VALLEY CROSSING

INTRODUCTION

Have u ever been to Rajgir or Darjeeling or any other place where u need to cross the big gap between you and your fate on the other side by ropeways ? You must have felt shivers down the spine after seeing the depth of the valley from above. But have ever thought of  an idea  of   crossing the valley  with  two people on either side of the valley holding a pole and the third one hanging in the middle and crossing the vast gap  underlying?
Even I didnot think of this before Dr. Mandi asked us to  perform this act by making the two tables look like two  mountains and the gap between them  as valley in our POM(Principles of management)  class.This at first looked quite funny  to all but it requires a lot of management skills to get executed successfully.
 
There were many attempts but few successes.

GOAL SETTING

"The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain."
                                                                                        Kahlil Gibran

One of the important  factors which drives the whole team to unite ,to coordinate smoothly among themselves and to realize their dream is the common  objective or the common goal of the  team.The leaders play a major part  here to communicate the role of each player and the team players are equally important to understand their part in the journey.

In this valley crossing exercise all the three are equally important to set their individual roles as even  if one of them do any misinterpretation of their roles then the hanging one is bound to feel the eventuality.But even then one has to wear the  the  leader's boot and take the initiative to coordinaate properly and explain each of them the dos and donts.


THREE PILLARS OF ORGANIZATION

An organization or a team needs to differentiate the work or divide the work into specific  departments and  allot each of the department to a particular set of specialized people to make the work being done more efficiently and  effectively.The coordinator needs to integrate the divide parts into one.


Similarly,while moving forward  step by step to cross the valley,the three positions of  front ,middle and rear are like specialized departments in which a specific skill set is required.Each position should be given to that person in which  his/her role is fitting according to his/her strength.The coordinator will be the leader here who will try to  make sure that the each step is taken safely and there is no issue regarding synchronization of steps.

Another important aspect of organization is the division of  power which means whether power should be centralized or decentralized.

In this case power is distributed equally among all three as any one of them can stop the work whenever intended.

The third aspect of organization is standardisation and socialization.

The valley crossing exercise does not have specific rules and guidelines but it is  more of  an interdependent task in which every person can  switch roles if required ,help each other and  perform the task in their own way.

TEAM WORK

Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.
- Henry Ford

The leader of the team has to take charge and build on the unity of the team. He has to convey the message  very clearly to each member of the team what is expected out of him/her.The team cannot progress even if any one of them is out of the game.The valley can be crossed safely only if all are properly aligned to the goal and there is a unity of comand line.Even the weakest link is as important as others.The team should complement each other and gel together which can increase the cohesiveness of the group helping the performance of the whole  group to go up.Thaat is why there was a famous quotation given by Stephen Covey:Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.

EXCELLENCE    =    EFFICIENCY   *   EFFECTIVENESS

Excellence is someting which cannot be achieved by individuals but by teams o organizations.
The valley is not possible to be crossed by a single person alone.There has to be a collective effort of the three to make it happen.The efficiency of the act and the effectiveness should combine together to become a force in itself.
The right steps in the right time with right speed by the right person will determine the effectiveness of the whole team.
The  synchronization of the steps of each member with the whole system will determine the efficiency of the group.

TRUST &  BOUNDED RATIONALITY

Trust is everything here.While crossing the valley one thing that will be constantly going rounds in your mind is that you depend totally on the other two people while crossing the valley and not only that but you also depend on the pole.Therefore, it is important to trust each other because each one is interdependent and responsible for the other two.
The concept of bounded rationality comes into picture here as he has very limited knowledge about  the other people's ability to handle load and their ability to coordinate the activities properly yet he has to take decision on how he will take a calculated risk.

CONCEPTUAL,TECHNICAL AND HUMAN SKILLS

The technical skill is to  able to perform the actual task .i.e. lifting  the pole on the shoulder and carrying the 50% weight of  one of the person and 50% weight of the  pole and crossing the valley one by one with similar process of  one  person hanging by the pole and the others carrying the pole on their shoulders.


