LINKING S.M.A.R.T. GOALS & PYGMALION EFFECT

To many readers , who are novice in the field of management (like me ...), this heading looks abstruse and complex at the first sight :

What is PYGMALION effect ??? and  S.M.A.R.T. goals ???

Don't get  puzzled  !!!!  Bear with me as my motive is not to bog you down. Rather, I will try to make everything easy for you :)

This blog will help readers to connect the dots and unfold the hidden meanings attached with these words. But before moving further one thing should be kept in mind that "Goal Setting" , which looks easy from outside , requires a deep thought from all of us.  

In today's class , our professor told us the same thing that GOAL SETTING is very important before anyone starts achieving it. According to him , S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific , Measurable , Attainable , Relevant and Time-Bound. Yes, the acronym is open to different interpretations but the synergy among these specific words allows a person to realize his/her goals more effectively.

One of my classmates  said that 'S' could stand for STRATEGIC also , which led the discussion to the meaning of strategy. Prof. Prasad told us that strategy is not natural rather it is man- made to  accomplish one's short term goals. However, I do not want to divert from the topic of discussion as the crux of the matter is Goal Setting.

First of all , Let's take a simple question . How should one set one's goals ? Any idea............

Prof. Mandi told us that one should set one's  goals such that they don't pull one down. To put in nutshell , he told us that goals should act progressively on a person and not regressively.

Thereafter the discussion ensued and lots of other factors came into picture. Apart from Goal setting , there are some other factors which needs to be pondered. These are : Goal achieved , Goal History and last but not the least Potential.

Let us take them one by one and analyse how they are related :

firstly, Goal set should be greater than or equal to Goal achieved otherwise it can be inferred that one is  underestimating one's potential. Potential is a very heavy word . One must use his performance to utilize his true potential and every one knows that the potential is unlimited. So this cycle never ends as the more you dream big , the more you evolve . Besides it , this statement says it all that one should always set the goal higher than  one's previously achieved targets because everyone's  potential  would definitely be more than his previously achieved ones. To cut it short , It can be said that 

                

           GOAL SET  X  GOAL ACHIEVED = PERFORMANCE ( POTENTIAL )

Spiral growth

Understanding the above equation , one can say that if one's goal set is higher , then one would strive to achieve one's goal ; achieving one's goal leads to higher performance thereby increasing the goal set to a notch higher in the subsequent endeavors because of the increased confidence. So the pattern emerged out to be a spiral like a Fibonacci series : 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21........and so on. Isn't it ?? We should incorporate this into our life and see the improvements. 

So till now, we have seen that higher goal setting comes from an impulsive desire  i.e. if one has self confidence and he/she doesn't underestimate himself/herself , then s/he would definitely set his/her target high. However, Our Goal setting is not only influence by internal factors but also by an external factor. This factor is so well attached to our day to day life that many would seem  surprised at this : Expectation. Yes, this small thing can bring out a lot of hidden potential from others if used in a positive way. 

To study the influence of this factor , I want to bring second part of my topic under consideration : Pygmalion Effect. Many of you would have already anticipated about what is coming ahead. So let's go in a structured manner. 

Pygmalion Effect, also called self fulfilling prophecy, refers to the tendency in which more the expectations placed upon people, be they children, students or employees, the better they perform.We can see this effect in various relationships like Mother - children , Teacher - Students , Manger - Subordinates , Leader - follower , captain - players performer - audience and the list goes on...........

I want to take manager - subordinate relationship to make you understand this phenomenon as I assume that my readers are mature enough and empathize easily with this relation. Managers use this concept more often as a motivation tool to direct the efforts of their subordinates so that they don't underestimate themselves and always put in their best efforts . The application of this concept in most cases leads to enhanced performance by employees. The reason is obvious as the employee responds to the faith that the superior has reposed in her supposed ability. This response is most often positive as the desired goal is conditioned by the organisation and social expectations. The subject or employees' own desire is often subordinate to the overarching expectations from the superior. But hang on !!!  There is something related to this effect in earlier post also and if you are a careful reader then you can read between the lines. I think Theory Y managers also employ the same philosophy with their employees . Am I right or wrong ???

Many readers here start acquiescing to this fact that in Management everything is co -related  and if you miss a link , you miss the whole chain. So my advice to the readers is that start seeing every thing from all perspectives as all management concepts are interrelated.  

Adding to what I  said earlier , Pygmalion Effect has a great impact as the employee feels s/he is always under observation and there is a burden of expectations from the superior or organisation on his/her shoulders. 

Don't Do this please......

However, Pygmalion effect works  both ways i.e. positive as well as negative. Up until now , we have seen only the rosy side of Pygmalion effect but this effect comes with a caution. Negative expectation results in negative outcome. So , the bottomline is : this effect can make or break somebody to the core. 

