While some models of organizational effectiveness go in and out of fashion, one that has persisted is the McKinsey 7S framework. Developed in the early 1980s by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, two consultants working at the McKinsey & Company consulting firm, the basic premise of the model is that there are seven internal aspects of an organization that need to be aligned if it is to be successful.
The 7S model can be used in a wide variety of situations where an alignment perspective is useful, for example to help you:
Improve the performance of a company.
Examine the likely effects of future changes within a company.
Align departments and processes during a merger or acquisition.
Determine how best to implement a proposed strategy.
Thursday 22 August 2013
My first digital CV!!
Sunday 18 August 2013
Why Excellence?
Excellence is an
attribute on which organisations survive. A building block for them to flourish
and become even more bigger and prosperous. Their success depends on excellence
to a profound extent. Which is why great CEOs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry
Ford et al have all harped on the salient features of excellence within their
organisation to make them worthy institutions that they are today. Without the
pursuit of excellence, these organisations would have died a slow death.
Quantify Excellence
Excellence when
defined is a non-parametric quantity and hence, often can be interpreted in
incorrect means whereby it gives a false picture of whether it is actually
achieved or not. However to set clear targets and understand the scenario, we
quantify excellence in the following manner:
Excellence =
Efficiency * Effectiveness
i.e. a combination
of efficiency and effectiveness together gives rise to excellence.
Efficiency essentially being "doing things right" and effectiveness
being "doing the right thing". Every organisation in due course needs
to figure out the effective approach towards accomplishing something. Doing the
right thing is important so that ventures and strides are taken in the right
direction. Once the effectiveness is taken care of, organisations should then
concentrate on efficiency. This is where many establishments differentiate
between one another. It refers to an input-output approach whereby depending on
the availability of resources and inputs, management will then give the output,
dealing with all kinds of optimisation methods in the process.
Tower Building Exercise - Lessons in
Excellence
The tower building
exercise as shownhere is one of the best ways of exhibiting efficiency,
effectiveness and ultimately excellence. The individual prior to performing the
task figured out a way to complete the task. for e.g putting the blocks
slightly to the top left or top right of the below block and not exactly on
top, putting that at angles to the below and not completely on top of it. These
are ways of accomplishing a effective way of performing the task. This part
helps him to do the task better as probably putting them in a certain manner
over the other can enhance the output and provide an effective solution to the
same. The second part is exhibited in the manner he performs the task. The rate
at which he does it, the height which he reaches all on the basis of certain
rules will eventually help him achieve the desired level of efficiency. As
discussed above, these two factors together will contribute towards excellence.
In a similar manner,
in large organisations, managers are always encouraged to follow the
above principles to achieve excellence. In my personal experience, I
have seen some of my superiors who have always designed goals and tasks in such
a way that they understand what needs to be done and then chalk out a way to do
the right thing in order to reach the end goal. This is followed by careful
analysis of improving the efficiency of the task, i.e utilising the available
resources and in the shortest time and at the least possible cost,
make the perfect product. Thus, in this manner, the employees and the process
that they follow itself lends to the excellence of the organisation as a whole.
“The bridges that you cross before you
come to them are over rivers that aren't there.”
- Gene
Brown
The
above quote roughly means: barriers that are physical are reflections of
the mental ones. There is an important organizational lesson to be learnt in
this. Organizations are meant to facilitate the impossible, unachievable. The recipe
is simple: Believe that it can be achieved, plan and deliver.
Objective
Here are three men walking but are stalled because
infront of them lay a valley which they have to cross.
Problem:
1. The width of the gap between the valleys is more
than a step so they canot jump over it but less than two steps.
2. There is no temporary bridge available i.e no
falt platform which they can lay over the gap and walk over.
Solution:
They hold the rod together with the
gap between each two of them is one footstep and they simply walk by.
The picture below demonstrates it. Surprised? Does going get this easy?
Well, I shall take you through a small dry run to answer that:
Solution:
They hold the rod together with the
gap between each two of them is one footstep and they simply walk by.
The picture below demonstrates it. Surprised? Does going get this easy?
Well, I shall take you through a small dry run to answer that:
L1
L2
L3_______
Step
1: All safe
R1
R2 R3
L1 L2 L3
Step 2: Person 3 half safe
R1
R2 R3
L1 L2 L3
Step 3: Person 3 full unsafe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3
Step
4: Person 2 and 3 partially safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3
Step
5: Person 2 fully unsafe
R1
R2 R3
L1 L2
L3
Step
6: Person 1 and 2 partially safe
R1
R2 R3
L1 L2
L3
Step
7: Person 1 fully unsafe
R1
R2 R3
L1
L2 L3
Step 8: Person 1 partially safe
R1
R2 R3
L1
L2 L3
Step 9: Everyone is safe
R1
R2 R3
The '_______' like structure
indicates the valley and Li and Ri denotes the left and right foot of the ith
person.
Structuring of Task Roles:
Tasks should have certain
attributes for perfect realisation of a task, which can be stated as:
1.Interlocking roles i.e. highest
level of interdependency
2.Highest level of interactions among the members
3.Instantaneous feedback
4,No scope for any Social loafing
The task here is highly
interdependent and provides instantenous feedback upon any mishap.
Team Excellence:
Excellence is efficiency *
effectiveness. Individual cannot achieve excellence but a team an organisation
can achieve that. Efficiency and effectiveness both comes simultaneously and
has to be handled simultaneously. Effectiveness is where to go? and efficiency
is how to go efficiently i.e at reduced cost or enhanced safety. But to put
effect efficiency one has to again think efficiently.
