All you need is an idea

An idea can change your life

The very first session organized by B-Gyan that I attended and the topic was Global Pharmaceutical Industry Trends: SCM challenges & opportunities in the market By Mr. Rajesh Pednekar, Head distribution, Pfizer Ltd. But it actually was a session on entrepreneurship in disguise.

And, if you have even 0.1% of that entrepreneurship spirit in you, that guy made sure that it was multiplied by 1000 and you are , all of a sudden, looking for new ideas to start your own venture as if someone hypnotized you. I mean if you sell a 1 rupee good to the entire nation, you can make a billion bucks. All you need to figure out is something the nation requires. Address the problems faced by the nation and make a fortune out of it.

So it started with how attractive India is as an economy and what are the opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry and, there certainly are many with a large amount of patents expiring in the coming two years. Then something about the supply chain challenges faced by pharmaceutical industry and how GST is going to play a positive role in that.

Then comes the main part, Entrepreneurship. Have you ever imagined or considered 10 lakhs in a job and 10 lakhs in a business is different? How tax inefficient jobs are? With the same income of 10 lakhs and same expenses, you can save about 7 times more in a business. Isn’t it amazing? You have the freedom to decide what to do, you can leave a settled business for your kid and I can tell you “n” no. of advantages. So the ball is in your court and you are the one to decide if you want to be an employee or The Employer.

Looking forward for another inspiring session from B-Gyan but more than that thinking of an idea, a problem to address. And Guys, the idea will flow from your day to day life only. Just think what all problems you or some or the other section of the society faces in the daily activities and how they can be improved. 
Good Luck.

Inequality

And this is not from the curricullum.

Global Wealth Inequality

Time to change the rules.

Time to THINK!

Three Monks

Watch this animated short movie and try to figure out yourself what management lessons can we learn from it.

So, how was the movie and its peculiar music?
Three Monks (Chinese: 三个和尚, San ge he shang) is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. After the cultural revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animations created as part of the rebirth period. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.
The film is based on the ancient Chinese proverb "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.
Now, before we talk about management lessons lets talk about some general learnings.

• Courtesy followed by animosity.

This will happen in real life as well, if you try to take undue advantage of something or someone, at one point it will surely backfire.

• An incident, no matter how bad it is, leaves you with a good lesson.

Fire in the monastery did a similar thing in this short. It made the monks realize what they are capable of achieving together as a team.

• The smallest of things might lead to the biggest of disasters.

The rat in this case.
Now, back to the subject :p , the management lessons:

Scenario 1

In case of a single monk, he is able to fetch 2 buckets of water using the principle of a fulcrum to good effect.

Now, in this case, the monk knows that he has to do the job and he puts in his dedicated effort. A good example of Craftsmanship, we talked about in the previous blogs.

Scenario 2

In this case, none of them wants to work alone and expects the other to put in equal effort.
You see such things happening in corporations as well. Do you remember any colleague who worked and had no problem with you not contributing to it?

They together share the load of a single bucket and though the no. of buckets per person has decreased compared to the earlier example but the effort put in by the two has decreased even further after they use a scale to determine the center.

No. of buckets per person is one fourth but the effort is even lesser, one fifth or something.
You will have to do the exercise to find out if the effort is actually lower :p
One more thing to learn here is that two incompatible persons can lower each other's productivity like the tall and the short monk were struggling to adjust with each other.

LET's take tennis for instance, a top seeded singles player might not be able to deliver the same in doubles. Or a doubles player might perform exceptionally with one player but might not be equally effective with someone else.
So, we make teams in which the members compliment each other and allow the members to deliver their maximum. NADAL and FEDERER, or MURRAY and DJOKOVIC one of the best in the business when it comes to singles but can they make the best doubles pair?

Scenario 3

In this case, the 3rd monk comes in the picture and its chaos in the monastery. It was a complete absence of co-ordination. But then once the fire broke out, they started putting in their full effort and ultimately innovated a new way of doing the same task(pulley system). 
You see how innovation can bring maximum results in minimum effort and time.
Another thing to notice is how they chose particular individuals for specific tasks based on their strengths and doing the same thing time and again brought DEXTERITY in their job and resulted in maximum efficiency. 

To sum up

Scenario	One	Two	Three
Effort	10 joules	2+2 joules	½+½+½ joules
Output	2 buckets	1 bucket	1 bucket
Efficiency	20%	25%	66%

* the figures used are only indicative.

Academic learnings :

1. Division of work: Proper division of work improves performance as there is no conflict and there is clear demarcation of jobs to be done by each employee.
2. Innovation: Any job can be simplified even further with continuous innovation and monitoring of the performance.
3. Least effort and Process improvement: The companies should consistently strive for process improvement to find out the option with the least effort, there is always a scope of betterment.
4. Scaling: In businesses, we need scaling many a times to keep up with the ever-increasing demand and scaling is not simply increasing the output of the previous process, it requires process change sometimes as well.
5. Mutual understanding and consent: The manager needs to ensure that the employees share a cordial relation to maximize their efficiency and minimize the chances of conflict.

Remember, there are numerous lessons that can be learnt from the most ordinary events in life, all we need is an intent and the right perspective.
Do still remember the music, i certainly do.
Auf wiedersehen!

Pygmalion Effect

GOAL SETTING

Goal setting as we have already talked about is an integral part of management. But now we will talk about effective goal setting which is a two part process, setting a goal and then also designing a strategy to achieve the same. So the goal setting should be SMART.

SMART

Specific - The goal should be specific and precise. It should be leading towards exactly the desired direction.

Measurable - It should be measurable so that it can be defined if the stated goal has been met or not. measurable goals can boost the performance.

Attainable - Keeping the goal realistic is very important to keep the team motivated. It should always consider the circumstances, resources available, strengths and weaknesses.

Relevant - The goal set should be relevant to the task at hand and should align with the vision and mission of the company.

Time-bound - And ofcourse, the goals set should be time bound so as to make the workforce deliver its best and not postponing things to a later date.

And it affects the outcome in many ways like

• directing the effort and energy towards a single direction.
• Motivating the workforce to put in extra effort.
• Giving a sense of achievement to the team.
• Inculcating the spirit of persistently pursuing the goal.

But then there is a twist, and that is Pygmalion effect.

We talked about motivating the employees through appropriate goal setting but now we say, set a goal marginally beyond their potential.

Studies tell us that  bigger the aim greater the effort. Going by this, we follow the graph given below while goal setting and keep it just marginally above the potential to achieve 100 % potential and this is called the PYGMALION EFFECT ( google it).

This was practically demonstrated in the class by making the students set different goals and then trying to achieve them( again tower building).

Now one more thing to learn, simple things in life can teach millions of lessons(tower building in this case).
I have a real life example here, I gave CAT and aspired to score atleast 99 percentile and here i am in NITIE, because i aimed high and came close to my aim. And i know many of my friends, my batch mates in Patiala who worked hard but wanted anything above 90 in CAT and sadly, this played against them and they couldn't unleash their potential.

So guys aspire, set a SMART goal, and see how pygmalion effect plays its role.