“If everyone helps to hold up the sky, then one person does not become tired.”

 

If I have to explain the title of this post, then you have to view the below video.

The story goes like this...

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. Another monk arrives the temple and they start sharing the responsibility.In order to divide the load, they both figure out a way so that the pole could be carried by both of them but the carry pole could then be used for carrying only one bucket. They are still content. A third monk arrives and goes to fetch the water. He gets so exhausted in the task that he drinks all the water by himself. So he evades from the task. Eventually everyone starts expecting the other person to take on the chore. Consequently, 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 desperate situation makes the three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. They take the help of the pulley and divide the work amongst all three of them according to their capabilities. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again. 

Below are the three possible solutions for this.

• Each of the monk carrying two buckets of water.
• Two monks sharing one bucket of water.
• Scientific way
• Two monks carrying three buckets of water.

And it goes without explanation that the scientific way is the most efficient one for reasons like Work is evenly distributed,No one is overloaded and the processes are well defined.

Learnings from the story

1.      Team Work enhances the efficiency

Team work plays the key role in the organization. It helps to do the task efficiently and effectively. It helps in proper coordination among the employees. Also if the work is done in the team, it can be divided as per the skills of the employees so that it can be finished faster. It’s the responsibility of the Manager to coordinate with all the team members.

2. Disputes in an Organisation

However Organised your team is, it is impossible to be without disputes.Thinkings do clash in a high profile work environment.It is impossible for individuals for to think in the same way while working in a team.But it is also up to the individuals what are the measures they are taking to overcome it.At any cost, it should not affect the objectives of the organisation.I would like to sight my personal experience here.When I was working in Wipro, there was a situation when both myself and my manager lost our cool and shouted at each other very badly.Both of us could have acted assertively in that situation.But unfortunately situation got better of us.Though Eventually things eased out after couple of meetings, it was rather a ugly fight.Both of us had our own perception about things.

3.      Scientific Measures to solve the problem

For any problem if we use scientific measures to solve it, the quality of the solution would always be better.As in this case, three monks would never have a fight for bringing water and that scientific measure helped them to understand the importance of team work.And eventually their burden of work also got reduced.

4.Synergy

Always,

1+1>2

If the work is shared among the people, different ideas do come in and will help us to reach our goal at the earliest.

"United, we Stand

Divided you fall"

Hope this would have given all the readers the importance of team work.Meet you in my next blog....

Valley Crossing - Great Example of Team Work

What is teamwork in practice? How many times have we talked about or heard from others the word being used to mean the ability to work along with a set of people. But Team Work means more than that. The Valley Crossing Problem is one such case where teamwork finds it true meaning. 

But what is the valley crossing problem? 

As the figure shows the problem is based on three people crossing the bridge over a gap. The points to focus in this case is that all the people have to play a role here, be it a prominent or a supporting one. The gap shown in the figure is greater than one normal step of the people there and less than two steps so that one cannot easily bridge the gap by jumping one step over it and at the same time not so large that two people are left hanging in the air at the same time. 

Best solution to the above problem is clearly demonstrated in the above picture.This is how a team work should be.When one of your team member is in trouble, the others should come to his rescue so that everyone are able to attain the common goal.

Persons	First Person	Second Person	Third person
Step
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Risky	Safe	Safe
3	Safe	Risky	Safe
4	Safe	Safe	Risky

This illustrates a classical example of team work.A pragmatic managers keeps his ears and eyes open so as to pre empt such occurrences and prepare accordingly. 

And I would like to thank Dr.Mandi for making us understand such concepts in a way which only he can!!Thank you Sir for all your efforts.

“Employers are like horses — they require management.”

Answers for many of my queries that popped in my mind when I was working in Wipro Technologies were answered in the second class of Dr. Mandi. And that too in a most practical way that I would never forget.

The difference between Top Level ,Middle Level and Working level was clearly explained in the most efficient way with a practical game.The game goes like this.

It is a simple game of constructing a single tower with the several cubes available to the maximum potential.Initially Sir asked us to make it with our eyes open and it was a open bid. Maximum bid was 15 and the student was able to build 17 block tower.

Lesson Learnt from this act.

• We need to set the targets high always.It is always good fall short of the target after setting it high.Because this would help us to perform to our maximum potential
• And we should not miss out on the opportunities that is provided to us.We should be smart enough to take control of the opportunities.

Part -2

Now the task given is that we will have two persons.One will be blind folded and the other will be instructing him to build the tower.With the increase in the adversity people tend not to take risks.
There was a bid for 18(just one above what has been achieved in the above exercise).

And to our surprise the guys were able to build 26 blocks.We were awestruck with this exercise.

Learnings

• Organisation is all about INTERDEPENDENCE of each and every member in a team and how well everyone is able to perform their organisation.
• The blindfolded person is like the actual employee, doesn't know about the strategic decisions taken by the organisation.But still he is the real performer.It is up to the  management to get the best out of him even without informing about the actual business decisions.
•   In this new era, Organisation is trying to split the whole work into number of separate blocks such that no big intelligence is required in doing the things.

And Dr. Mandi thought us all these things in such a way we cannot forget the things in our lifetime.Great going Mandi sir!!!

The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat !!!

Oooops!!!I haven't seen a place which rains like this before in my life.It was a different experience altogether.As I haven't seen so much of rain before, I have also not seen a Professor like T.Prasad (And Of course, we share the same name.:-) ).He was so down to earth that he made everyone of us sit on the floor where he had already reserved a place for himself.I haven't imagined even in my widest dreams that management lessons can be thought in this way as I was thinking it to be a very formal one.But this professor proved to me and my friends that he is going behind an efficient way to teach us management.

I want to be an entrepreneur right from my childhood and no one have explained me about the business in such a simple way as our Professor Mandi (This is how our Professor is otherwise called as).He showed us some simple scientific toys which I have never seen in any of the market but the children would definitely love that.

And a stress ball with globe printed on it was another example for innovation.And the next picture shows how simple balls can help in understanding great science concepts.All I learnt from his class is we need not have good capital to start a business but thinking differently should be good enough.He doesn't stop here!!He was also speaking about how to earn money while studying in a B-School.Though it was very good to hear, honours is on us to materialise whatever he said.

And after all hearing to his lectures the thing that came to my mind was the topic of this blog.

Looking forward for further learning from his class in a more practical way!!!

Keep Reading for further updates!!!