What the Principles of Organisation and Management course at NITIE was all about and my learnings from the course.
Principles of Organisation and Management
Wednesday, 22 August 2012
Learnings from the Principles of Organisation and Management
What the Principles of Organisation and Management course at NITIE was all about and my learnings from the course.
Tuesday, 21 August 2012
Leaders v/s Followers
Leaders v/s Followers
Leaders:
It is only natural that not everyone becomes a leader;
however, those who follow will no longer accept old fashioned leaders, full of
authoritative ideas and who impose new management techniques on others. They
want leaders with well- rooted human values and who will respect talents and contributions
given by others. People want leaders that can create an atmosphere of risk and
creativity. They reject intimidation or manipulation, and want to be recognized
as an important part in these changing times.
Traits:
Leaders must look within themselves to find new ways of
influencing people and changing the course of companies. It is the leader that
must be the first to change;. The leader then gathers followers, but not those
that only do what they are told. Leaders want mature and responsible people
that can look ahead. As a result a partnership will be formed with those people
who are personally committed to themselves and the success of the business.
Responsibility:
Leaders assume the responsibility of keeping teams together.
They have the obligation to take command, establish rules, determine values and
principals that will lead to success. The leader must look at leadership as a
responsibility and not as a position of privileges. The effective leader is
responsible for all final decisions, and he must not fear the force of his
associates or subordinates. He must encourage, instigate and be proud of all
those that collaborate with him. The leader must look at others success as
being his as well.
Follower is the one who subscribes to the teachings or
methods of leader. He loks upto leader for the guidance, motivation and to show
the way ahead. They are led by the leaders. Whereas the leader leads the
followers.
Few examples of leader - follower are
Manager – subordinates
Company – stakeholders
There are two important keys to effective leadership.
1) Trust and confidence
2)Communication skills
Good leaders are made not born. If one has
the desire and willpower, one can become an effective leader. Good leaders
develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and
experience.
Saturday, 11 August 2012
FEDEX
Why
do you think Roger Federer has nickname as FedEx? Federer like FedEx has always been
consistent, reliable and quality (quality of his game) conscious and these
qualities which are very rare to see at one place have earned him this nickname.
FedEx Corporation:
FedEx Corporation provides
customers and businesses worldwide with a broad portfolio of transportation,
e-commerce and business services. With annual revenues of $43 billion, the
company offers integrated business applications through operating companies
competing collectively and managed collaboratively, under the respected FedEx
brand. Consistently ranked among the world's most admired and trusted
employers, FedEx inspires its more than 300,000 team members to remain
"absolutely, positively" focused on safety, the highest ethical and
professional standards and the needs of their customers and communities.
History
Origin: The modern air/ground express industry was pioneered with the founding of Federal Express in 1971; the corporation was created in 1998 as FDX Corporation and became FedEx Corporation in January 2000.
Origin: The modern air/ground express industry was pioneered with the founding of Federal Express in 1971; the corporation was created in 1998 as FDX Corporation and became FedEx Corporation in January 2000.
Landmarks:
1978 - Federal Express Corporation is listed on
the New York Stock Exchange; ticker symbol is FDX.
1981 -
Federal Express introduced the Overnight Letter.
- Federal Express began
international delivery with service to Canada.
- Federal Express opened its
Super Hub adjacent to Memphis International Airport.
1983 - Federal Express becomes the first U.S. company to
reach revenues of $1 billion without merger or acquisition.
1994 - Federal Express officially adopted "FedEx" as its
brand for recognition as the worldwide standard for fast, reliable service.
- FedEx launched
fedex.com as the first
transportation Web site offering
online package status tracking, enabling customers to conduct business via the
Internet.
1998 - FedEx acquires Caliber System Inc. and creates FDX
Corporation.
2000 - Parent company FDX is renamed "FedEx
Corporation." Services are divided into companies that operate
independently yet compete collectively: FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx
Freight, FedEx Custom Critical
and FedEx Services.
