Building Organizations

The INCEPTION

Every tower has an underlying foundation which supports the building and if the foundation is not strong, no matter what material and technology you use, it will not stand. Similarly, every success story begins with an idea. The idea has to be impressive and innovative to make the foundation strong. This is the elemental step for any organisation to rise and prosper. The idea not only strengthens your base but also gives the direction and target to the organization.

Tower Building Exercise

Each and every drop of water is essential in constituting a river and every river is essential to making the sea. Same is the case with organisations, where each and every block has its definite purpose in the scheme of things. The organisation grows with the addition of each block and coverage of a new milestone, but every additional block to be placed is different with respect to others. 

In our Principles of Management Class, we underwent an exercise to build towers using light wooden blocks. The wooden blocks were to be stacked one over the other in order to construct a stable tower. It was a simple exercise, but it incorporated many of the principles of the course, for instance, what are the fundamental principles behind a successful enterprise, how can a mammoth organisation thrive successfully, etc.  Even with such a simple exercise, one can understand the details of an organisation, such as how to develop hierarchies and structure an organisation.

The first principle, as mentioned earlier, is to have a have a strong footing and have deep roots in your areas of specialization. Also you need to have a good idea to be stable in the market and stick for long term. The base block comprises of the core values and if they are not sound (i.e. the base block is not heavy and strong enough), it may not be able to withstand the pressures and may buckle. Every additional step has to be properly planned and checked for necessity since it imposes extra friction between the existing layers and additional pressures on the lower layers. Hence, the additional block must be light in weight, or in other words, the person must be free from ego. This would reduce the friction and lead to amicable working. Also every step should have an involvement and consensus of every member of the team in order to have better bonding and fetch desirable solutions.

The Tower

GOAL Setting / Deciding the Target

Goal Setting is one of the most important functions of an organisation and, perhaps, any team. Without deciding the goal we can not know the direction to put our efforts and the efforts would be wasted. Similarly, even setting a goal which is below the expectations or which is beyond the requirements is not desirable as these would not bring out the true capacity of the team/organisation and hence would lead to a downfall. To take care of this, we have SMARTER Goal Setting, which implies-

• S - Specific
• M - Measurable
• A - Achievable
• R - Realistic
• T - Time Bound
• E - Evaluate
• R - Re-evaluate

Now let us study the following data and we will understand the importance of the SMARTER goals withe reference to it.

Parameter	Index	I	II	III	IV
Historical Tower height achieved by team LOW	1	5	5	5	5
Historical Tower height achieved by team HIGH	2	18	20	21	23
Achievable Performance -(Estimate / Guess )	3	18	20	22	25
Goal proposed by the Manager	4	18	22	22	18
Goal proposed by the worker	5	12	12	12	20
Goal mutually agreed for building the tower between worker and manager	6	15	22	18	15
No. of cubes Tower manager and worker team could build / achieve at the end of the exercise	7	18	18	18	18

Now as we can see from the data, we have the historical highs and lows for the Tower height achieved by teams earlier. On the basis of these data, an estimate is made for the achievable performance. The manager and the worker both assess the estimate for achievable performance and set their respective goals (4 & 5). Based on these, the worker and manager negotiate with one another and reach a mutually agreeable goal for the task at hand. While negotiating, the manager should try to reach as close to achievable performance as he can. This would help increase the productivity and improve the overall performance of the team.

The performance of the teams under various scenarios can be compared by the use of certain parameters mentioned in the table below:

Gaps	I	II	III	IV
Gap between Tower height Performance so far achieved and Achievable performance of tower	0	2	4	7
Gap between goal proposed by the manager and mutually agreed goal by team	3	0	4	3
Gap between goal proposed by the manager and the goal proposed  by the worker	6	10	10	-2
Gap between goal proposed by the worker and mutually agreed by team	-3	-10	-6	5
Gap between  performance achieved (at the end of the exercise ) and  goal mutually agreed by team	-3	4	0	-3
Gap between  performance achieved ( at the end of the exercise ) and  achievable goal	0	-2	-4	-7

Scenario 1 is a case in which the manager is not an initiator. He takes the goal as the achievable performance, and does not strive for a better result, which is evident even from the goal proposed by the team where the manager and the worker both cede equal ground. It also shows that the manager is not influential and is not very thoughtful. Thus even though the team outperforms its set goal, it is able to reach only the achievable level.

Scenario 2 is a case where the manager is very optimistic and is ready to take an initiative. Also since the goal proposed by manager and that agreed by team are the same, hence it can be seen that the manager is also very influential with the workers. But, overall the team cannot reach the goal they had mutually agreed and hence it can be said that the team is not very efficient.

Scenario 3 portrays a case wherein the estimated guess is more than the maximum height achieved historically. The manager proposes a goal equal to the achievable performance which implies that manager is optimist and takes initiative for work. He is moderately influential over the workers and negotiates well for the goal. The motivation provided by the manager helps the team in performing according to the goal set and achieving the target but it falls well short of the maximum tower height achieved and raises a question about the approach of the team.

The Scenario 4 has the estimated achievable performance higher than the maximum tower height achieved. The goal proposed by the manager is even lesser than that by workers which shows that the manager is lethargic and that workers are thoughtful about their work. The mutually agreed goal goes down further as a consequence of the lethargy of manager. But the team performs better than the expectations and stacks more cubes than the goal set by team.

Thus a few of the learning worth noting in the above example are that the manager must be an initiator and take the initiative with any task at hand. He must have a good influence over his team, so that he can motivate and convince them towards the common goal.