SKY WALK -The Best Example of Dynamic Leadership

 Three Situations can emerge –

     1)      One leader at all the times.

     2)      Changing leaders as per the need of the hour.

     3)      Many leaders at a single point in time.

To ascertain which alternative is the best Prof. Mandi introduced us with a cartoon named as SKY WALK. The cartoon depicts three members working as a team and are crossing high raised building tops from left side to right side. The cartoon depicts SKY WALK' of three people ' . 

This cartoon is also a good example of teamwork which is the ability to work together towards a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishment towards organizational objectives.

 Image itself was self-explanatory:  3 people are crossing the valley safely with help of a pole. But is it so simple to do? Firstly, there was a constraint before performing the task i.e no more than 3 people should do this. Secondly, there was no description about gap length, distance between 2 people, length of pole, height of all 3 people,etc. 

THE SOLUTION:

To perform this activity , task has to be divided in 9 process or stages where 3 people would be in between these 3 stages -  safe , half risky and full risky. So stages were like:-

Step	State of 1st Person	State of 2nd person	State of 3rd person
1.	Safe	Safe	Safe
2.	Half-Risky	Safe	Safe
3.	Full-Risky	Safe	Safe
4.	Half-Risky	Half-Risky	Safe
5.	Safe	Full-Risky	Safe
6.	Safe	Half-Risky	Half-Risky
7.	Safe	Safe	Full-Risky
8.	Safe	Safe	Half-Risky
9.	Safe	Safe	Safe

 

LEARNINGS :

1)      Dynamic Leadership: There is not a single leader at all the times .Each member is taking the leadership role while crossing valley for a certain time, and then the leadership is transferred to someone else. In this way SKY WALK was achieved. One leader commanding all the time might be very risky in this situation.  Also, if all were leaders at the same time all would try to dominate and no one would be ready to follow, thus the situation would become haywire.

2)      Communication - Effective communication is the backbone of Teamwork in any organization. If no communication is there no knowledge sharing is possible. This lack of communication increases the time it takes to complete projects. Teamwork promotes conversation between employees regarding the task at hand, possibly preventing employees from working in opposite directions.

3)      Coordination - Coordination is very important as performance totally depend on it. Like in case of crossing the valley, each person should have taken every next step in a synchronized way.

4)      Load Distribution: The load of each person was shared by the other two due to proper organization. From this we conclude that a job may seem very cumbersome for a single individual but efficient organizations can perform these tasks with ease.

5)      Uniformity of roles: Similar roles for all 3 individuals. There is no differentiation among person 1, 2 and 3. All contribute equally to achieve the goal. The amount of risk is also equally distributed among them.

Above were my observations and learnings from the SKY WALK Cartoon. Please go through different articles on the same cartoon and provide your valuable insights.

Until Next week!

Cheers!!

Ankush

Three Monks - Nothing Spiritual. It's all Managerial.

 

This post is aimed at understanding the concepts of management from a short animated film namely - “Three Monks”

About the film - The film is based on the 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." The film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk.

It was released in 1980 and was directed by A Da. The film has got many recognitions including:

·         Won the outstanding film award at China's Ministry of Culture.

·         Won the Best animated film prize at the first Golden Rooster Awards in 1981.

·         Won four international awards including a Silver Bear for Short Film at the 32nd Berlin Film Festival in 1982.

It is a beautiful movie with a wonderful message. A must watch for all the managers and trainers.

Here is the YouTube link for the film. Watch the film and then continue reading. I am sure every minute of these 18:52 minutes will teach you a management lesson.

My learnings from the film – 

1)      Increase in members of team does not necessarily lead to increase in productivity – In the movie we see that a single monk was able to fetch two buckets of water. However when two monks were there, they were fetching just one bucket. In case of three monks absolutely no bucket was fetched. Hence emerges the concept that in order to have productive teams a manager should focus on building teams that have no internal conflicts and a balanced team should be chosen with every person recognizing his/her roles and taking responsibility.

2)      Recognizing strengths and weakness of team members- A manager should be able to recognize the core competencies and skills of team members and accordingly assign tasks. As we saw in the film that the second monk was a fast runner so when monastery was on fire he was doing all the running and fetching water from the river. The third monk who was strong but not agile took up the job of throwing water to put out the fire. The first monk however kept falling while running in this exercise so when finally the thee monks came up with a innovative solution he was given the task of standing at one place and pulling buckets of water.

3)      Innovation – We saw in the film as the number of monks increased form one to two, the productivity decreased from two buckets to one bucket. There lies the concept of effective job design and optimum utilization of resources to maximize productivity. In the film after the crisis the monks realized their potential and suitably innovated a pulley system which helped them to bring out their true potential and capitalize their potential.

4)      Participative Management – This concept was shown briefly in the film when the two monks were unable to fix a position for the bucket on the rod. It was then when the first monk came up with the idea of using a measuring scale. The first monk measured the length on rod and the second marked the point. This is known as participative management.

Special mentioned to be made of the rat in the monastery which, just like an able manager actually motivated the monks to fetch water when no one was ready to, by starting the fire in the monastery. Seeing the crisis situation the monks performed in synergy and were able to manage the crisis. Post this situation the monks were able to develop mutual trust for one another, this resulted in a fruitful environment hence.

Above were my learnings from the video. Kindly watch the video and give your insights on the same. Feedbacks and/ or suggestions on this post more than welcome. Until next week.

Cheers!!
Ankush