Now time to stop as I think enough learning for today. Next blog will be coming soon. Keep reading...... :D 

McGregor Decoded !!!!

               
So welcome to my third blog. Here I want to discuss a very storied  yet very important concept of Management Theory. Yes, you guessed it right .................. I am talking of Douglas McGregor's immense contribution to the management for which the whole world will always bow down to him.

In his hugely influential 1960 book, The Human Side of Enterprise , McGregor 

made the simple yet powerful observation that managerial practice often expresses some very deep assumptions about the nature of human beings : Two competing theories about human nature, he claimed, dominate the managerial thought-world.

                              

                             

         
  

  Theory X and Theory Y

Theory X says :

 "You Have to be Joseph Stalin to get your work done"

Vs

                                                                           

 Theory Y says:

" We need the gurus to remind us that    business is all about people; that if you trust in people, they’ll trust you back"

Prof. Prasad's influential way of making us understand this concept through a matrix expanded our horizon of  knowledge regarding these management practices and made me ponder his next words thoroughly .  He told us about the types of managers one encounters during one's life.

                An X -Manager

Theory X says that the average human being is lazy and self-centered, lacks ambition, dislikes change, and longs to be told what to do. The corresponding managerial approach emphasizes total control. Employee motivation, it says, is all about the fear and the pain. That's why the starting quotation compares this management strategy with  Stalinist philosophy.

               

             

  Give your Employees water and let them bloom

Theory Y maintains that human beings are active rather than passive shapers of themselves and of their environment. They long to grow and assume responsibility.The best way to manage them, then, is to manage as little as possible. Give them water and let them bloom, say the Y-types. But please hold your horses.......because I am not done yet . 






Just look at the matrix below and try to analyse what can be the number of cases. 

Management Matrix

These are the four cases as per my analysis :

Category 1: Theory X manager and Lazy Employee 

This combination is generally found in those organisation which are on the lower rung of the   ladder.Now in this case perspective matters. How???

                                          

          

Theory X  manager's position is justifiable here in view of this fact that the workers under his supervision are Lazy so require "CARROT AND STICK"  approach but on the flip side we can say that showing  intimidating attitude towards the workers can backslide the whole organization to a lower level.              

           

Category 2: Theory X manager and Motivated Employee                         

This category is devil's cage because whatever you do you will not get your share of pie i.e. the bottomline remains the same that you will be treated as a lazy employee even if the reality is different.These type of organizations require no external conflicts as there is already a trust deficit there and also witness relatively higher attrition rate within the industry because an employee will always feel aloof from the organization goals. To say the least , a person requires  mettle to work in these organizations . 

 Category 3: Theory Y manager and Lazy Employee

                         

This category is contrast to category 2 because the tables have turned here as it presents a challenge to the manager rather than the employee and brings out the best of him/her because he/she is working against the flow of  river by expecting the unexpected from his/her lazy employees..............

Normally, these types of managers earn fame and popularity because they have the guts to bring the lazy employees out of their comfort zone who generally cling to their cozy corporate life.These organisations usually take more time to perform better in market just because it requires more time to bring the status quo to a more stabilized state.

 Category 4: Theory Y manager and Motivated Employee                         

This one represents those organisation who consistently perform better and set the   benchmark for others. 

Any other names for these organisations.....???? Hmm... Bellwether companies.   

This is an ideal condition in which every thing goes smooth and conflicts are generally absent.

But I do not want to pull my punches here and have to say that this scenario does not check the mettle of any manager because the adverse conditions are absent and learning curve for any manager will remain stagnant. 

This is my analysis and learnings from that lecture . Please comment or give your suggestions for the improvement of this blog:)         

MY MINI EIFFEL TOWER...........................

This is my second blog in series to the earlier one and more insightful and inspirational than the previous.


Dr. Prasad is becoming more and more interesting in his fundae and I want to discuss here one very important concept of Organization and Management. Everyone has heard the words like CRAFTSMANSHIP and ORGANIZATION but I am very sure that no one has ever been delved into the details of these terms.

What is an organization??? Can craftsmanship be categorized as management?? Does one person constitute an organization?? There are an umpteen number of questions which can be asked at this juncture but I am sure after reading this blog, there wouldn't be an iota of doubt in the minds of readers.