The conceptual skills are required  to understand  the aim of the whole team ,how to  reach that goal ,what are the  impending problems  that they may come across.Planning and organizing the  role of each and every person of the team is  needed to reach the goal.In this case proper coordination and synchronization of the steps are very essential.For this they need a lot of  planning,practise and power.


Human skills or interpersonal skills are essential to understand the psyche of each and every individual  to perform the task better because ultimately it is the human beings who will be crossing the valley not any trainaed machines or robots.A human being will be working wioth another human being who will have emotions like fear,tension,unhappiness,etc...

                                                                                                             Arup Shankar Mitra
                                                                                                             IM-19 Sec-A
                                                                                                             Roll-219

KHAN ACADEMY

MISSION 

The first time I heard of the name Khan Academy reminded me of the movie "My Name is Khan".The name KHAN has a brand value in India specially in Bollywood fraternity.But here Khan Academy is popular throughout the world  not because of any brand name but due to its mission of   "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere" which itself speaks volumes for itself.

The founder of the organization Salman Khan, belonging to a small geography called Bangladesh,thought of delivering something big to the students of this world.After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science), he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School.He started teaching his cousin and there after to his other friends and relatives.

VISION 

His ultimate vision is to turn his academy  of delivering free video lectures , automating  excercises with continous assessment,creating a video library,etc. into a physical school where spend some time in watching video and doing self paced  exercises and rest of the day in building robots ,painting pictures ,composing music,etc.Creativity is the primary objective which the academy  tries to enhance.

INNOVATION

Khan Academy is making headlines across the globe and is being touted as the most important developing concepts of education which has come up recently.It has innovated the way in which education can be delivered.From basic history to complex cell structures to microeconomics to astronomy,biology and healthcare ,everything  can be learnt from the library of videos truly striving to achieve  its mission of " learning anything anywhere". 

Innovation is at its best.It takes learning out of the classroom and puts the control right into the hands of the student.  It is a self-paced learning system that gently guides any student through the learning process.  With the lack of quality education that many countries are suffering from at the moment, Khan Academy truly could not have come about at a better time.

TEAMWORK & ORGANIZATIONAL CONTROL

Started as a non-profit organization and run purely by charity,the Khan Academy started by  a single man,is open to  forge new ideas and integrate  different concepts to reach its goal.Team work is at its best as people from different fields i.e. software engineers,programmers,finance people,designers,managers,people relations,etc. are running   the organization smoothly.

There is ample scope for interns and tech geeks who loves coding in this academy.

MARKETING STRATEGY

The Khan Academy became a phenomenon throughout the globe within few years  because of its idea of redesigning the education system  altogether .The average man can access and acquire  knowledge with just a click. It undertook a great marketing strategy of  creating a library of online videos and posting it online via youtube. 

Here are some of the links which can demonstrate the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8

http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy?feature=relchannel

BUSINESS MODEL & ENTREPRENEURSHIP


The Khan Academy is a non-profit organization which depends on donations which include high profile donors like Reed Hastings(CEO of Netflix) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.It does not have any business model at all.Mr Salman Khan is the God father of the academy.He has that entrepreneurship mindset.He was in the  annual  list  in TIME magazine of  100  most influential people in the world.He is a life long learner and a source of positivity for others.He keeps his eyes to the long term rather than focussing too much on temporary ups and downs.He turned into online educational entrepreneur from being a hedge fund analyst.He started posting online videos for his cousin and other relatives which become huge hit and it started   spreading like a virus.

THEORY Y 


If you ponder about Theory X and Theory Y applications,Khan Academy fits into  Theory Y.Basically the organization looks forward to its employees and the donaters and gives them full freedom to exercise their innovative ideas  and create something new which can help the organization  in publishing digital  knowledge materials that can help the average common man in the long run.The academy provides ample opportunity to its employees to bring about a change in the world of education.



Arup Shankar Mitra
IM-19  Sec-A
Roll=219