Managers : Theory X and Theory Y

THEORY X AND THEORY Y

Theory X

Theory X assumes that employees are naturally unmotivated and dislike working, and this encourages an authoritarian style of management. According to this view, management must actively intervene to get things done. This style of management assumes that workers:

• Dislike working.
• Avoid responsibility and need to be directed.
• Have to be controlled, forced, and threatened to deliver what’s needed.
• Need to be supervised at every step, with controls put in place.
• Need to be enticed to produce results; otherwise they have no ambition or incentive to work.

X-Type organizations tend to be top heavy, with managers and supervisors required at every step to control workers. There is little delegation of authority and control remains firmly centralized.

McGregor recognized that X-Type workers are in fact usually the minority, and yet in mass organizations, such as large scale production environment, X Theory management may be required and can be unavoidable.

Theory Y

Theory Y expounds a participative style of management that is de-centralized. It assumes that employees are happy to work, are self-motivated and creative, and enjoy working with greater responsibility. It assumes that workers:

• Take responsibility and are motivated to fulfill the goals they are given.
• Seek and accept responsibility and do not need much direction.
• Consider work as a natural part of life and solve work problems imaginatively.

This more participative management style tends to be more widely applicable. In Y-Type organizations, people at lower levels of the organization are involved indecision making and have more responsibility.

Managers :  Theory X and Theory Y

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.

Valley Crossing

Valley Crossing 

A Lesson in Team Building,Conflict Resolution,Communication and Trust leading to SMART GOALS

The task at hand required a group of three people to move from left side of the valley to the right side with the help of a pole. The task demanded a good conceptual knowledge of the problem at hand & building an effective strategy to be implemented to solve the problem.

                 For the success of the problem, the key ingredient was coordination among team member & efficient execution of the strategy devised. 

               

• Any person, while on top of the valley (the “risky” position to be in) will be supported by other two people. All the three members here have interchanging roles in the completion of task. As can be noticed in the above image, all the three members have equal distribution of risky, half-risky and safe situations.
• The success of this exercise will depend upon how closely the three people work as part of a team, coordinate and communicate with each other through sound/signals and follow a synchronous movement.

Key learnings:

1. Confict in this exercise was actually who would be the first person to cross the valley
2. It was undoubtedly the leader who would show the way
3. Conflict resolution was achieved by equally dividing the task between all the three people.
4. No one was overburdened or underburdened.
5. To cross the valley interdependency-an essential characteristic of team work is needed and it was shown in the exercise.
6. Effective communication ultimately  led to success.

                         NAVRANG: SMART understanding of                                                       ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE




 Navrang consists of 27 small cubes of 9 different colors. Contrary to a Rubik’s cube which has 6 colours, Navrang has 9 colours. The cube is made of 27 coloured detachable cubes in sets of 3.

So what did our Prof Mandi had to offer with Navrang. Well, a very peculiar kind of a toy. I am getting used to this way of teaching with toys- to see something so innocent as a bunch of blocks turn into something that can easily pass as a management jargon.
I mean have a look at it..

The first challenge was for 3 of us to volunteer and solve the cube - put it back into place with the given set of constraints - 

1. Each face of the cube must have all the 9 colors. Which also means obviously that none of the colors can be repeated on any face - since there are only 9 slots in each.

2. We only had 5 minutes in which to solve the cube.

3. The 27 smaller cubes were clustered randomly on the table.

Learnings from this activity are:

• The Navrang cube represented an organization and the 27 different coloured cubes were the elements in the organization
• We as managers need to combine each element in the best combination possible to realize the organization's goals.
• Logical thinking is the best solution to any problem
• Previously when we started doing the job without any thinking whatsoever, we were not successful
• Logical thinking enables us to achieve SMART goals.

Organizational structure affects organizational action in two big ways. First, it provides the foundation on which standard operating procedures and routines rest. Second, it determines which individuals get to participate in which decision-making processes, and thus to what extent their views shape the organization’s actions.

                                Transactional Leadership
                                              Vs
                              Transformational Leadership

Transactional leadership involves a transaction: between work and reward.
The underlying belief behind transactional leadership is that people are motivated by rewards, so the social structure functions best when there is a clear set of guidelines.
The subordinates will be given a task to be done by the leader and the latter will also clearly specify what to expect on its successful completion. So performance is used to transact with rewards.

