THE VALLEY CROSSING EXERCISE

Every organization faces challenges. Often the case is that, at any point of time, one department of the organization may perform extremely well while some other department may not. The real challenge is to carry the organization forward through these hurdles through support and cooperation. This is very well demonstrated by the Valley Crossing Exercise.

The Valley Crossing Exercise

As the photo depicts, there are 3 people who are carrying a bamboo with them. The bamboo represents the organization and the 3 people represent the different departments. The 3 people have to cross a valley safely and reach the other side. The width of the valley is such that at any instant, it will completely have a person hanging on the bamboo and the hanging person will have to be supported by the other two persons.

During the exercise, anyone of the three persons can be at the following three risk levels:

1)      Risk free (safe) – Completely on ground

2)      Half Risk – One half on ground and the other half hanging

3)      Full Risk – Completely hanging

Structuring The Task

Managers will structure the task such that it is executed in an easier way. They are solution providers. The task is structured keeping in mind the below mentioned aspects:

• Everyone is at equally risky position at all times
• Communication and feedback across 3 members are instantaneous
• Interdependence among the 3 members is crucial
• Distance between two persons are >1 foot step length and <2 foot steps length
• Maximize Excellence
• Maximize profitability

While carrying out the activity, there can be 9 possible combinations in which different members of this team will be at different risk levels which is shown in the table below:

Position	Person A	Person B	Person C
^^^	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE
^^^	Half Hanging - HALF SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE
^^^	Fully Hanging - UNSAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE
^^^	Half Hanging - HALF SAFE	Half Hanging - HALF SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE
^^^	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Fully Hanging - UNSAFE	Half Hanging - HALF SAFE
^^^	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Half Hanging - HALF SAFE	Half Hanging - HALF SAFE
^^^	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Fully Hanging - UNSAFE
^^^	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Half Hanging - HALF SAFE
^^^	Completely on Ground - Safe	Completely On Ground - SAFE	Completely On Ground - SAFE

LEARNING FROM VALLEY CROSSING EXERCISE:

TRUST :  The single most important factor for their success was the trust factor. Trust was necessary for them because when somebody was in full risky state all of his hope were on the other two and if any of the two failed then he could have fallen into the valley. But he kept on the faith and made it to the other side of the valley . Similarly even in commercial level we need to trust others. We need to trust other people and have faith in their talent and capability.

SHARING OF RESPONSIBILITY :  At all the positions while crossing everyone shared equal responsibility.At no time was any person more responsible for a success/failure than the other one and this defines why they had success in the end. They showed great responsibility while carrying each other. Similarly in our business world we need to share and take responsibility . Unless we take it ourselves nothing would be beneficial for us.Once we start taking it and execute it properly we will see results showing good in our favor as well.

FOCUS :  Focus was one thing that they did not lose. Until they had reached their goal they did not even shifted their focus for a single bit. This defines a true quality of an entrepreneur. One should never lose focus till one has reached where he had aspired for.

COORDINATION : Nothing would have been possible unless there was coordination at place. If they had lost a single bit of coordination  at any point then the whole idea would have failed. Similarly in our business world we need to coordinate things properly. If not done well the whole thing could go haywire resulting in utter failure of the concept in spite of hard work.This coordination should be there all throughout the hierarchy of the organization .

LESSONS FROM IM-10 – Shri Nikhil Kulkarni

Who says learning can only be achieved in an academic subject class? Yes this was a class in the academic building but the ingredients were not quite the same. It was the first time that we were getting to interact with a NITIE alumnus. The alumni are the assets of any college and we were having the first glimpse of the assets that NITIE possesses. Courtesy Prof Prasad (our beloved Mandi Sir).

Shri Nikhil Kulkarni passed out of NITIE as an IM-10 batch alumnus and is currently a consultant in KPMG. He had come for a guest lecture alongwith his batchmates Shri Hemant and Shri Aribit.

Prof Prasad had sent to all of us the link for Nikhil Sir’s blogs. Most of us had read that one blog regarding ‘Experience Vs Freshers – MBA’ as it related to all of us in one or the other way.

