Theory X Y

THEORY X vs Y

 

 

Pygmalion phenomena is commonly observed in all fast growing companies. I had the opportunity of working for two years in one such company. Sapient Nitro deals mainly with eCommerce and specialises in designing and development of complex eCommerce websites.Since most of the project are very tightly scheduled and very critical to client's future financial projections, the managers usually set very high target to achieve desired result. When I joined my first project , the fresher team was asked to work on one practice module and finish it in 1 week. The team worked very hard and completed it in given time. However later team came to know that module was designed for 2 weeks and we did a commendable job. A classic example of Pygmalion effect. High expectation kept us motivated to slog hard and finish it spectacularly. However manager should remain cautious. There is a fine line between realistic high expectation and unrealistic target. Unrealistic target brings in frustration and affects productivity.

 

Theory X and Theory Y are solely about managers. It is based on assumptions of manager. The most dangerous situation to organisation is when workers dislike work and manager assumes that workers are not lazy.This is because workers are lazy but manager designs his policies based on his false assumption which further deteriorates condition.The best scenario is when workers like their work and manager assumes that workers are not lazy. This synchronization benefits the organisation. 


Theory X type 1 Example:  Worker dislikes the work and manager assumes that workers are lazy.
When I was leading a team of 11 in one of the project in my company. Two of them really disliked the software testing work given to them. I realised it soon though they never told. I discovered that they used to think testing as lowly job.So I pushed them hard to take complete ownership of their job and gave them opportunity to directly present their work to seniors, though I kept track of all they used to do. This new responsibility improved their performance considerably.Thus I employed idea based on assumption that they were unwilling to do the job

Theory X type 2 Example :  Worker really like the work but manager assumes that they are lazy
This is  responsible for many of the company switching done by IT professional. Workers are really talented and desire to handle more responsibilities but manager based on its assumption doesn't assign much work . This disheartens ambitious engineers and they switch to other company for better technology and work.

Theory Y type 1 Example :   When worker really dislikes the work and manager assumes that worker is not lazy.
In between two projects I was on bench for couple of weeks.I was assigned some mundane Excel sheet work by my bench manager. I thoroughly disliked the work but I didn't want to give him the impression so I finished initial few on time. I was then overloaded with more Excel work and that thing so disheartened me that I contemplated switching job but thankfully I soon got into  another project.

Theory Y type 2 Example : When worker really likes the work and manager assumes that worker is not lazy.
I really enjoyed being the team lead in one of my project. I worked very hard and continuously kept motivating my team. This was acknowledged by my manager by an appreciation mail but what encouraged me more was more responsibility given by the manager. This not only motivated me more to work hard for the organisation but also helped in shaping my career

 

SMART GOALS

Objective: Learning the way of setting SMART Goals and their achievement

Dr. Mandi always has a very innovative way of teaching concepts and ideas, and I always find them to be with such an approach that the idea strikes directly into the mind, no need to go deep into the books to understand better. Today again he started in his own way. He wanted to make us understand the importance of setting right goals and their achievement. He gave us cubic blocks of wood and students were asked to build a tower with certain set of conditions- single cube base, no support can be used at any point of time. A student was asked to come and build a tower.  With an objective of around 15 blocks in mind he was able to make a tower with 16 blocks which I considered a good performance.

Continuing on this Mr. Mandi gave us an approach which I will remember throughout my life now. I always thought that goals should be “realistic”, but after his class I realised that goals can only be Low/ Average/ Tough. What is low for one person may be very tough for another person. It all depends on the difference in confidence of a person.

So points to remember while goal setting is that-

·        ALWAYS SET HIGH GOALS; AVOID SETTING AVERAGE/LOW GOALS

·         STEPS SHOULD BE TAKEN TO MAKE TOUGH GOALS TO AVERAGE/LOW OR WHAT YOU SAY POSSIBLE

Goal Achievement should be planned after thinking about how to make goals ‘realistic’.

Here the concept of JUGAAD- Indian innovation, can come to help us and we Indians are considered really excellent in this.  

Goal Setting and Achievement can be better understood with the help of the following diagram—

A= Goal Set

B= Potential

C= Goal Achieved

D= History

 

So here I should also talk about a new concept I learned which is 

‘Pygmalion Effect’ or ‘Rosenthal Effect’-

low expectations lead to a decrease in performance. 
We understood this better when we did this task after understanding the above concept.  With a new set of Goals, a target of 40 blocks ,the team was not only able to break the previously achieved record of 27 but was able to build a tower of 28 blocks.

  Goals achieved are meant to lesser than or equal to the Goals set.

        

When I was working for my company and saw the APP(Annual Performance Plan) targets, I always considered that the targets were to high based on the historical performance, and I felt that under-achievement of the targets brings low confidence. But now I realized that they were meant this way.

valley crossing

VALLEY CROSSING

The valley crossing problem as given by Dr. Mandi resembles the case faced by every organization and that too in much complex, intriguing and interdependent form.

Lets look into the valley crossing problem which will give us the insight in how the things work in any organization and how every link is important to achieve the goal as set by the organization. If one of the links fails, the whole connected system can collapse. So what is important is the teamwork which binds the system through different and connected links .

We have various conditions which might perceived to be put into consideration before attempting the task. Assumptions and the real-life importance or lack of it behind these assumptions can be.

Height and weight of the people will matter 

These are general perceptions and are proved wrong by sheer grit, if you have that, height and weight will not matter. Similarly, whatever be the physical attributes of a person, they will not be a hindrance, if you have the desire to follow your dreams, and however big they might be.

Real-time communication 

It is most necessary for the proper coordination between many players as it helps in the maintenance of “Unity of Command” principle

Uniform gap-size 

Gap between the individuals should be equal. This condition explains us that there should not be any discrimination in the organization and everyone should be equally-approachable.

Synchronous movement

It is also necessary to make sure that team does not falter in-between the task and it helps us in learning the “Unity of direction” principle 

Equally Responsible roles: Every role which a individual in the team is possessing is equally responsible.In a team every person shares a similar role but not the same role i.e there is no differentiation of of work between the persons doing the valley crossing.The responsibility and similarity of job can be seen from the table as below:

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

 MY LEARNING FROM THE TASK...

An organization works primarily on the concept of “TEAMWORK”. All employees, as a part of organization, work together to achieve a common goal. 

A team is a group of people with various complementary skills, working together towards a common vision. Members of a team operate with high degree of trust, accountability and interdependence