LE01

It is 19 June 2012 and the time is 11.00pm, I have looked into time table sheet and found new course, Principles of Management, which i felt it as a routine course. To be frank, it dint exited me much, may be because of routine name of course, or few concepts of it are already covered in an elective which i had taken in my engineering course.

20 June 2012

At 9.00am, Lecturer Dr. Prasad had entered class and had begun his passionate speech, which created an everlasting impression on whole class that a M.B.A student should become a creator of opportunities but not a seeker of opportunity. This seems to be a simple one but real gist of this statement is hiding behind it. I simply loved it and began thinking differently and out of box. He wants us to become Entrepreneurs. Then we came to know about MANDI.

Mandi is an innovative pedagogy for effective learning. In Mandi pedagogy students are assigned to engage in street selling of educational aids merchandise for a day and the experience is integrated with regular academic learning processes. Mandi Field experience is utilized to impart MBA curriculum at NITIE. This programme is designed by Dr. Prasad and Hence, NITIE students would love to call him Dr Mandi

He is very different and full of energy and told us that we are not going to learn in a conventional way. Instead we will learn as we do things in a practical way. He introduced a new concept “Aj ki roti aj kamao”, which means we are suppose to earn today for today's bread and butter. A new slogan called “Socho beecho, beecho sekho, sekho soocho” is introduced by Dr Mandi which means we should learn by actually doing business in real world. Under his supervision, NITIE students have created many goods which are wonderful. Below are some of creations involving simple physics.

Then he had raised few questions on the kind of education system we adopted currently in India. We discussed the issue and found that Many of students are choosing mundane career options, unlike trying something new. He has shown "Another Brick in Wall " Video by Pink Floyd and we thought that students mindset should change. After going thorough entire first class, i remember Amir Khan in 3-Idiots, in which he says, one has to understand concepts thoroughly and should not mug up things.

At 2.00pm, again we met and this time discussion went on the goal setting procedure that is to be efficiently and effectively followed by each of the employee in any firm. For an effective manager these goal settings is of utmost importance because they are parameters with which he judges team members. These goals can be of many types as described below in figure 1. These are goals which are to be accomplished by any employee in any firm.

Figure 1

Above classification of goals can be understood easily by introducing a game called " Tower Challenge ", in which a tower is to be made with the help of identical cubes by placing one over other and participants are three in number, and roles are shown below

1.        The Participant ( Participant 1 )
2.        The Middle Manager ( Participant 2 )
3.        The Top Management ( Participant 3 )

Rules of Game: 

1.       The Participant is blindfolded and should use odd hand to place cubes one over other
2.       The Middle Manager should guide Participant in placing cubes one over other
3.       The Top Manager can make decisions in the game, as and when required

Goals are :

           

      Specific: - We have to make highest tower.

      Measurable:- It should be highest, last year it was 17 blocks

      Attainable:- The target was taken 18, as 17 is attainable in last year

      Relevant:- Its relevant to the vision, to build longest tower of 18 blocks.

      Time Bound:- It has to be completed within class timings.

     Three participants are chosen to play game by conducting auction process, in which student has to bid his own wish amount to participate in the game. This in-turn was an good opportunity for all students to participate in game but as students heard auction word, most of us stepped back :) We failed to grab the opportunity to play game and here we realized real outside environment which says that, opportunities does not come to us, we are suppose to grab them. But finally 3 of my friends made into game participation.

     Dr Mandi has asked each of those 3 to ascertain what could be maximum height of tower which they are capable of making it. Random answers has come and they are 20, 17 and 15. There was a poll conducted in class to ascertain what could be maximum tower height. Statistics provided are below.

     45% said height would be of <15 cubes

     45% said height would be of 15-20 cubes

     10% said height would be of >20 cubes

      Placing cubes one on each other went interesting and crowd surrounded participants and cheered them up. Here audience is referred to customers and we realized how difficulties will come up in the game i.e. placing cubes using odd hand with blindfolded and, at these difficult junctures Dr. Mandi has been giving Management lectures correlating with the tower building game. After 90 minutes of hard word, finally we have made tower of 18 blocks with top most block marked as "B", which indicates our section :). Below is victory picture.

      Conclusion:

    We have learnt many concepts in single class and we found it to be very interesting. I hope at-least some of us would be opportunity creators in future and few would become successful managers and leaders. Now my opinion has changed that POM is no more going to be mundane. We have understood that we get carried away easily by lecturers when professors come up with innovative teaching methodologies, most usually happens only in NITIE, Mumbai. We are interestingly looking forward to learn much more from Dr.Mandi.