Sunday, 28 July 2013

Navrang Riddle to learn management


NAVRANG RIDDLE:

There was a riddle give by our POM prof. Prasad at NITIE. The riddle was given to learn management concepts of how to set goals or purpose and how to achieve it by logical arrangement.

Riddle was as follow:

27 cubes were given of 9 different colors say Yellow (Y), Blue (B), Purple (P), Green (G), Orange (O), White (W), Red (R), Grey (Gr) and Brown (Br).

Goal or Purpose :  To make a big cube using all 27 small cubes with no two cubes of same color are adjacent (horizontal and vertical wise).

Here, my attempt to explain the algorithm to achieve the goal by logical arrangement.

We divide big cube in smaller component as given below:

1) element i.e single small cube .
2) rode i.e by connecting three small elements (cube).
3) plate i.e by connecting three rodes .
4) big cube i.e by connecting three plates.


Step 1 : To achieve this , make 9 groups with 3 cubes or elements of same color as show below.



Step 2: Now , we need to make rodes by using three different colored elements. To explain this lets take Yellow , Blue and Purple elements. We need to make three rodes , each rode has three positions (1,2,3 vertically) . Now each of the three color needs to occupy all three positions as show below.


here , YBP1 represent first rode of yellow , blue and purple color. similarly YBP2 and YBP3 are rode 2 and 3. 
similarly remaining 6 rodes can be made as shown below:
 Step 3 :  From rodes to plates .  To make a plate we need to connect three rodes horizontally with position 1,2  and 3. 

Take  YBP1 , GOW1 and RGRBR1 to make plate1 . 
Take   RGRBR2 , YBP2 and GOW2 to make plate 2.
Take  GOW3 , RGRBR3 AND YBP3 to make plate 3. As shown below.


Step 4: From plates to big cube (goal of this riddle)

Place plate 2 over plate 1 and plate 3 over plate 2 . By doing so we achieve our final goal of making bigger cube with not two small cubes or elements are adjacent to each other . 


In an organisations we have goal and we have processes to achieve them effectively and efficiently . We break our purpose in smaller modules and integrate them according to process defined to achieve our final goal. With this NAVRANG riddle we can easily understand these principles of managements. 


  

Sunday, 7 July 2013

Participative Management : Three Monks Story

                                                           Three Monks Story line


The three monks story can help us to learn some of the very basic but necessary management lessons. The story depicts the problems related to management and in the end one possible solution to the problem .

Story:

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on the top of a hill . He has one daily route task of bringing two bucket of water .   Soon second monk joined him and they share work between them. Everything was going fine. But problem started after the arrival of third monk . Every  monk expect that someone else would do the daily task. None of the monks was ready to make a team and participate in work. Consequently , no one    
fetches water though everybody was thirsty. One night,  temple caught fire . Situation forced them to work in a team and participate to mitigate the fire . They succeed in their endeavor and learnt a lesson of " unity is strength" . Next day they invent a method of fetching water and all three of them divide work among them . The temple never lack water again. 

Link :



Management Lessons Learnt From The Story:

a) Team work enhance efficiency

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


b) Conflicts / Dispute arises when there are more then one person involve in task and also due to lack of communications .
c) Conflicts and Dispute can be eliminated with the help of work division and participative management 
d) Innovation can help improve in efficiency
e) Productivity can also be improved by innovation .
f) Synergy : Sum of the two component is bigger than the whole (1+1 = 11)


Conclusion: 

Team work , participative management and innovation helped the three monks to resolve their problem 


Regards
Arun