Dr. Mandi is becoming  mysterious day by day in his teaching philosophy and till the end we were on tenterhooks that what would happen in our class. Same thing happened in our today's lecture when we came to know that Craftsmanship involves a negligible management and one person can hardly form an organization. Whatever one does, one does it for his/herself. One does not require a management to perform a task individually. Sounding awry !!!! I want to quote a wonderful example of his that a person who mends shoes at the roadside doesn't know the nitty-gritty of management. Moreover, s/he is not conversant with the jargons of management such as scalability, sale, performance, time management, targets etc. Then Prof. Prasad explained that a person starts as an entrepreneur and later on enhance the scalability to the level of organization, where the organization and management terms come into play. A person at the lower level of scalability is highly satisfied compared to a person at higher level of scalability. However, one can also achieve the same level of satisfaction while talking of an organization.

The second concept is regarding the making of an organization which was beautifully demonstrated by Dr. Mandi. The task was comprised of building the tower (as high as possible) with the wooden cubes. Then out of the blue a question was asked by him .Who wants to build the tower??? And as usual the silence prevailed................
 

A still from second lecture

                                        

And later on a proper bidding happened for this task. Meanwhile , when everybody was reluctant to come forward then a new learning came out regarding the attitude of all spectators ( more precisely , SILENT SPECTATORS ).We were just showing our risk averse behavior which could be detrimental for us to be a manager. Finally, the bidding ended at the price of Rs. 500. The next question aroused : How tall tower one can establish?? Again everyone set their target low. Mr. Prasad told us that setting a low target would make every one satisfied early in their life and a high target would make us work more and grant us an opportunity that will push us to our extreme limits. But I think there are some exceptions to the concept of " HIGH RISK HIGH RETURN " strategy. Many people believe that setting lower expectations and later on delivering higher outputs is better. But we can say that the matter is subjective and requires a further discussion which would be out of the purview of this blog............ 

Then came the bottomline of the whole lecture with a task which was performed last , when our professor asked a team of eight people to collectively build the tower with only one person (blindfolded) building the tower and second person dictating him and rest of the people are suggesting from behind. This scenario can be suitably matched with the working of an organization having a huge middle tier of mangers. What happened at the end .......any guesses?????

                                      

A Confusing Situation

                                       

Contrary to what was expected, they were not able to build a huge tower. The main setback for this was the overdose of suggestions from the six people( acting as "middle level mangers") who rather confused the person ( acting as a "worker" in an organization) who was building the tower. Prof. Prasad told that an overly managed organization should cut down the size of its middle tier managers and move toward FLAT organizational structure to become more effective because there is always a problem for any organization to justify a huge bunch of middle managers where as it is relatively easy to manage workers.


These are some useful learnings from the second lecture of our professor. Stay tuned for more.........

FIRST DAY @NITIE................

As this is my first blog so don't expect much from me. So here it goes..............

The mesmerizing atmosphere of god's own campus "NITIE" needs no description. And the pedagogy followed by professors here adds further icing on the cake. We all waited a lot to realize our dream of becoming the part of this elite batch 2013-15(more specifically , PGDIM XX) right from the starting of our race to management arena. And this race ends here.


          Any management enthusiast will be lucky if the person who teaches is Prof. Mandi who defies a conventional image of a professor . A person who gives a new way of thinking to those people who were earlier mere frogs in a well. We all were lucky that we got a chance of interacting with Mr. T. Prasad (Also famous by the name of " Prof. Mandi " among the student fraternities). His session started with a strange style of throwing away some toys to others. All toys had some hidden learnings which were later on told by him. First session , packed with the non traditional way of teaching , had a huge insights to the motto of his lecture " AAJ KI ROTI , AAJ HI KAMANI HAI ". And not to forget his famous lines which have been etched in my mind  

                                    " SOCHO BECHO , BECHO SEEKHO , SEEKHO SOCHO "

Smiling All Around!!!

His lecture was a kind of an eye opener to almost whole of the batch when every one came to know that how many things were at stake during our tryst in NITIE. Our each day boiled down to the opportunity cost of Rs. 2500 or more which adds a further responsibility on our shoulders to walk an extra mile and put an end to the life of a person who earns his bread and butter from the alms of others. This vibrant talk from our exuberant professor is the first stepping stone to our path to become an independent person.


The lecture was good in some other sense too that it gave us a chance to know about our diverse batch mates and also introduced the significance of BLOGGING. After that session we  got to know that blogging could be the means to teach those people who are not so privileged as we are. Further we were told  the success stories of some famous alumni , specifically Mr. Mrunmay Chakraborty ,who was his student in NITIE.

Our lecture ended on a motivational note which was in the form of a song sung by Pink Floyd "Another Brick In The Wall ". Mr. Prasad motivated us to become an innovator (breaking all boundaries ) rather than a close minded dumb fellow so that we can enlighten this world with our knowledge and obviate the necessity of universities in this country. Now time has come to put an end to this blog. But mind you this is only a start ; rest of the things are yet to come because no body knows  what is there in store for us......................Eagerly waiting for his next class.

P.S.  Bless me with your comments/suggestions