Tower Building Activity

In this activity students were asked to build a tower of wooden cubes in the class room.

Students had to follow certain rules while building the tower. Rules were

1.Wooden cube Tower is made with only one cube base.
2. At a time only one cube is placed for building the tower

3. Student building tower can use only one hand
4. When tower falls ... the game is over.

This activity was performed in 2 ways.

Single student doing it, following above mentioned rules.

A team of 2 students with one student blind folded who will do tower building and second student supporting and guiding him with directions. The Second student was neither allowed to touch cubes nor to the blind folded partner.

Dr. Mandi asked students about their estimations about height of tower. Mr Rajat got chance to actually perform the tower building in 1st way, i.e. with open eyes. He could make the tower with 22 blocks which was more than his own goal.

Dr. Mandi again asked students for their estimates for tower height when it has to be created in 2nd way. This time all set up the goal less than 22. Majority of the students quoted  in 12 to 18 range. Mr Pranesh was blind folded and Mr Rishi Gupta guided him with direction. They took more time but to the surprise of all they managed to build tower of 25 blocks height.

So what we learned from this activity?

1.     Goal setting

We usually prefer setting a goal much lower than our potential while Management (other students in case of this activity) puts a goal much higher than that. This result in a strenuous relationship between management and employee and most of the time employee ends up performing quite below his/her potential. Goal setting is a combined process and both management and employee should work on setting a smarter goal.

Effectiveness is also about performing equally good in adverse conditions. A good management doesn’t just reduces its Goal due to adverse conditions; it looks for solutions to be equally productive despite adversity, as was displayed by the blindfolded student being able to build 25 blocks tower with the help of his partner’s guidance.

2.     Craftsmanship Vs. Modern Management

Activity done in 1st way was representing craftsmanship where decision making and doing actually doing work is done by the same person.Whereas 2nd way represents modern management where the person supporting is doing management, i.e. guiding the blindfolded person and blindfolded person is doing actual work. 

Also, craftsmanship and modern management has following differences.

	Craftsmanship	Modern Management
No. of people involved	One	More than one
Work Flow	Work is done in a  Sequential manner	Work is done in Parallel
Specialization of workers	Craftsman is jack of all trades	Smallest piece of work is done by a worker many times
Satisfaction Levels	High	Low
Interdependency	Low	High
Skill Levels	High Skill is required	Deskilling is done here to gain advantage in terms of providing less training. Therefore low skill is required.

3.     3 E’s of Management

 The 3 E’s of management which are required to be achieved by any organization are

    1)    Effectiveness

    2)    Efficiency

    3)    Excellence

Effectiveness can be defined as the capability of producing intended result that is acceptable to others and appeals to the masses. It is tough to achieve and only few people can work on it.

Efficiency is the ratio of Output to Input. It is easier to achieve.

Effectiveness is synonymous to right direction and efficiency to speed. So, if one is effective and efficient one can excel, similar to the person who runs fast in a right direction wins. So the formula for excellence becomes–

  

      EXCELLENCE    =             EFFICIENCY          *     EFFECTIVENESS