Trasnsformation Leaders on the other hand instill a competence in a group or individual that they attain such functions like visioning,modelling ,synergising and business boundaries which would not be possible without the motivation of the transformation leader.The characteristics of transformation leadership are:

• Empowerment
• Risk taking 
• Clarity of mission
• Team Building 
• Equanimity
• Envision Trust

Burn's theory of transformational leadership states that in this type of leadership the followers and leaders inspire each other towards higher levels of motivation and morality.

The transformational leaders will set an example first by setting himself as a standard to his followers as to what level of motivation they should build up to.

  

Three Monks Story and My learnings from it

 3 monks and no water to Drink

Three Monks Story and My learnings from it

Here I will analyze the learning from a very famous Chinese short story called “The Three Monks”.

The Three Monks is about a young monk who lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of getting two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carrying 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. Therefore, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. At night, a rat comes to scrounge and then knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire.
Following that they understand the old saying “unity is strength” and the temple never lacks water again.

1.     Cultivate dispositions 

Though the curriculum includes enormous volumes of rote memorization, the focus is not to acquire specific knowledge, but for practitioners to develop what we have called “questing and connecting” dispositions. The monk’s goal is to cultivate a disciplined but also “pliant” mind, capable of rapid learning and measurable accomplishment. Monks are encouraged to constantly seek and explore knowledge; for example, many monks are surprisingly well-read in neuroscience. In addition to learning from high masters, the monastery emphasizes peer-to-peer learning as a shared social practice to foster a culture in which certain dispositions more naturally arise.

Though dispositions are difficult to cultivate, they can be much more valuable than specific skills or knowledge, particularly in times of rapid change. The faster change happens, the shorter the shelf-life of any knowledge or skill becomes. And while knowledge is often domain specific, dispositions apply across domains.

Conflict Management

There conflict was lead nowhere but just to increase the work. They resolved the conflict and the distribution of work led to no scarcity of water.

3. Productivity improvement because of active participation
4. Involvement of all organization to achieve common goal
5. Framework of the work contain and its proper distribution

Where there is a Will,there is a Way

                         The Mynah and the Elephant






Can the huge elephant fly? Obvious answer is No.

But we learnt in management from Dr. Mandi that Possibility should always be > Reality
The apparently absurd thing became true and we also learnt the important concept of willpower and motivation when the elephant ultimately succeeded in flying.

The motivator is the Mynah and the one having tremendous willpower is the elephant.

The story began with the elephant asking the Mynah if it could fly.The Mynah asked the elephant to put a feather in its mouth and flap both its ears as hard as possible.Actually the feather was redundant.But once the elephant thought that the secret to fly is in the feather ,it put more and more effort to accomplish its wish.
And ultimately it was successful in flying not by the virtue of the redundant feather but by the virtue of will power giving rise to extraordinary effort-thereby leading to extraordinary results.

Moral of the story
 Believe you can, and you will . “Possunt quia sibi posse videntur”. 
 Never give up trying. 
 Have trust and faith in yourself 
 Faith moves mountains 

TRansformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is defined as a leadership approach that causes change in individuals and social systems. In its ideal form, it creates valuable and positive change in the followers with the end goal of developing followers into leaders. Enacted in its authentic form, transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms. These include connecting the follower’s sense of identity and self to the mission and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers that inspires them; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that optimize their performance.

Transformational Leadership Benefits and Limitations

Strong Motivation

The transformational leader gets the entire staff involved in envisioning company objectives and then motivating staff members to exceed their personal expectations to achieve those objectives. The employee's value to the company is consistently reinforced by the transformational leader who inspires staff members to go beyond what is expected of them to advance their own careers as well as help the company reach new levels of growth.

Personal Touch

One of the ways a transformational leader inspires employees is through personal coaching and contact with each staff member. The transformational manager reaches out to employees who are on board with the company vision to help them improve their skills and get excited about achieving company goals. She also attempts to convert staff members who are not interested in the company vision become energized about moving the company forward. To do this, the transformational leader uses an "open door" policy that encourages employees to seek her advice, and she schedules regular one-on-one meetings with each employee.

Lack of Detail

A transformational leader is effective at motivating and rallying a staff behind a singular company vision, but he often lacks the attention to detail required to create a strong corporate structure or follow company policies, according to the Mind Tools website. The transformational leader is concerned with the overall big picture and sometimes neglects the daily operational details.