Mission:
FedEx Corporation will produce
superior financial returns for its shareowners by providing high value-added
logistics, transportation and related business services through focused
operating companies. Customer requirements will be met in the highest quality
manner appropriate to each market segment served. FedEx will strive to develop
mutually rewarding relationships with its employees, partners and suppliers.
Safety will be the first consideration in all operations. Corporate activities
will be conducted to the highest ethical and professional standards.
Strategy:
The unique FedEx operating strategy
works seamlessly - and simultaneously - on three levels.
- Compete collectively by
standing as one brand worldwide and speaking with one voice.
- Operate independently by
focusing on our independent networks to meet distinct customer needs.
- Manage collaboratively by working together to sustain loyal relationships with our workforce, customers and investors.
Products and Services:
FedEx Express invented express distribution and remains the industry’s
global leader, providing rapid, reliable, time-definite delivery to more than
220 countries and territories, connecting markets that comprise more than 90
percent of the world’s gross domestic product within one to three business
days. Unmatched air route authorities and transportation infrastructure,
combined with leading-edge information technologies, make FedEx Express the
world’s largest express transportation company, providing fast and reliable
services for more than 3.6 million shipments each business day.
FedEx
Ground is a
leading provider of ground small-package delivery services, providing service
to the U.S. and Canada. FedEx Home Delivery, the industry’s first ground
service dedicated to residential delivery, is available from FedEx Ground and
is backed by a money-back guarantee.
FedEx
Freight is the
market leader in providing less-than-truckload (LTL) freight services across
all lengths of haul. FedEx Freight segment financial results also include FedEx
Custom Critical, North America’s largest time-specific, critical shipment
carrier.
FedEx Services operates combined sales, marketing, administrative and
information technology functions in shared services The FedEx Services segment includes:
FedEx Services, which provides sales, marketing, administrative and
information technology support to our other companies; FedEx TechConnect, which
is responsible for customer service, technical support, billings and
collections for U.S. customers of our major business units; and FedEx Office,
which provides an array of document and business services and retail access to
our customers for our package transportation businesses.
Award and Recogniton:
FedEx Express has been the recipient of many prestigious
awards. It has been recognized for numerous achievements, from providing
outstanding service to being a world-class employer.
- Business
Week “50 Best Performers” – 2006
- Financial
Times “UK 50 Best Workplaces” – 2007- #31
- Wall
Street Journal Asia “200 Most Admired Companies” survey – 2006- #17
- FedEx
won the Customer Services of the Year Award 2011 in the ‘Parcel and
Deliveries’ category. – 2011
- FedEx
was awarded the Best Air Cargo Carrier of the Year at the 4th Express,
Logistics & Supply Chain Awards in India. – 2010
Financial
Highlights:
Philanthropy:
Emergency and Disaster Relief
FedEx is committed to actively
supporting the communities it serves through strategic investment of our
people, resources and network.
FedEx accepts applications from
organizations that bring relief to victims of emergencies or natural disasters.
Specifically, we direct our funds toward the quick and efficient transport of
aid, and disaster preparedness education initiatives.
Child
Pedestrian Safety
FedEx is interested in supporting organizations that help keep child pedestrians safe through increasing awareness and knowledge of pedestrian safety
FedEx is interested in supporting organizations that help keep child pedestrians safe through increasing awareness and knowledge of pedestrian safety
Environmental Sustainability
FedEx prioritizes philanthropic and
volunteer efforts that focus on environmental sustainability and are
strategically aligned with our business goals.
SWOT Analysis:
Strengths
Sthrengths and Weaknesses |
FedEx has many strengths. They are very innovative in coming up with
new ways to add value to their customers experience with FedEx. They have always been wiling to embrace new
technologies as well as create some of their own.
Weaknesses
FedEx’s weaknesses derive from their inability
to differentiate themselves on a wide scale basis from UPS, this is hindering
their ability to achieve a industry wide competitive advantage.
