Goal Setting: SMART Goals

For any organization or any person for that matter, Goal setting is one of the most important tasks that needs to be achieved.
So, how should the Goals be ?
As a popular management concept goes, the goals must be SMART.

Specific:

It stresses the need for a specific goal over and against a more general one. This means the goal is clear and unambiguous. To make goals specific, we 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 answers the five "W" questions:

• What
• Why
• Who
• Where
• Which

 Measurable:

It 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?

Attainable:

It 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.

An attainable goal will usually answer the question:

• How: How can the goal be accomplished?

Relevant:

It 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?

Time Bound:

 It 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 SMART 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.
A time-bound goal will usually answer the question:

• When?
• What can I do six months from now?
• What can I do six weeks from now?
• What can I do today?

However, just setting up SMART Goals wouldn't help. We need to implement these in our lives as well. And this implementation of the SMART goals is was what would lead to effective PERFORMANCE.

Tower Building: Craftsmanship-------->Modern Management

Before getting into the discussion of Craftsmanship vs Modern Management, let us first define what they are.

Craftsmanship:
When there is just one person doing each and every part of the work, it's Craftsmanship.
E.g. A cobbler

Modern Management:
When the work is divided into atomic parts and is then assigned to a number of people where one person is doing just one atomic part of the work, it's modern management.
E.g. A manufacturing plant

To start with the comparison, we had a Tower building activity in which a tower of cubes had to be built by placing one cube over the other. First, there was just one person building the tower where he was the lone person doing everything in the process signifying Craftsmanship.

Then, a team of 8 people was made to build the tower where each person had a specific job signifying Modern Management.

However, in the first case there was a tower of 17 cubes built while in the second 7 cubes. This was mostly because in the second case the person who was placing the cubes was blindfolded and the other 7 persons did not have any proper roles defined. This is not to say that Modern Management does not succeed. In fact, it does to a larger extent if the task is executed in an appropriately planned manner.

Let us have a look at some points to see why modern management is much better than Craftsmanship.

• There can be no parallel work in craftsmanship whereas it is used in modern management to save time and hence increase the scale of production.
• In craftsmanship, everything is done by a single person whereas in modern management, the work is broken down into jobs followed by activities followed by tasks and so on up to the elemental level and then each elemental level is given to a person.
• In craftsmanship, skill is the requirement, whereas modern management thrives on De-skilling so that anyone can do the de-skilled job and the organization does not have to depend on a skilled individual. So, as we move from craftsmanship to modern management, the control gradually shift from the worker to the non-worker i.e. the management.

The advantage that craftsmanship has over modern management is that there is job satisfaction in the former while there is job alienation in the latter.

There is also a concept of 3 E's in management: Excellence, Effectiveness, Efficiency
Here's the relation between the three:

                            Excellence = Effectiveness x Efficiency

Here, effectiveness signifies direction and Efficiency signifies speed. So, efficiency means "getting more out of less" and effectiveness means "for more".
Therefore, Excellence essentially means

                 "Getting more out of less for more"

Hence, when we evolve from craftsmanship towards modern management, we not only scale-up the processes and output but also generate a lot of employment in the society by employing a larger population.

Douglas McGregor's Theory X & Theory Y of Human Motivation

Douglas McGregor, one of the forefathers of management theory and one of the top business thinkers of all time had a profound influence on the management field, largely due to his Theory X and Theory Y of Human Motivation.

McGregor developed a philosophical view of humankind with this theory X & Y in 1960. Essentially these are two opposing perceptions that theorized how people view human behavior at work and organizational life.

Theory X Assumptions:
Managers falling under Theory X believe that:

• People have an inherent dislike for work and will try to avoid work whenever possible.
• People must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment etc. for getting the work done.
• People prefer to be directed, don't like responsibility and have little or no initiative.
• People seek security above everything else.

Theory Y Assumptions:
Managers falling under Theory Y believe that:

• Work comes naturally to the employees.
• People will exercise self-direction in order to achieve organizational objectives.
• People accept and, more importantly, seek responsibility.
• Creativity, Innovation, imagination are encouraged.
• People are capable of using their abilities to solve the organizational problems. 

Now, where would you work more effectively ? With Theory X or Theory Y manager ?
 A consensual answer to this would be with Theory Y managers. However, there are certain fields like large scale production operation and unskilled production line work where the work is more or less monotonous. Theory Y is more suited to knowledge work and professional services.

Moving ahead, because of these 2 types of management and, needless to say, two types of workers (Good & Bad), there are 4 cases as depicted in the image below:

 Let me analyze these 4 cases in the order of their merit as per my experience:

1. Hopeful Managers, Good Workers: An ideal environment to flourish as an organization I believe. The management's perception turns out to be correct and hence the workers would enjoy more while delivering their work.
2. Hopeful Managers Bad Workers: Ideally, not a good environment to be working in, but since the management belongs to the category of Theory Y, there will be motivation enough for the workers to work well. It could possibly lead to the change in the mindset of the workers and hence moving to case 1, i.e. Hopeful Managers and Good Workers :)
3. Hopeless Managers, Good Workers: In this case, even if the workers are willing to do well for the organization, their perception in the minds of the higher management is not good. So, there will not be proper direction in the entire work process which could eventually lead the environment to move to case 4, i.e. Hopeless Managers, Bad Workers.
4. Hopeless Managers, Bad Workers: The organization does not seem to pursue a pleasant future if the work environment is such in an organization.

So, be it as the management or as the work force, eventually it is for us to decide in which quadrant we want our organization to be ?

First Day, First Class at NITIE

Exactly a year back, when I was preparing for CAT and NITIE was one of the dream B-Schools that I wished to be in. And when the dream came true, I pleasantly wondered how my classes would be like. But, even in the happiest of my dreams I could not have asked for a better start at NITIE.

First day, first class and I could not believe that there could be a class as chilled out as it turned out to be.

Started with Soft spunch balls, having the globe imprinted on it, flying and hitting people, a plastic toy passing from one person to another, people clicking photographs at will, a peom recited, songs sung and what not !!

However, more than the fun in the classroom, it was the learning that I got which was more enthralling. Dr. Mandi listing down the priorities with “MONEY” being the foremost priority seemed so much practical. The concept of “Aaj ki roti aaj hi kamaana” and “Socho becho, becho seekho, seekho socho “ are two of the best thoughts that I have ever come across.

In addition, the opportunity cost, the amount that the students turned down to come to NITIE, was calculated to around 15 lakhs, which turned out to be Rs. 2500/- per day :O :O. I had never before realized my value in terms of Money.

And as I approach the end of my FIRST BLOG EVER, I recall another learning that I got from the first class: “If each one of us start writing blogs on our field of study, those blogs can be used to educate millions of people across the globe.”