Why Entrepreneurship!!!!

An entrepreneurial mindset is one of the driving factors that can reverse the declining growth curve of the global economy. Small and medium sized enterprises form a major part of a country’s economy, especially in the developing countries. It thus becomes imperative for the budding managers to innovate and create economic opportunities by promoting entrepreneurship. This is where the importance of institutions comes in which can improve the chances of creating successful entrepreneurs through educational interventions.

Institutions need to create a culture which will focus on innovation and eventually bring up qualitative changes in the society around us. At Nitie, the very first class by Professor Prasad teaches you a basic funda of management – “Socho Becho Becho Sikho Sikho Socho”. It explicitly states that creative thinking and knowing the art of selling and then learning from your experiences are the key essentials of management. Maha Mandi, held every year which goes to the grass root levels in the way business is conducted and thus is an enriching experience. It is a socio-marketing initiative which promotes entrepreneurial spirit among students and also gives them an opportunity to do their bit for the society. This event was conceptualized by our Professor Prasad who is now popularly known as Professor Mandi because of the popularity of this event. In fact, Maha Mandi was earlier called only Mandi but gained this name after enthusiastic participation from various other B-Schools as well.

We are encouraged on how to utilize this knowledge and work on our own start-ups rather than working for MNCs. We also have a very famous event, 

This is just to give a flavor of the entrepreneurship culture being built in our college. However our main objectives during the MBA phase and focus would be:

·         Discussion on Entrepreneurship as our career ahead.

·         Getting a flavor of B-School culture on entrepreneurship.

·         Sharing links of important sessions and seminars being conducted on entrepreneurship.

·         Lastly, helping out each-other on our ideas and how to improve on them

Importance Of Goal Setting:SMART WAY

SMART is a mnemonic used to set objectives, often called Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), for example for project management, employee performance management and personal development.

he acronym letters broadly conform to the following parameters :

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely

Developing goals upon these parameters :

1. Specific :

The first term stresses the need for a specific goal over and against a more general one. This means the goal is clear and unambiguous; without vagaries and platitudes. To make goals specific, they must tell a team exactly what is expected, why is it important, who’s involved, where is it going to happen and which attributes are important.

A specific goal will usually answer the five "W" questions:

What: What do I want to accomplish?

Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

Who: Who is involved?

Where: Identify a location.

Which: Identify requirements and constraints.

2. Measurable :

The second term stresses the need for concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of the goal. The thought behind this is that if a goal is not measurable, it is not possible to know whether a team is making progress toward successful completion. Measuring progress is supposed to help a team stay on track, reach its target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs it on to continued effort required to reach the ultimate goal.

A measurable goal will usually answer questions such as:

How much?

How many?

How will I know when it is accomplished?

3. Achievable :

The third term stresses the importance of goals that are realistic and attainable. While an attainable goal may stretch a team in order to achieve it, the goal is not extreme. That is, the goals are neither out of reach nor below standard performance, as these may be considered meaningless. When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. The theory states that an attainable goal may cause goal-setters to identify previously overlooked opportunities to bring themselves closer to the achievement of their goals.

An attainable goal will usually answer the question:

How: How can the goal be accomplished?

4. Relevant :

The fourth term stresses the importance of choosing goals that matter. A Bank Manager's goal to "Make 50 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by 2:00pm." may be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, and Time-Bound, but lacks Relevance. Many times you will need support to accomplish a goal: resources, a champion voice, someone to knock down obstacles. Goals that are relevant to your boss, your team, your organization will receive that needed support.

Relevant goals (when met) drive the team, department, and organization forward. A goal that supports or is in alignment with other goals would be considered a relevant goal.

A relevant goal can answer yes to these questions:

Does this seem worthwhile?

Is this the right time?

Does this match our other efforts/needs?

Are you the right person?

5. Time-bound :

The fifth term stresses the importance of grounding goals within a time frame, giving them a target date. A commitment to a deadline helps a team focus their efforts on completion of the goal on or before the due date. This part of the S.M.A.R.T. goal criteria is intended to prevent goals from being overtaken by the day-to-day crises that invariably arise in an organization. A time-bound goal is intended to establish a sense of urgency.

Tower Building Exercise!!!!

The INCEPTION

Every tower has an underlying foundation which supports the building and if the foundation is not strong, no matter what material and technology you use, it will not stand. Similarly, every success story begins with an idea. The idea has to be impressive and innovative to make the foundation strong. This is the elemental step for any organisation to rise and prosper. The idea not only strengthens your base but also gives the direction and target to the organization.

Tower Building Exercise

Each and every drop of water is essential in constituting a river and every river is essential to making the sea. Same is the case with organisations, where each and every block has its definite purpose in the scheme of things. The organisation grows with the addition of each block and coverage of a new milestone, but every additional block to be placed is different with respect to others. 

In our Principles of Management Class, we underwent an exercise to build towers using light wooden blocks. The wooden blocks were to be stacked one over the other in order to construct a stable tower. It was a simple exercise, but it incorporated many of the principles of the course, for instance, what are the fundamental principles behind a successful enterprise, how can a mammoth organisation thrive successfully, etc.  Even with such a simple exercise, one can understand the details of an organisation, such as how to develop hierarchies and structure an organisation.

The first principle, as mentioned earlier, is to have a have a strong footing and have deep roots in your areas of specialization. Also you need to have a good idea to be stable in the market and stick for long term. The base block comprises of the core values and if they are not sound (i.e. the base block is not heavy and strong enough), it may not be able to withstand the pressures and may buckle. Every additional step has to be properly planned and checked for necessity since it imposes extra friction between the existing layers and additional pressures on the lower layers. Hence, the additional block must be light in weight, or in other words, the person must be free from ego. This would reduce the friction and lead to amicable working. Also every step should have an involvement and consensus of every member of the team in order to have better bonding and fetch desirable solutions.