Opportunities
- The
cost of infrastructure of express delivery companies are a barrier of entry to
new comers
-
FedEx leadership in global express delivery - As long as the nature of our
socioeconomic environment exists, there will always be a need for express
delivery
-
E-commerce is creating an increased need for express delivery
-
Globalization offers opportunities for expansion.
Threats:
-
Maintaining the infrastructure of an express delivery company is an exit
barrier because of high fixed costs
-
Capitol is acquired through the volume of sales, so the high fixed costs can
hurt when times are slow
- Due
to the nature of the industry, it is nearly impossible to become the clear
industry leader.
Future Goals:
FedEx Long Term Goals
- Grow revenue
- Achieve 10%+ operating margin
- Increase EPS by 10%-15% per year
- Increase cash flow
- Increase returns
Growth Strategies:
FedEx plans to focus on these five strategies to grow as a business.
FedEx plans to focus on these five strategies to grow as a business.
- Grow core package business
- Grow internationally
- Grow our supply chain capabilities
- Grow through e-commerce & technology
- Grow through new services & alliances
Monday, 30 July 2012
THREE MONKS NO WATER
There is an ancient Chinese proverb "One monk
will shoulder two buckets of water, two monks will share the load, but add a
third and no one will want to fetch water. There is a film based on this
proverb which tells how people behave in teams and how can we make the team
work efficiently. Click to watch the video. There are three ways in which the
monks carry the water. The film depicts the comparisons of the different
attitudes of the monks when staying alone, staying with one other monk, and
staying with two other monks.
A
young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has a daily
task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He does it by using bringing
two buckets of water on a bamboo stick balanced on his shoulder. When the
second monk joins the first monk stops doing
the job completely. But then the two monks decide to share the job by bringing
one bucket of water using bamboo stick after initial arguments over the
position of bucket on the bamboo stick. Then the third monk comes. Initially the
two monks make the third monk bring the water. But he is so tired that he himself
consumes all the water. Now nobody is ready to get the water. There is no water
in the temple and the temple catches fire.
This crisis brings the three
monks together. They co-operate with each other and extinguish the fire. One monk
goes down the hill fills the bucket with water. Other monk pulls the bucket up
using a pulley and the third one near the temple extinguishes the fire. This could
have happened earlier but they were thinking about themselves initially and not
about the organisation as a whole (here the temple). The emergency made the
monk forget the individual goals and work together as a team.
Innovation is the key |
From first way to second way the
number of bucket have come down. Initially one monk was bringing two buckets
but in second case two monks were bringing one bucket. But here the
productivity is not decreased if we take the human fatigue into consideration. If
we only consider through materialistic point of view the productivity has come
down but the monks are not machines so must take human effort into
consideration.
Out of Box Thinking |
Now if we look at third case we
can see that it is the most productive way of doing the work. In the third case
all the three monks have different predefined and clear roles. Their roles are
different but interdependent and everybody is equally responsible for the job. The
job and responsibilities are equally distributed so that nobody feels cheated. There
is a facility of instant feedback. Thus by using simple management principles
the job is simplified. Usually most of the complex problems have the simplest
solutions. It is upto us to look at the problems differently and think out of
box and innovate to reach to the solution. This way the work becomes fun and
the productivity is improved significantly and this in turn helps the
organisation become efficient and grow by leaps and bounds.
Productivity in each case can be compared as follows.
Productivity in each case can be compared as follows.
Method I
|
Method II
|
Method III
|
|
Members
|
One Monk
|
Two Monks
|
Three Monks
|
Input - Effort by monks ( Units in Jouls) ( Esti..)
|
100 Jouls
by One person
|
50 Jouls by two persons together
|
Insignificant effort by three monks together
|
Output - Water
|
2 buckets
|
One bucket
|
Many buckets of water is fetched
|
Productivity Measure: ( Input / Output)
|
100 J / 2 =
50 J per bucket of water
|
50 J / 2 =
25 J per bucket of water
|
Insignificant effort per baucket of water
|
Nature of Member Roles
|
Independent
|
Somewhat Interdependent
|
Very much Interdependent
|
Sunday, 8 July 2012
LE 03 VALLEY CROSSING ACTIVITY
TEAMWORK
Teamwork is defined as
"work done by several associates with each doing a part but all
subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole." Teamwork
can lead to better decisions, products, or services. The quality of teamwork
may be measured by analyzing the following six components of collaboration among
team members: communication, coordination, balance of member contributions,
mutual support, effort, and cohesion. The most effective teamwork is produced
when all the individuals involved harmonize their contributions and work
towards a common goal.