Shri Hemant Kulkarni with Prasad Sir

Nikhil Sir started out the session asking us why would one go for entrepreneurship rather than going for a job. Everybody in the class had his/her opinions but a logical rationale was given by Nikhil Sir regarding the difference between starting out as a professional with some firm and starting out as an entrepreneur. He reminded us that when we talk of having to manage an enterprise, the same kinds of responsibilities are imposed after some time in any job. One would be responsible for profits/losses in an entity as is the case in entrepreneurship. The crux of the matter is that only if someone has the extreme urge and passion to take up something of his own should he go for entrepreneurship. He also said that setting up a company would take only 30 minutes. The only things required would be an idea and a domain name. The website would be established and your business will get running. What would sustain your business, however, is the fact that how you make use of your resources and how fast you embrace innovation.

Talking about entrepreneurship, Nikhil Sir and Hemant Sir discussed the idea of their brainchild ‘Mastishk’ which was setup by them. It was an online portal involving simulations of business-like situations which eventually became a big hit among all the students. They discussed how nobody was initially interested in ‘Mastishk’ and they had a difficult time selling the idea to ‘Prerna’ – the organizers of the NITIE’s premium annual event. Everything right from coding to developing the interface for the online portal was done in-house. Buoyed by the response, everybody eventually wanted to be a part of it. Sponsorships started coming in and the business started rolling on its own. Their interviews for placements also revolved around Mastishk.

Touching upon other aspects of their professional life, they provided us subtle inputs about how their life actually is. Nikhil Sir told us that he did not return home back from office before 11.30 pm for 3 out of 5 working days at KPMG. It’s important to maintain a work life balance when you are faced with such long working hours. He also talked of the politics that usually happens in every workplace and it is up to the individual to tackle it.

In between all this, we had the energetic Hemant Sir who before saying anything had asked us all about the NITIE pond and the 96 steps (there are actually 94). He is one of the few guys who have been selected for an HR role which is a rarity in NITIE. Talking of his placement, he said that he had written his responsibilities for Mastishk in his CV as C2C, which means ‘Chaprasi to Chairman’. He had the zeal for human resources which was quite evident in his CV and mannerisms during his interview. And because of this zeal and enthusiasm, he was taken for an HR role even though the company had come for some other profile. His simple advice to all of us was to do what we had passion for.

The first session from the alumni cleared a lot of doubts for all of us. We hope to frequently have these sessions in the future.

After the session, I read some of the other blogs of Nikhil Sir like ‘Salesman Vs Professional’ and ‘Should one drop out to become an entrepreneur’. Each of these blogs had been very analytical. I would be reading his other blogs soon as each of them deals with one or the other real life experiences. And I hope that I would be able to again meet these alumni at some point in my professional life.

THE THREE MONKS - A SILENT MOVIE THAT SPOKE AT LENGTH ABOUT MANAGEMENT

THE THREE MONKS

With each class, my understanding of some basic concepts about management and organization gets enhanced because of the practical examples discussed in class by Prof Mandi. This week, after the discussion on goal setting and the smart approach, it was time to watch a movie – The Three Monks. This is a very famous 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 an animation film with no dialogues but speaks a lot about team effort and cooperation.

The Movie:

There was a small temple on a mountain and a little monk in the temple. His daily routine was shouldering water, chanting sutras, knocking the wooden fish, adding water to the holy water bottle on the table honoring the Goddess of Mercy, and watching over the mice from stealing food at night. His life was smooth and comfortable. Soon after, a tall monk came. He drank half of the jar’s water as soon as he arrived at the temple, so the little monk asked him to fetch water. The tall one thought it was unfair for him to fetch water alone, so he asked the young one to do it together. They could only carry one bucket a time, and they would only feel content when the bucket was placed in the middle of the shoulder pole. Anyway, they still had water to drink in this way. Then, a fat monk came. He wanted to drink, but there was no water in the jar. The short monk and the tall one asked him to fetch water by himself. He carried a bucket of water, and drank it up immediately. From then on, nobody would fetch water, so they had no water. Everyone chanted his own sutras and knocked his own wooden fish. As nobody would add water to the holy water bottle, the plant in the bottle withered soon. At night, a mouse came out stealing, but everyone pretended not to see it. As a result, the mouse was so rampant that it knocked over the candleholder and caused a fire. Only thus did the three monks make a concerted effort to put out the fire, and finally awaken. After that, they started hanging together and the temple never lacked water again.

Management Lessons Learnt From The Movie:

1)     A task can be performed more efficiently when one person has entire control of activities – In the beginning, there was a single monk in the monastery who was free to do all the things the way he liked. So he planned for himself and carried out all the activities without any interference from anyone else. As a result, there was water readily available at all times.

