TOWER BUILDING

This time he brought some cubes and the activity was to build a tower with the cubes, one above the other.
There was a bidding process, and the person with the maximum bid gets to build the tower. This is how one of us was selected and others guessed how many cubes will he be able to stack. The no. was 17.

Learnings 

1. Risk taking and the courage to spend. You cannot shy away from spending while laying the foundation of any enterprise( ofcourse, the spending should be careful).

2. Setting up a goal. You surely need some pre-defined objective which will motivate you to achieve it.

Next, a group of students were selected with one of them blindfolded, who was to build the tower, second was there to directly guide him and others were to guide the second guy. Exactly portraying the hierarchy of a company. This time the no. was 7.

Now the blindfolded guy is the employee who does the actual task, then the manager and the top management.

So we know how much of the performance depends on co-ordination among the various layers of the company. The lower end employee is as good as his manager and so on.

Another thing to be noticed is the difference between an individual doing a task and a group doing the same.

An individual can think, decide and act on it on his own( Lesser complexity) and he could make a bigger tower whereas the group could not achieve the same.

However i believe this was because of the nature of the task not because an individual is better than a group.

But what we learn from here is

1. Clarity and awareness about goals: All the employees should be informed about the vision and the target of the company and shouldn't be blindfolded.

2. Proper Scaling: And, a group should use the economy of scales for efficiency in operation. The group can make smaller towers but a number of them to use all their resources optimally. For a smaller operation, an individual is more efficient.
3. Deskilling: The companies have the option of and can try to deskill the job to an extent that anyone can perform that task and the company is not dependent on specific individuals for a particular job. It also brings DEXTERITY in employees making their operation much more efficient and less prone to error.
4. Division of work: In large setups, proper division and demarcation of jobs to be performed gives the employees better clarity and allows them to measure their job, self-assessment.

Other Learnings

Many of us deviated from our estimates when we were told that the student building the tower will be blindfolded.
A good manager,however, should set a goal and stick to it. Show faith in his employees. In hard times, the goal shouldn't be lowered but the effort should be raised.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

Enough for the day :p

But stay tuned!

And about my life here, TOO HECTIC.