The Pygmalion effect

The Pygmalion effect is a phenomenon which effectiveness in stimulating creativity is only surpassed by its simplicity.

Teacher-Student Relation(example of Pygmalion effect)

In the story told by the Roman poet Ovid, Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he has created. George Bernard Shaw borrowed the theme for his play Pygmalion  in which a Professor Henry Higgins makes over the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, becoming besotted with her even as he teaches her how to speak proper English.

The ‘Pygmalion effect’ works through the self-fulfilling prophecy – that one’s positive or negative expectations about someone’s behavior, capability or performance lead to a higher propensity for the behavior, capability or performance to manifest.

To put in simple words the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

So what do I do to harness the Pygmalion effect?

Things you can do are for example:
• Encourage your employees to set innovative goals
• Praise creative efforts, even if they weren’t successful
• Stress the importance of the sharing of ideas among colleagues
• Be creative yourself – serve as a role model
• ‘Stand up’ for your employees innovative efforts
• Take pride in your employees achievements
• Publicly recognize innovative work.

Use of Pygmalion Effect in Goal Setting process:

The prof told us about the few things which must be kept in mind while setting goals:

I will denote each set with an alphabet and we will derive a relation between them.

A – Potential

B – Goal Set

C – Goal Achieved

D – Historical Record.

The Goal Set should follow a spiral path just like a snail which keeps on growing in a spiral way starting from a point. This kind of growth will always be continuous and stable.

            The Goal Achieved should follow the Pygmalion effect in which the performance is increased by keeping a positive attitude and in which higher expectations lead to higher results.

This was evident from the class exercise in which they beat the previous record of 27 blocks to form a tower of around 30 blocks while working as an organized team with high expectations.

Stay tuned for the next post..

Are you SMART?????

This week in the class we were informed about Goal Setting and introduced with the concept of SMART .

Now you must be wondering whats so different about setting a Goal??

Its not that simple as it seems. Let’s get going

Goal setting is a powerful way of motivating people, and of motivating yourself. In fact, goal setting theory is generally accepted as among the most valid and useful motivation theories in industrial and organizational psychology, human resource management, and organizational behavior.

Now most of us are having an work experience and have heard from our bosses/seniors
to set SMART Goals.But what does SMART mean??

   

SMART usually stands for:

• S - Specific (or Significant).
• M - Measurable (or Meaningful).
• A - Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
• R - Relevant (or Rewarding).
• T - Time-bound (or Trackable).

For example, instead of having "To sail around the world" as a goal, it's more powerful to say "To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015." Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!

Now lets understand this concept with a Goal Setting Example

For her New Year's Resolution, Shanti decided to think about what she really wants to do with her life.

Her lifetime goals are as follows:

• Career - "To be managing editor of the magazine that I work for."
• Artistic - "To keep working on my illustration skills. Ultimately I want to have my own show in our downtown gallery."
• Physical - "To run a marathon."

Now that Shanti has listed her lifetime goals, she then breaks down each one into smaller, more manageable goals.

Let's take a closer look at how she might break down her lifetime career goal - becoming managing editor of her magazine:

• Five-year goal: "Become deputy editor."
• One-year goal: "Volunteer for projects that the current Managing Editor is heading up."
• Six-month goal: "Go back to school and finish my journalism degree."
• One-month goal: "Talk to the current managing editor to determine what skills are needed to do the job."
• One-week goal: "Book the meeting with the Managing Editor."

As you can see from this example, breaking big goals down into smaller, more manageable goals makes it far easier to see how the goal will get accomplished.

Stay Tuned will be back again with some more deep concepts....

the 3 E's of Management...

Continuing with the previous discussion on The THEORY X and THEORY Y I would like to discuss another concept as introduced by our professor in class.This is known as the 3 E's of management which is an essential part of any manager.


Effectiveness:
Effectiveness can be explained in terms of what is achieved. It is about whether targets are met or not. Performing effectively means that the right work is being completed. Managers are responsible for making sure that this happens. If a team is working really hard but not delivering what is needed, then they are not effective. Effectiveness is measured by setting out clear objectives before work starts and then evaluating whether the objectives have been met or not.

Efficiency

Efficiency can be measured in terms of the inputs required to generate the outputs. It is about the way in which work is completed. It is part of a manager’s job to help improve efficiency. For example, if the same work can be completed using less inputs or resources then efficiency has improved.

Measuring efficiency means that the process followed to complete the work must be defined and then each part of the process studied to see what resources are required. This becomes the starting point or benchmark for measurement.

Excellence

Excellence is the third element of the three Es model, covering the most important aspects of work being done. It could be argued that excellence is just one of the factors to consider when improving efficiency, but because it is so important in today’s organizations, it has become the third element.It is the mixture of the above two factors and is a result of the multiplication of both.

In an organization

 Excellence = Effectiveness * Efficiency

                                

 

The Best Effectiveness, Efficiency and Excellence Mix

It can be very difficult to find the best mix of effectiveness, efficiency and excellence as there are so many ways to obtain value. For example:

• It may be that the focus is on providing a specific output (effectiveness) for the least cost – this may be at the expense of efficiency.
• It may be that the focus is on maintaining a particular cost (economy) and producing the excellent output for that cost.

Every manager can be a better manager and understanding the 3Es Effectiveness, Efficiency and Excellence can help improve business performance.

Concept of Theory X and Theory Y

In continuation with my previous blog I would like to explain an interesting theory which Prof Mandi explained us in class.

What motivates employees to go to work each morning? Many people get great satisfaction from their work and take great pride in it; Others may view it as a burden, and simply work to survive.
This is a BIG Question.
 Douglas McGregor expounded two contrasting theories on human motivation and management: The X Theory and the Y Theory.

