreneurship is the act and art of being an entrepreneur or one who undertakes innovations orintroducing new things, finance and business acumen, in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods."

"A job is a regular activity performed in exchange for payment."

But these definition has nothing to do with what you can do in a job or by being an entrepreneur. In today's scenario everyone entering an esteemed MBA college wants to be an entrepreneur without knowing anything about the opportunities and risks involved in it. So it is very important to clear the confusion around it. The question which is significant over here is not about being an entrepreneur or going for a job, rather what you want from that. If you have a unique idea and you think you can work it out into a business idea, then you can think of entrepreneurship. On the other hand, if you want to innovate, work in a stimulating environment, don't want to work under many restrictions, don't want to do a job which is mechanical in nature and other similar reasons, don't go for entrepreneurship. A right job can provide a lot of the above things without making you an entrepreneur. A very apt question came out on the table, "Rather than working for a multinational company one can work for the country by starting an enterprise". But this thought is quite shallow because one should consider oneself as a global citizen and should work for humanity. When one starts an enterprise, you can't work freely as there are various rules and regulation to be followed to start a company and also one should have proper funding which is not that easy to get in present time. So, unless you have that burning idea to take you to the other side, don't just follow entrepreneurship for the sake of it. But if you have that thing burning inside you don't stop for anything in the world.

MastishK

It is India's first online business game to be started by our two guest lecturers. This was a new idea that convinced them that they can go all the way with it and they started it and excelled it.

Social Entrepreneurship

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP : MOHAMMAD YUNUS

“Without question, the balance of power on the planet today lies in the hands of business. Corporations rival governments in wealth, influence, and power. Indeed, business all too often pulls the strings of government. Competing institutions-religion, the press, even the military-play subordinate roles in much of the world today. If a values-driven approach to business can begin to redirect this vast power toward more constructive ends than the simple accumulation of wealth, the human race and Planet Earth will have a fighting chance.” -BEN COHEN.

" One Hour video of One single person's speech - who would spend time watching it ? "- was my initial reaction. But the positive responses from my friends instilled a curiosity to watch that video. So how was the 1 hr monotonous video ? Inspirational and Phenomenal. Its like you have a built up a structure of thoughts based on strong conception blocks and this video just pulls one major block, letting all our structures of assumption fall. The concept of Social Business that tends to support the cause of elevating poverty. And A concept that has become successfully proved model. Thanks to Dr. Mandi for engaging us with such awesome videos.

Though the above video, will help you understand his ideology in the best way, Let me summarize the best points for you

* Most local branches are self-funded by deposits of their local members in taka, the Bangladesh national currency.
* By serving as a depository for its members, Grameen Bank allows the poor to build their own financial asset base.
* The bank extends loans to its members at a maximum interest rate of 20 percent, a fraction of what many other microlenders charge.
* Operating on a cooperative model, profits are redistributed to the Grameen Bank’s owner-members or are invested in community projects.

These features root the Grameen Bank in the community it serves and keep money, including interest payments, continuously circulating locally to facilitate productive local exchange and build real community wealth.

Microcredit programs seeking to replicate the Grameen model have spread rapidly across the globe. Most, however, replicate only the loan feature. Few provide their members with depository services or replicate the Grameen Bank’s other defining features, though these features are central to its commitment to community wealth building.

As microlending programs became increasingly focused on repayment rates and growing the size of their loan portfolios, they looked for new sources of capital to expand their reach. With encouragement from foreign philanthropists, many turned to foreign commercial equity investors. Since private equity conflicts with the nonprofit model, sometime around 2005 many nonprofit microcredit programs changed their status to for-profit enterprises and converted their philanthropic nonprofit assets into private for-profit assets.

This social Entrepreneur has not just stopped with this concept. He has extended this concept to Grameen- Danone collaboration to provide good quality yogurt to the poor people and another similar collaboration with Adidas to provide low quality shoes to the poor people. 

These and many such initiatives has led the world to award this gem of a man, the Noble peace prize. May the world produce more such people

"Its not people who are credit worthy, Its banks who are not people worthy" - Mohammad Yunus

Being an ardent fan of puzzles, I was interested the moment I saw it in class. Dr Prasad always brings new surprises everyday
But I wondered- What does THIS have to do with Management ?

The class began with the prof throwing dismantled pieces of this cube to students sitting around him. There were 27 Pieces in total. His question was if this particular cube can be formed again, with no colour repeating on any side.

Oh, That would be easy- Was my first thought , and the entire class seemed to follow my ideology. Lots of hands rose to accomplish this simple task. Two were chosen and given enough time. But then, they were not able to complete it, in the given time and then gave up. The Next part was when Dr Prasad handled the cube. He seemed to have a structured format and completed it in one third of the given time.

From what i could grasp. I tried on my own and here's the video for you to see.  I made it in English for the following two reasons.
1) I was comfortable doing it in English
2) More Number of students can understand the method behind this puzzle

The picture on the left is my blue print of the puzzle that i have explained in the video. Its all a matter of arrangement in a structured way and that makes all the difference. Each number represents a color of the cube. You could even just use the blue print to make the arrangement


So what did we learn from this story

Attempt by Student (First time)	Attempt by Professor
A Trial Attempt without preparation	A planned attempt with early preparation
Random Format	Structured Format
Confusions, Uncertain, stressed,	Calm, Simple and Clear flow of ideas
Unrealistic goals set based on excitement	Realistic goals based on experience
Not done even upto 10 Mins	Done within 4 Minutes

Other Principles of Management

• Each Problem can be solved by systematic thinking
• Each Block represents an entity (Labour, Machine etc) in an organization and is to be assembled in a structured and hierarchical way like the above process, so efficiency is maximum
• Two blocks of the same colour may represent people who don't gel well with each other. And hence while forming a team, a structured approach is necessary

THREE MONKS

Few things about the film:

The story of the three Monks is an anime film directed by A Da. The film has got many recognitions including:

·         Outstanding film award at China's Ministry of Culture

·          Best animated film prize at the first Golden Rooster Awards in 1981.

·         Four international awards including a Silver Bear for Short Film at the 32nd Berlin Film Festival in 1982.

Plot:

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.

Lets discuss and analyze the various situations that arises in the film and also relate to real life situation.

The one

We find that in this case there is only one monk and he carries two bucket of water. It may be sufficient for the monastery as consumer is also one. Here innovative ideas are not being implemented as there is one person so demand being very less and it is getting fulfilled by the resources bought by the same person. In organization this self sufficiency attitude is required for example there is only one member in a team and he is responsible for all the deliverables, then he had to take care of all the requirements and necessary activities to be done without depending on other person.

Two monks

Two monks share the load of a single bucket of water. Still they find it difficult because there is no coordination between them. Both of them wants to be in the easy state and wants that other person to do all the work. This situation is very common in any organization. Every team member hardly put equal efforts, here dependency arises and sometimes team work is hampered.

Three monks

The work comes to a still as third monk enters the monastery the other two force him to go and fetch water. This particular case is a perfect example of social loafing in an organization where people start exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone. Moreover the lack of proper coordination between the members in the team results in complete organizational failure.

Crunch situation

But we see that in the face of crunch situation, all the three members forget their internal differences and work in a synchronized manner to improve the situation. This results in work being properly distributed in which results in highest efficiency when compared to all other previous cases.

This particular instance highlights that the manager must have a strategy for crisis management. This situation is also very common especially with IT industry as I have been there, during the time of deadline the pressure increases in numerously and at that time everyone realizes and meet the deadlines with team effort. The role of manager is very critical in the crunch situation as at that time employees do their job properly but there must be someone who can steer the ship and give proper direction.

Use of Innovative ideas

We saw that after the crunch situation is over, the monks went for innovative ideas due to which work-load is reduced with the help implementation of those innovative methods and proper coordination. Thus the management of any company should focus on technological advancement and innovative ideas so as to increase efficiency.

TOWER BUILDING ACTIVITY AND PYGMALION EFFECT

A very interesting exercise done in the class was that of Tower Building. One student was selected to build the tower of small wooden cubes with the following criteria:
1) The cube should be one on top of the other.
2) The builder should use his odd hand.
3) If the tower falls, the game is over. The person can remove the blocks and start again but the tower should not fall.

The students were asked to give estimates as to how many blocks can the tower me made of. The range varied from 10-25. The builder himself had low expectations of just 10 blocks. Once the activity started, everybody started encouraging and he went on to make the tower of 18 blocks before the tower actually fell. This showed that a person is capable of doing more than what he expects if he puts his mind to it and if the audience starts expecting from him. Thin phenomenon is also referred to as The Pygmalion Effect also known as the Rosenthal Effect. It is a phenomenon in which the expectation placed upon a worker is directly proportional to the performance delivered. It is a form of self fulfilling prophecy where a false definition of a situation causes a new response from the audience and this response in turn makes the original false conception true. Henry Ford had once very aptly said, “Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you are usually right.” 

The next part of the activity involved giving the guess estimate for the no of blocks which can be put to make tower if the builder is blind folded and has 2 persons who can direct him verbally. The majority of the class decreased their estimates, 4 students maintained their previous estimates and only 1 person actually raised his estimate. Here we see that the majority of the class comes under the category of “Non- Risk Takers”. And only 1 student is in the category of Ambitious Risk taker. When this same activity was done in the other section with the builder blindfolded, he had made the tower of eighteen blocks. So the bottom line is that one should not lower his targets irrespective of the challenges. The employee is always pushed so that he achieves his goals which he sets.
Companies and Multinationals usually are run by employees who come in the last category i.e Ambitious risk takers. These people take risks and work accordingly to take the company at higher growth rate. The organization should not lower their targets. The targets should not be reduced and should be progressively increased. This is because the potential for any company is always higher than the achieved target, and in order to grow, the company has to set higher targets and achieve those gradually.