Craftsmanship vs Organisation and The Objectives of Management.

Objective: The Objective of this Blog is to analyse the differences between an Organisation and Craftsmanship and study the Objectives of Management.

Prologue:

"Tower Kaun baneyaga, hath khada karo", these were the words of Professor Mandi after he took out two boxes of blocks out of his bag.

We were excited, a new game by our dear professor.
"He rocks man!", guy sitting next to me exclaimed.And i agree, our new task was to build a single base tower with wooden blocks, previous record being 26 block tower as told by Prof Mandi. Everyone raised his/her hand in excitement, at last one student was chosen for the task(How he was chosen is an interesting story ;) ).
"Kitna uuncha banaaega Tower", asked Professor Mandi. And the student thought for a while and said "10 stories.". This was his GOAL.
He Started, block by block, one over the another, and we all were guiding him: go slow, left, right, wait!!

And the tower collapsed, the highest story being 17! a good score for a start after setting 10 stories as goal.

This is when Professor Mandi explained to us the jargon of "Craftsmanship".
"A Craftsman is a person who makes articles using his manual skills. He sets his own goals, the whole process of product manufacturing is handled by him i.e. single person doing all tasks. A tailor, a cobbler are examples of a craftsman.". Many examples and situations were discussed.

Next, he called upon 8 volunteers to come up for the same job of tower making. The team decided its goal as 20 towers. "If a single person can build 17 stories, we can make more".
But the rule was, only a single person can touch the blocks and rest will guide him. They can only talk to person next to them, CEO->Manager->team Leader->next employee...and so on ->builder. A typical organisational hierarchy was formed.  In addition, the builder's eyes will be covered by a cloth.

And the game started again, managers were guiding and employee was building the tower, but wait, everyone was shouting and there was mis-communication. The tower collapsed after reaching a height of 7 stories!!
How can it happen, there were 7 others guiding the builder.
This is when professor Mandi explained to us the importance of middle management in an organisation.
The tower collapsed as there were many instructions being passed at the same time to the builder leading to confusion. Hence, the top management must clearly define the objectives of middle management which ultimately leads to less chaos and better productivity.

You can watch the complete video of the activity here:

Now, Lets compare the two entities 'Craftsmanship' and 'Organisation' to get a more clear picture of its objectives and processes:

I hope the difference between 'Craftsmanship' and 'Organisation' is clear to you.

Moving on to our next topic:

Objectives of Management

According to my understanding of the session, the primary objective of management is to bring out Excellence, be it in anything. But, how can we achieve excellence? It has to be dependent on something.
To achieve excellence, we require two parameters, namely:  Effectiveness and Efficiency.
Efficiency can be defined as the product of these two functions. Expressing in equation form:

Being effective means having the capability to achieve desired results. Effectiveness gives anything(a process, goal etc) proper direction. its a function which can be achieved by few number of people and requires very good management skills.

Being efficient means giving high output with respect to input. With Efficiency, comes speed, which can be achieved by many people. A person may be very skilled in his task and can give high efficiency.

Therefore, to achieve Excellence, a proper mix of Effectiveness and Efficiency is required by any organisation.
Finally, Professor Mandi explained that Excellence can also be defined as achieving "More out of less for More".

With this, i conclude this blog. I'll be writing more on the topics of Principles of Organisational Management in future. Keep reading.