2)    Necessity of Team Work – Team work is absolutely necessary in order to come out of a problematic situation. It can be seen from the movie that only when the three monks came together and put all out efforts that the fire could be extinguished. Had they not been working as a team it would not have been possible for them to save the temple from the fire.

3)    Undefined Responsibility Relations lead to chaos – Each member of the team needs to be explained his/her responsibilities in the task. Without this, there will not be proper understanding about one’s roles in the team. This may lead to missing out on certain activities and eventually ineffective completion of the task. In the movie, there was no clear cut role assigned to each of the monks. As a result, none of the monks worked and that lead to shortage of water in the monastery.

4)     Unnecessary ego should be avoided among team members –

     The three monks in the movie developed unnecessarily large egos and consequently nobody bothered to discuss the problem with each other and find a suitable solution. It is in the team’s interests that ego be avoided and cooperation be given its due credit.

Bring About Innovation

Avoid Ego Clashes

5)      Initiative – None of the monks in the movie took the initiative to divide the work among themselves. They  let things happen without any effort to control them and the this resulted in the fire at the temple. It is necessary in any team to take initiative towards resolving any issues and working as a team.

6)     Innovation – After the fire had been put off, the monks amicably worked together and designed an innovative pulley system where every monk had a well defined job and their efforts also got reduced. This shows that innovation can lead to unique and helpful solutions for any situation and organization.

7)     Resolving Conflict – Conflict of interest can arise in any workplace and any organization but it is imperative to resolve them amicably and work in alignment towards the goal of the organization. The three monks also finally resolved their conflicts and then lived happily together in the monastery.

8)      Productivity – the methods applied by the monks included bringing 2 buckets by one monk and bringing 1 bucket by 2 monks. This brings in the debate of individual vs team productivity. As per productivity analysis method 2 is more productive than method 1. This is shown in the table given below. Assuming one man uses 1 unit of energy to lift 1 bucket.

Event	Output (No. of buckets)	Input(Worker Energy units)	Productivity = Output/Input
1 Man – 2 buckets	2	2	1
2 Men – 1 bucket	1	0.5	2

1 Man - 2 Buckets

2 Men - 1 Bucket

BECOME SMARTER THROUGH THE S.M.A.R.T APPROACH

It was yet another enriching experience with Prof Mandi at NITIE wherein we learned to deal with things through the SMART way. This time the class started with some practical demonstration of mathematical concepts which till now had been learned only theoretically. Prof Mandi had brought with him a cube which had different segments of rectangles and cubes made inside. On careful observation of the cube, it could be observed that it was actually a practical demonstration of the formulae (a + b)² and (a + b)³. I had learned these formulae in class 6^th at school, however, it was for the first time that I was able to visualize them.

The Pygmalion Effect 

Prof Mandi also discussed with us the Pygmalion Effect which states that the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. The effect is named after Pygmalion, a play by George Bernard Shaw. In any organization, it is necessary to let employees know what is expected of them and give them a time frame in which they need to finish their task. In such an environment, the expectations are bound to make them work harder which will benefit the employee as well as the organization.

"Aim at the sun and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself"

Examples of Pygmalion Effect:

1)      Expectations of Parents with their children

2)      Expectations of a teacher from his students

3)      Expectations of Captain form his team

4)      Expectations of a general from his soldiers

5)      Expectations of an audience from the performing artist

It can be seen that in all the above cases, expectations make people perform better and brings out the best in them. The higher the expectations, the better the performance and vice versa.

Goal Setting and Goal Achievement –

                        A goal perfectly set is half way reached

The first and foremost requirement to do any task is to set an achievable goal first and the best technique to set this goal would be the SMART approach, smart in the literal as well as practical way.

The SMART Approach:

The setting of any goal should fulfill all the above parameters, only then can we expect to achieve them in their truest senses.

Goal achievement is also dependent on goal setting. The goals set should be more than the historically achieved goal. If it is less than the mark already achieved, it would not be progressive and the performance would not be in accordance with the potential. Every individual has infinite potential. The goal set should be such that it exceeds the potential. One may not be able to achieve it but this will help him in performing to the best of his abilities and coming as close to his full potential as he can.

Goal Setting X Goal Achievement = Performance

 The graph shown below sums up the priority of positioning of the various parameters while setting a goal.

   In the shown graph, 

            A -Goal Set

            B - Potential

            C - Goal Achieved

            D - Historically Achieved 

My Management Lesson Of The Day From Prof Mandi – Only theoretical learning will not make you a good manager. Learn things the practical way.