The Tower

GOAL Setting / Deciding the Target

Goal Setting is one of the most important functions of an organisation and, perhaps, any team. Without deciding the goal we can not know the direction to put our efforts and the efforts would be wasted. Similarly, even setting a goal which is below the expectations or which is beyond the requirements is not desirable as these would not bring out the true capacity of the team/organisation and hence would lead to a downfall. To take care of this, we have SMARTER Goal Setting, which implies-

• S - Specific
• M - Measurable
• A - Achievable
• R - Realistic
• T - Time Bound
• E - Evaluate
• R - Re-evaluate

Now let us study the following data and we will understand the importance of the SMARTER goals withe reference to it.

Parameter	Index	I	II	III	IV
Historical Tower height achieved by team LOW	1	5	5	5	5
Historical Tower height achieved by team HIGH	2	18	20	21	23
Achievable Performance -(Estimate / Guess )	3	18	20	22	25
Goal proposed by the Manager	4	18	22	22	18
Goal proposed by the worker	5	12	12	12	20
Goal mutually agreed for building the tower between worker and manager	6	15	22	18	15
No. of cubes Tower manager and worker team could build / achieve at the end of the exercise	7	18	18	18	18

Now as we can see from the data, we have the historical highs and lows for the Tower height achieved by teams earlier. On the basis of these data, an estimate is made for the achievable performance. The manager and the worker both assess the estimate for achievable performance and set their respective goals (4 & 5). Based on these, the worker and manager negotiate with one another and reach a mutually agreeable goal for the task at hand. While negotiating, the manager should try to reach as close to achievable performance as he can. This would help increase the productivity and improve the overall performance of the team.

The performance of the teams under various scenarios can be compared by the use of certain parameters mentioned in the table below:

Gaps	I	II	III	IV
Gap between Tower height Performance so far achieved and Achievable performance of tower	0	2	4	7
Gap between goal proposed by the manager and mutually agreed goal by team	3	0	4	3
Gap between goal proposed by the manager and the goal proposed  by the worker	6	10	10	-2
Gap between goal proposed by the worker and mutually agreed by team	-3	-10	-6	5
Gap between  performance achieved (at the end of the exercise ) and  goal mutually agreed by team	-3	4	0	-3
Gap between  performance achieved ( at the end of the exercise ) and  achievable goal	0	-2	-4	-7

Scenario 1 is a case in which the manager is not an initiator. He takes the goal as the achievable performance, and does not strive for a better result, which is evident even from the goal proposed by the team where the manager and the worker both cede equal ground. It also shows that the manager is not influential and is not very thoughtful. Thus even though the team outperforms its set goal, it is able to reach only the achievable level.

Scenario 2 is a case where the manager is very optimistic and is ready to take an initiative. Also since the goal proposed by manager and that agreed by team are the same, hence it can be seen that the manager is also very influential with the workers. But, overall the team cannot reach the goal they had mutually agreed and hence it can be said that the team is not very efficient.

Scenario 3 portrays a case wherein the estimated guess is more than the maximum height achieved historically. The manager proposes a goal equal to the achievable performance which implies that manager is optimist and takes initiative for work. He is moderately influential over the workers and negotiates well for the goal. The motivation provided by the manager helps the team in performing according to the goal set and achieving the target but it falls well short of the maximum tower height achieved and raises a question about the approach of the team.

The Scenario 4 has the estimated achievable performance higher than the maximum tower height achieved. The goal proposed by the manager is even lesser than that by workers which shows that the manager is lethargic and that workers are thoughtful about their work. The mutually agreed goal goes down further as a consequence of the lethargy of manager. But the team performs better than the expectations and stacks more cubes than the goal set by team.

Thus a few of the learning worth noting in the above example are that the manager must be an initiator and take the initiative with any task at hand. He must have a good influence over his team, so that he can motivate and convince them towards the common goal.

Problem Solving And Decision Making

One day Prof Mandi started a discussion on a very interesting topic called problem solving and decision making .The discussion was very productive and i got to learn a lot of new things which i will be sharing in this blog.

Problem Solving: Problem-solving is a mental process that involves discovering, analyzing and solving problems. The ultimate goal of problem-solving is to overcome obstacles and find a solution that best resolves the issue.Decision Making: Decision making is the mental process resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternatives. Every decision making process produces a final choice in an action or an opinion of choice. If a person neither takes and action nor gives an opinion, this is also decision.Difference Between Problem Solving and Decision MakingIt is important to differentiate between problem analysis and decision making. The concepts are completely distinct from each another. Traditionally, it is argued that problem analysis must be done first, so that the information gathered in that process may be used towards decision making. A problem is a deviation from performance standards - that is, what occurred is different from what was expected to have occurred. In decision making, the objectives are first established, and a choice is made among alternatives for action or for an opinion. A decision that results in doing nothing - no action, nor an opinion rendered - is also considered a decision.In any organization decision making and its implementation can happen in the following 4 ways:-1.       Individual Decision, Individual Implementation3.       Group Decision, Individual Implementation4.       Group Decision, Group Implementation


Individual Decision:-In this case decision is taken by an individual and is a fast way of decision making.Group Decision:-In this case decision is taken by a group of individuals and the decision is made only when they reach a mutual consensus.This way takes more time.The Steps in Problem-Solving:-1.       Problem Identification : In this step we identify the problems and prioritize them.2.       Problem Analysis : In this step we define the problem statement on the basis of all the gathered data both from internal sources and external sources.3.       Plan Development :In this step a plan is developed for tackling the problem and finding a feasible solution for it                           4.      Plan Implementation:In this step the solution is implemented5.  Plan Evaluation:In this the implemented solution is evaluated