LE-03 (Valley crossing)

Valley crossing problem

Problem in hand:

                                               There are three people trying to cross a valley. The gap of the valley is in the range of one foot to two feet. Assume that each of them has the same footstep. They have a rod of a convenient size and they have to cross the valley using the rod as a support. Direct jumping is considered fatal assuming the valley is fathomless.

Solution: 

                                                  The following are the steps to be followed sequentially to complete the task.

• Initially, the first person puts his leg forward and hid first foot remains in air and so he is only half safe. The remaining are fully safe. 
• The next step, the first person is totally unsafe and he has hang from the rod, which is being supported by the other two with their weight. 
• The next step, the first person puts its first foot on the other side of the valley and hence half safe again. The second person now puts his first foot in air and hence even he is half safe. 
• At the end of next step, the first person totally reaches the other end of the valley and hence is totally safe again. The second person is totally unsafe hanging in the air with the support of the rod weighted by the first and third persons. 
• Next step, the second person puts his first step on the other side of the valley and the third person puts his first step in the air and hence both are half safe.
• At the end of next step, the third person reaches the other end of the valley and hence totally safe again. The third person remains hanging in the air supported by the first two persons who have reached the other end of the valley. 
• After two more steps, even the third person reaches the other end of the valley and the mission has been accomplished.

Management Lessons learnt:

Team work:

                                                    The three members worked as part of a team and accomplished the goal of crossing the valley. In the whole exercise, at any point of time someone is either half safe or completely unsafe. Also, the number of times someone is either unsafe or half safe is same for all the three members. This shows that they should believe in each other and should develop a sense of mutual trust to complete the task successfully. Also a mistake by one the members may prove fatal for the remaining two members.

Interdependence:

                                              

                                               We can observe the success of the above task depends on the three members equally. But also we can say that their roles are interlocked. The role played by one of them is played by the other at a different point of time. The safety of each member also depends on the workmanship of the other two. Hence we can say the Interdependence is crucial and should be maximum.

Peer support:

                                                 The support extended by our colleagues in a team helps us in doing wonders at job. This can be easily illustrated by the above exercise. In this generation, where work is being assigned in a more specific sphere of influence, peer support plays a pivotal in the success of any team. The support may be in the official problem or the personal arena.

Effectiveness:

                                         Effectiveness is doing the right thing. In the valley crossing exercise, the three members had to decide on the best method to cross the dangerous valley using only a rod as a support. They might have thought upon a variety of options but finally executed the above solution because it is the best solution that they thought. Doing a given task effectively can increase the productivity greatly and this can be illustrated by the valley crossing exercise.

Vision and Mission:

                                              A team should have a vision, both long term and short term and should work towards accomplishing it. A motivating vision and mission statement keeps us the right path to achieve the goal and acts as a constant motivating force. The vision and mission should be constantly updated based on or progress. Blindly doing the job without a clearly laid down vision results in haphazardness and lack of clarity on the job.

        

LE02

                        In this post, I will dwell upon the POM concepts that can be learnt from the innovative educational organization, Khan Academy.

Introduction :

                            Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization. Its founder is Salman Khan, a Bangladeshi American. He is a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. The organization is on its track in changing the old methodologies of teaching and make studying enjoyable to students. It provides more than 3500 free Youtube lecture videos in subjects like mathematics, physics, astronomy, finance, history, economics, chemistry etc.

Salman Khan

 Vision :

                            This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever.

Mission :

                           Providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.

Logo of Khan Academy

Technical-human-conceptual skills :

                          Khan Academy is run by a small group of members which comprises people from different backgrounds. They include software engineers, designers, deans of different departments etc. The top management has Salman Khan in Executive Director position and Shantanu in COO position. They efficiently coordinate among themselves so that they can carry on such a huge task in an effective manner. They are also aided by volunteers, part-time contributors from around the world.

Innovation :

                      The academy started with Khan remotely tutoring his cousins interactively, some topics in Calculus, using Yahoo Doodle images. He uploaded a video in youtube and made it public but didn't expect that it would garner a huge response from all over the world. He got comments from different generations, different regions of the world, appreciating the content of the video and asking him to upload some more videos. It then gave him the innovative idea that why not upload videos from all the subjects covering all the topics which will be of great help to the students all over the world. This one idea led to the formation of the most innovative educational organization of 20th century, Khan Academy.

New business/revenue models :

                             Khan Academy is a non-profit organization funded by donations. It has backing from Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and Google. Its total revenue is about $1,50,000 in donations alone. It also earns $2000 per months from ad companies. This clearly shows that if you have an innovative idea to get into entrepreneurship and which has the right content, attracting investors is not difficult.

Strategy :

                               There are students around the world who go to schools unwillingly and study without evincing any interest. To create interest among them, innovative and creative methods of teaching are required. The antiquated methodologies followed by the educational system is laying a lot of stress on the tender minds without actually teaching anything comprehensively. Khan Academy's vision is to target such students and offer them the way of teaching which they can enjoy. Also, there will be different types of students, some who have the gifted ability to understand quickly and some who are slow learners. Applying the same teaching method to all the types will not yield any fruitful results. Through video lectures, one can maintain his own pace of learning depending on his capability. He has the facility to pause, stop, resume, rewind or fast-forward the video. 

                               Students normally do not get constructive feedback for their performance, which they can use to improve their credentials. The academy provides proper feedback and tests the student thoroughly to make sure that he understands the concept comprehensively. This is an important feature of the tutorial. There are a lot of students following the academy's website regularly and the strategies applied by Salman Khan proved to be fruitful to the organization.

A snapshot of teaching methodology adopted by Khan Academy

Teamwork :

                                 The Khan Academy has a very small team of employees performing their duties efficiently with suitable team work. The team assigned duties among themselves and each member concentrates on a specific sphere so that he can gain expertise in his respective segment. Working as a successful team led by an able leader like Salman Khan is secret behind the stupendous success of the organization in such a short span of time. 

Entrepreneurship :

                                 Entrepreneurs have various ideas to start their own businesses. Some start firms in production and manufacturing field and some in services field. But some start organizations which change the face of the world because of the services offered and such organizations take the creators to new heights which they cant imagine even in their dreams. Salman Khan is one such kind of an entrepreneur. He runs a non-profit organization yet he receives funds from many renowned organizations and trusts. He need not look out for angel investors or run around banks for funds. All this is because of the field which he selected to work.