Disguising Reality

The transformational leader operates primarily through motivation. She encourages employees to succeed by convincing them to take on more responsibility and improve themselves through training and hard work. But a transformational leader can sometimes blur the line between reality and inspiration, according to the Changing Minds website. To get the results she wants, the transformational leader will continue to encourage an employee through inspiration and praise for the employee's performance. The reality could be that the employee lacks the skills to perform the job tasks assigned to him and the transformational leader offers only words of encouragement when training is needed.

“MAHA MANDI” a classroom on the streets of Mumbai !!

Saturday morning greeted Mumbai with incessant rain, overcast sky with no sign of the sun. The rain lashed down on rooftops of big complexes, buildings with relentless force showing no signs of abating and thereby showing no mercy to those who would have loved to enjoy the day outside with their family and friends.

But this day witnessed one of the biggest events organized by Nitie students-Maha Mandi.

The day began with the inauguration ceremony witnessing the presence of Ms. Sonam Bajwa (Charismatic leadership) which saw participation from NITIE, SPJIMR, KJ Somaiya and other renowned colleges.  The “mandi experience” was still a mystery to all of us.

On the day I along with my team members set out for Andheri in bus arranged by college. Bus was full to its capacity with enthusiastic students.

On getting down at Andheri,we began to look for a customer whom we could sell.Questions like What are these people up to? Are they busy? Is this person looking grumpy? Is this one too arrogant?  were all racing through our mind.

There we met our first customer-A grumpy looking person in mid 50s.We decided to give a try and to our utter surprise we managed to sell a toy costing rupees 200 for rupees 250.

Then we made our way to Andheri station where a person approached us on his own and began inquiring from where we came from and seem very interested by Maha Mandi.We sold him the Jodo block.So far it was cake walk for us.

Then came the difficult time when we got people who listened intently to what we had to say but in the end the price was either too much or the product was too risky for their kids as they might swallow up the toys.We made our way to Bandra where we sold maximum items on Link road.

 

Finally at Juhu we sold off a few items.
Total sales in 4 hours=2800 rupees.

Learnings from Mandi experience

• Before Mandi,we were a bit overconfident-specially after the success we had after the first two sales.But then we realized that patience is the key.
•  The toys like Tangrum and Jodo are perfecgt examples of how the education system in India needs to be.
• We also learnt that targeting the right customer is a very important thing.
• From one's facial expression,a seller has to guess whether he is a potential buyer or not.
• During conversation never bring the price of the product first.Rather generate interest in the buyer's mind
• Patience is a virtue and must be present in a seller.
• Never give up.Always try.

Another interesting observation:

If we can sell 2800 in 4 hours, then we can sell 6300 in a day of 9 hours,189000 in a month,22.68 in 1 year.Who said that you only have to do MBA to earn this sort of a package.

In Nitie, through the unique teachings of Dr. Mandi we get to know what quality education is all about,what is real teaching and most importantly how to implement what we learn in our day to day lives.

JAI HO MANDI

TOWER BUILDING EXERCISE

Tower Building Exercise in IM21 Section B by Dr. Mandi

Organizational behavior is all about understanding the employees in an organization.PUC-productivity , understanding and control of an employee is essentially what OB is all about.

In the tower building exercise we learnt two very important concepts of OB

• Effective organizational management is possible only when the doers and thinkers are separate entities.
• Closed eyed performance should be better than open eyed performance in an organization.

The basic organisational structure with a worker at the lower level of the pyramid , followed by a manager and in the end, the General Manager of the company , with the worker wearing a blind fold, which is very synonymous to the actual situation in an industry wherein a worker is just asked to follow instructions without questioning or suggesting ,and it is the manager who takes the decisions .

In this exercise the blindfolded guy represented a worker who was just following the instruction of his manager to place blocks one over the other.The blindfolded person could not "see"what he is doing which is the actual situation in an organization where a worker does not know why is he doing a job .He just does what he is told to do by the manager.In the end he managed to place 16 blocks together just by listening to his superior.

This exercise also put the communication skills of a manager to test.

Learnings:

The manager later on agreed that if he had communicated in a better way,more than 16 blocks was possible.

This should be the mentality of a manager who always believes that:

• "POSSIBILITY > REALITY"

The best is yet to come.

• Also, Where the gap exists or areas of improvement should be identified.

• Then Why the gap exists question should be answered.

• Lastly,What should be done to fill the gap between possibility and reality must be answered.