 According to him Theory Y is the basis of good management practice, while giving argument that workers are not merely cogs in the company machinery, as Theory X-Type organizations seemed to believe.

The theories look at how a manager's perceptions of what motivates his or her team members affects the way he or she behaves. By understanding how your assumptions about employees’ motivation can influence your management style, you can adapt your approach appropriately, and so manage people more effectively.


 
Theory X

Theory X type of managers assumes that employees are naturally unmotivated and dislike working, and this encourages an authoritarian style of management. According to this view, management must actively intervene to get things done. This style of management assumes that :

• An average employee intrinsically does not like work and tries to escape it whenever possible.
• Since the employee does not want to work, he must be persuaded, compelled, or warned with punishment so as to achieve organizational goals. A close supervision is required on part of managers. The managers adopt a more dictatorial style.
• Many employees rank job security on top, and they have little or no aspiration/ ambition.
• Employees generally dislike responsibilities.
• Employees resist change.
• An average employee needs formal direction.

Theory Y
This theory expounds a participative style of management. It assumes that employees are happy to work, are self-motivated and creative, and enjoy working with greater responsibility. It assumes that :

• Employees can perceive their job as relaxing and normal. They exercise their physical and mental efforts in an inherent manner in their jobs.
• Employees may not require only threat, external control and coercion to work, but they can use self-direction and self-control if they are dedicated and sincere to achieve the organizational objectives.
• If the job is rewarding and satisfying, then it will result in employees’ loyalty and commitment to organization.
• An average employee can learn to admit and recognize the responsibility. In fact, he can even learn to obtain responsibility.
• The employees have skills and capabilities. Their logical capabilities should be fully utilized. In other words, the creativity, resourcefulness and innovative potentiality of the employees can be utilized to solve organizational problems.

Now analyzing the situations based on the various permutations and combinations of the above said types:




Theory X Manager assume LAZY  workers as LAZY  and make them work:

This is good for an organization as the workers are lazy and already demotivated to work.So to increase the productivity a Manager has to act as an authoritarian type.

Theory X Manager assume NOT LAZY  workers as LAZY  and make them work

This situation creates a problematic kind of condition in which there might be disputes between the workers and the manager.As the workers are already motivated and still if a strict attitude is used by the manager it may result in confrontation between them.

Theory Y Manager assume LAZY  workers as NOT LAZY and make them work

This results in less productivity of organization as the workers will misuse the attitude of as liberal and inefficiency will arise.

Theory Y Manager assume NOT LAZY  workers as NOT LAZY  and make them work

This is the ideal condition in which there will be a improvement in the efficiency of organization as both  worker and manager are responsible and complete their work  harmonically.

MY ENCOUNTER WITH PROF MANDI

After a hectic schedule of last week at office I was finally relived on 18th June from my organisation and joined the college on 19th.I had already missed 2 days of classes.But upon reaching campus the only thing which I heard from my fellow classmates was about Dr Mandi. Every where it was a topic of discussion and his new methods of practical teaching.I wondered who he might be.

“Is this man related to D. Subbarao?” was the first question I asked myself in the class. A question if put to any student of the class would have surely brought a flutter of smiles; I turned a bit selfish and kept the small joke to myself. This man is referred by a pen name ‘Mandi’- a name I incidentally happen to be familiar with on account of connection with Himachal, a curious name nevertheless for any man. He happens to be known to students even before they had entered the class. He is a Principles of Management Professor at NITIE, a rather Bohemian  to be categorized by the end of my first class.

Today’s lecture was primarily on the term Organizational Management, its connotation and most importantly how it is different from Craftsmanship. He startled me on my first day in NITIE with his unconventional style by carrying wooden blocks to class. He asked the volunteers to build the longest tower with certain ifs and buts. The whole tower building exercise was carried out to make us understand that building a tower alone is craftsmanship, however doing an activity with the concept of sales, performance, results, objectives and optimal utilization of tools along with a group of individuals is Organisational Management. He expanded the idea with a more concrete example of the common cobbler. A cobbler makes shoes, and he tends to X customers per day. How good the shoes are depends upon his craftsmanship. His ability to optimally utilize resources both manual and material, manual in form of bringing many cobblers together to produce more number of shoes from a larger pool of raw materials to cater to a larger market determines how good he is at organizational management. His organizational management ability apart from boosting sales brings down the wastage of raw materials and makes optimal use of tools.At the same time I was thinking about The cobbler who made riches out of it was A Bata of Hungary. 

                     

Another important aspect that was put forward by the erudite was what happens when too many cooks enter the kitchen. He blind folded a volunteer and asked a bunch of other volunteers to direct him into building the tower. It was an abysmal performance by the group, expecting anything else would have been optimistic to the point of foolishness. Too many cooks do indeed spoil the brook. The same situation if scaled to work environment shares the analogy of what if we have too many managers over a defined set of limited talent? The output falls drastically. A manager must exist to justify his role, or else remember the too many cooks who set out to make a brook.

Another important concept included in the class was related to Theory X and Theory Y.I would just write a brief description of the theory which was beautifully taught to us with practical examples by our "Mandi Sir".

•McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

–According to Theory X, managers believe workers

•dislike work

•lack ambition

•are irresponsible

•are resistant to change

                              •prefer to be led

–According to Theory Y, managers believe workers

•are willing to work

•are capable of self control

•accept responsibility

•are imaginative and creative

•self-directed

Hence ended my first class, how do I fit here is yet to be seen. The class was a pretty different experience altogether. The cobbler example is going to stay for a long time in my mind, if not forever.Concluding with some lines of Frost (which occurred in my mind after hearing Dr Mandi in class)

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference