Goal Settings and Pygmalion Effect

                                                                                                                                                         The class started with the discussion on Goal settings  in view of the Tower building exercise performed in the previous class.  

              

How should be the Goals? We saw the traditional approach to this question as well as a very unique way as suggested by Prof. Mandi, where we attributed various other adjectives to the traditional word SMART.

Specific: It means that the goals should be clear, unambiguous. It should make a team to concentrate on the clearly defined objective and should help decide the action plan.

For example, before starting the tower building activity, the height of the cubes' tower was anticipated with a single number and not with a vague range.

'S' also stands for Significant, simple.

Measurable: It asks for a specific criterion to measure the progress towards achievement of the specified goal. It helps to track the performance of a team and provides feedback whether the team is moving towards the goal.

'M' also means Motivational, manageable, meaningful, mind-blowing!

Attainable: It demands that goals should be realistic and attainable. Un realistic targets wont help in long term. This may result in failure of an activity creating extra pressure on everybody.

For example, Once the first team built the tower, the next time the height of the tower was predicted to be higher but around that number, making the goal achievable.

'A' -> Appropriate, achievable, agreed, ambitious, acceptable

Relevant:  The goal must be challenging, yet realistic. Lowering the bar for a high jumper could not realistically increase motivation nor enhance performance. Similarly, setting a goal to build the tower of 30 blocks is not a realistic or attainable goal and would therefore not positively affect motivation or performance. 

'R' also means Results-oriented, resourced, resonant, realistic

Time Bound: It states that the goals should have definite time limit to achieve. It helps a team to focus their efforts on the completion of the goal. It makes a team proactive to deal with the day to day crisis arising in an organization, because the deadline is set.

The tower building activity performed in the class was not a time bound.

'T' ->  trackable, tangible, timely

  

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Pygmalion Effect and the Performance

The discussion of this concept started with the Pygmalion story from Greek mythology. It was the story of Pygmalion, the sculptor, who fell in love with the statue he had created.

It is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

To understand how this cycle of expectations and performance complement each other we also discussed the Fibonacci series and how the chain reaction leads to a rapid increase in performance. 

At the end, we had a huge Fibonacci spiral covering entire blackboard and the concept was very well understood...    

Fibonacci Spiral

Tower Building: Craft vs Modern Managaement

This blog narrates my experience and learnings from the second lecture by Prof. T. Prasad. Even this lecture was unique in its own way and provided us an opportunity to grasp the concepts from the live exercise of Tower building!                                  

                                                               

                                                               

Everyone had to first estimate the maximum height of the tower and the person who quoted the highest tower started building it.  We encountered following 2 different scenarios -

Scenario		Proposed Count	Actual Count
1	Single person	15	22
2	Blindfolded person and his manager	22+	27

Scenario 1 : When there was a single person building a tower, he bears the entire responsibility for it. Although, he enjoys the freedom of doing things his own way. This also led to the discussion on goal settings. 

While setting the goals, an important point to be considered is it is always advisable to under-promise and over-deliver rather than over-promising and under delivering.

Scenario 2 : In this case, at first, everyone thought that the height of the tower would be less than that in the first case. But Prof. explained how this is not the case in such situations as the pressure of failures is shouldered by the management. And the above chart rightly justifies it.

 

                                            


A single student building a tower                                                       A blindfolded student building a tower with his instructor.

                                                                              

Upon analyzing both the situations, we discussed the advantages and disadvantages for the various parameters. The table below lists these parameters and the conclusions. 

Parameter	Craft Management	Modern Management
Workforce	Single person doing an entire work.	Multiple persons working on separate modules.
Skills	Increase	Decrease
Productivity	Low	High
Satisfaction	More	Less
Innovation	Less since a single person is responsible for possible failures.	More as employees have insulation from risks because of the presence of upper management

And hence the modern management is important for innovation and growth of the company.

Thank you..!

A unique class at NITIE...!!!

It was my second day at NITIE. The first class got over and we were waiting for the next class to begin. And it started... in the most extraordinary way!

Prof. Dr. Mandi was taking the class, which went on to become one of the most memorable experiences of my lifetime. The entire class vacated the chairs and we all were sitting on the floor with Prof. Mandi. It was learning in the simplest manner yet it was very effective and it made me think if all infrastructure really necessary to learn business?

                                                           The class enjoying the session.

 

The discussion that started with very informal topics like Mumbai rains soon shifted to the event ‘Mandi’. We learnt the concept of this event and how it has been successfully carried around since its inception. The session got even more interesting once the educational toys were out. Prof. showed us the Newton’s cradle, balancing butterflies and a stress ball with a globe on it. He also told us the success story of a group of engineering students who started the business of selling the Newton’s cradles while they were just in the 2nd year of their graduation. It was motivational.^.

 

Student looking at a Newton's cradle.

The very important aspects that I learnt from this class were that it is necessary to inculcate skills for selling the product, targeting right customers, believing in your product and keeping ethics as a top most priority while doing all this. The main theme that Prof. highlighted was that we all must apply our knowledge to earn and to be self dependent.
            Dr. Mandi also gave us a whole new perspective about blogging. We, being fortunate to have an opportunity to learn at such a great college, can spread this knowledge to the outside world through our blogs. He has shown us a path to bring about the change and I am thrilled as there is lot more to learn in the coming days.

So, more articles are coming up to share my wonderful experiences of this class and learnings from it.


Thank you,
Nehal Chaudhari.