The film ‘3 monks’ is
based on the ancient Chineseproverb "One monk will shoulder two buckets
of water, two monks will share the load, but add a third and no one will want
to fetch water." The film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it
to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to
signify each monk.
The film is available on you tube and has more than
15 thousand views. The video is described on you tube as follows: “ Three Monks
is a Chinese animated short, released in 1980 and directed by A Da. It is one
of the most famous and beloved of Shanghai Animation Film Studio's productions,
and has won awards at film festivals throughout the world. A note about the columns of text that appear at
the beginning: the first column reads, "one monk fetches water to
drink", the second column reads, "two monks carry water to
drink", and the third one merely says, "three monks". The
unfinished sentence reflects the film's central question, which is whether the
three main characters will learn to work together so that they can all have
water to drink.”
The film teaches us a valuable lesson in
organizational management. The story of 3 monks is analogous to the corporate
world when a company is in growth phase.
When there was one monk, all the responsibility was
on his shoulders and he worked hard and with more productivity to complete the
task at hand. The first monk alone carried two buckets of water and this was
sufficient as the water required for one person was lesser. Similar is the case
for organizations in the start-up phase. The tasks are fewer, but so is the staff.
There was no co-ordination or co-operation required for goal achievement and
everything was based on hard work.
When there were two monks in the monastery, the
productivity decreased to a quarter as 2 monks were carrying just one bucket of
water. However, the cost of this decreased productivity was compensated by
increased comfort for the monks. Same goes for organization as they expand.
Everyone is unable to perform equally and some of them try to make others work
for them. Increased workforce in an organization doesn’t necessarily mean that
more work is done because everyone thinks that there are plenty of people to accomplish
the task at hand. Another reason that the productivity decreases is that
everyone doesn’t think at the same frequency, thus the situation is like different
people pulling the cart in different directions which is always detrimental to
the organizational goal. Hard work is important in this situation, however
co-ordination is also very significant.
In case of 3 monks, no one works for the common goal and
the productivity is almost zero. This is the classical case of large
organization when there is no co-ordination between different departments.
Finally, there is a crisis analogous to the fire, and thus things get shaken
up. Everyone works together for a common aim to bring forth a ‘revolution’.
Thus a new organizational procedure is evolved which is productive for large
organization. This ‘revolution’ is necessary for large organization without
which growth cannot be beyond a certain point.
The
second lecture by Professor T. Prasad explained us the concept of theory X and
theory Y managers. These are the human motivation theories put forward
by Douglas Mcgregor of the MIT sloan school of management.
Theory X
managers are not employee friendly. They always believe that the employee will
avoid his work. Theory Y managers, on the other hand trust their employees with
the responsibilities given to them. The two type of managers can be better understood
from the following video:
Now lets check out the
possibilities when various type of employees work under various types of
bosses.
1.Lazy
employees work under theory X manager:- The productivity would be low due to
the lazy employees. And it would decline even further due to lack of incentive
given to employees.
2.Motivated
employees work under theory X manager:-This situation is the most dangerous.
The result could be that the productivity of good employees would decline due
to lask of incentives. Also, good employees may leave the organization leaving
behind only lazy employees in the organization.
3.azy
employees work under theory Y manager:- Since the employees are lazy, their
productivity needs to be increased. Theory Y managers, being employee friendly
would try to motivate them by giving them incentives. This, if successful would
boost productivity.
4.Motivated
employees work under theory Y manager:- This is the most ideal situation. Since
the employees are good, they are ensuring that their targets are met. Due to
this, their boss is giving them due reward, motivating them further. Thus,
finally the everyone is gaining from this favourable nexus.
Every organization should therefore
try to achieve the last scenario. This is most favourable as the productivity
is more, the work culture is better and all the things are moving towards
better. This can be achieved by having more Theory Y managers in the firm who
can motivate the employees to perform better.
After
working for 3 years, getting back to college was always going to be a unique
experience. And so I marched towards the classroom to attend my first MBA class.
As I walked toward the class, I thought of the various possibilities of how the
class would unfold, but none of these matched what actually happened in my
first MBA class! In fact, I’m pretty sure that none of my batch-mates would
have ever predicted it.
The
first surprise, and a pleasant one, was our class was taken by Professor T. Prasad
more fondly known as Professor Mandi. The next shock was that toys were
distributed among the students. But the best part of the class was when we were
told to throw the sponge balls at our batch-mates. I’ve always wanted to play
catch catch in class, but least expected it to happen, not in an MBA class, nor
while the professor’s back not facing us! I will always remember this; thank
you sir for unique experience, you’d become our favorite by now!
Now
that he’d got everyone’s attention, it was time to get to real business. He
called students forward and made them sell the toys distributed to each other.
Then he gave suitable suggestions so that the student selling can increase the value
of the product for the buyer, a simple but effective way to boost the value of
any product. Then he encouraged blogging so that the content taught in his
lectures is not restricted to NITIE, but open to anyone who has interest to
study, this is one thing I appreciated the most.
However, the most significant take
away from the lecture was ‘aaj ki roti aaj hi kamana’ i.e. the students should
not rely on their parents for expenses but try to earn on their own, and that
too in their area of study. Earning from one’s own area of study reinforces the
gained knowledge and its application, thereby giving mastery in his field; a
very easy concept, but equally difficult to implement. We were made to realize how
big the opportunity cost was, for coming to NITIE; roughly around Rs.2500 per
day and then we were inspired to earn this back by opening our own companies
while in campus.
Overall it was a great lecture, and
I feel that if the concept, ‘aaj ki roti aaj hi kamana’ is implemented even
partially, the future seems great then!