Valley Crossing Activity
The Task :
Task given is to switch over from left side of the
valley to the right side of the valley with
the support of the pole as shown in the picture. Direct
jumping is not possible.
The following are the 9 steps for the valley crossing
Safe - Both
the legs of the person have full support
Half Risky – One leg in the air and the other leg has support
Full risky - Both the legs are in the air without any support
Half Risky – One leg in the air and the other leg has support
Full risky - Both the legs are in the air without any support
In the activity all the members communicate and coordinate with
each other while crossing the river. There is trust amongst each other and
contribution of every team member is necessary to complete the task
successfully. The task should be properly designed so that every team member is
treated equally. The team roles should be properly assigned.
Ingredients for Effective
Team Building:
Clear Team Goals – All members of
the team must understand exactly what goals the team is
striving to meet.
Trust – The team should develop interdependency on
others characterized by high trust and risk taking.
These key ingredients make up the strategy for developing high performing teams. Each ingredient needs to become a discipline that gets practiced, reinforced and refined. Only then the organisation will be able to lay down the foundation for superior teamwork.
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
LE 02 KHAN ACADEMY
The Khan Academy has transformed today’s educational
world. It is a non profit educational
organization, founded by Salman Khan in 2006.
Salman Khan is a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business
School. Slogan of Khan Academy is ‘it is our endeavour to accelerate
learning for students of all ages’.
SALMAN KHAN
Innovation: Khan Academy has a very innovative way to educate people all
around the world. The website (http://www.khanacademy.org)
supplies a free online collection of more than
3,200 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube. The Khan Academy's
materials and resources are available to everybody completely free of charge.
A global
classroom: Students
can join millions of Khan Academy students from all over the world who learn at
their own pace every single day.
Business Model:
Unique Features: Students can make use of the
extensive video library, interactive challenges, and assessments from any
computer with access to the web. Coaches, parents, and teachers have
unprecedented visibility into what their students are learning and doing on the
Khan Academy. The library of videos cover mathematics, history, healthcare and
medicine, finance, physics chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology,
organic chemistry, art history, computer science. Each video is a digestible
chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on
the computer. These videos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Feedback and Appreciation: The Khan Academy remembers what students
have learned and where they are spending time. They keep all of this data private
but expose powerful statistics to each user and their coaches. Users get at-a-glance information about
everything they have been learning and whether or not they have been
hitting their goals. Appreciation
is given on the basis of performance of students in the form of badges. Some of
the smaller badges are very easy to earn, but the higher badges might require
years of work.
Theory Y: Khan
Academy believes in Theory Y. They believe that every student irrespective of
his/her country, race, economic background is capable of learning if provided
with ample learning opportunities.
Future Plans: In November 2011 Khan Academy received a
grant of $5 million from Ireland-based The O'Sullivan Foundation .The Fund is being
be utilized in expanding the teacher & faculty base, Extending content
through crowd-sourced contributions. A series of summer school camps are planned to start in Northern
California to test curricula for real-world schools.
The reason for the success of Khan Academy is
the innovative way of educating the world. It was the first of its kind
organisation to start this. So it had very few competitors. It simplified the
way subjects are taught with the help of videos and made learning a fun. It brought
various streams of education under its umbrella which helped it immensely in
increasing its customer base. Also the study material was accessible to anybody
and everybody in the world so it had no regional boundaries and the
organisation grew by leaps and bounds. The simple and innovative business model
with tremendous expansion capability helped Khan Academy to be successful
organisation in todays competitive world.
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