Learning Goal setting and Performance: - What, Why and How?

Goals refer to future valued outcomes, it is the one thing that implies discontent with one’s present condition and desire to attain an objective and outcome. The feeling of success after pursuing important and meaningful goal is the primary standard of self-satisfaction.

So it makes the Goal Setting the first and foremost discretionary creating process in order to motivate people or to motivate yourself. The value of goal setting is so well recognized that the entire management system, like organisational management have goal settings basic incorporate within them.

But the question is How the Goals can be set? To answer this first let’s talk about objectives-which can be assigned by others (like the process of objective setting by our Bosses),which can be set in a group (like in a group task and a project when assigned to a team) or it can be self-set. However the most important thing is what are the parameters or principles which need to keep in mind while doing the Goal setting. We heard about the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reliable and Time-bound) goals, but in my opinion and learning from the class the key moderators of goal setting are:-

1. Feedback: - which people need in order to track progress

2. Commitment to the Goal: -which is enhanced by self-efficacy and viewing the goal as important

3. Task complexity: - which measures our sense of accomplishment after completing it

4. Situational constraints: -which moderates the goal effect w.r.t the available resources that we have in order to accomplish a task.  

Now how Goal setting for any organisation affects the performance? Performance is related job/position for any employee. Goal setting and achieving those goals help to drive for the next assignment along with change in the satisfaction level. But one should remember that personal Goals must be aligned with the organisation’s objectives and goals, otherwise how SMART the goal is, it won’t be having any impact on organisational productivity.

In the end I will say it’s not like you must follow a well written or a well augmented process to set your Goal, it all depends on you that how you will interpret and how much you innovate in order to set your GOALS.

Lesson 2:- Concept of Old and New Management

Lesson 2:- Concept of Old and New Management

In my last blog we captured the essence of “Learning by Earning” and agreed on the GURUKUL panache of teaching.

In order to understand the concept well, we began with a Tower building exercise with the help of small cubes in two stages:-

1.  In first it had be done by a sighted person.

2.  But in second stage a blindfolded person (low level management) had to assemble the cubes who will receive only verbal guidance from another person (middle level management) under the supervision of third person (top-level management).

The results were exciting. In the first stage the sighted person was able to build about 22 blocks, but the second stage resulted in building the tower of 24 blocks. This activity asked two questions form us:-

1.   Despite having adversities how can the 2^nd stage can produce better result than the 1^st?

2.   Which of the above two case should be preferred?

To explain the above questions well lets go through the following table which categorised the different entities of interest.

Entities of Interest	1st stage	2nd Stage
Involvement of person	1	3
Management and Organisation	No	Yes
Decision making	Done by the only involved person	Decision making transferred to group of managers
Performance	Low	High

  

As we can see from the above table how management segmented the task so that everyone can concentrate on the only task given to them so that the factors like fear and adulteration do not affect the performance or the production of the organisation.

After the completion of the task Dr. Mandi explained what is OLD (1^st stage) and NEW (2^nd stage) management. For simplicity the differences between above two can be found in the below mentioned table.

Parameters	NEW Management	OLD Management
Clarity of Work	Ambiguous to the people	Involved person are clear about their responsibilities
Skill level	Involved person are more skilled	Deskilling of work happens
Satisfaction level	More	Less
Productivity	Less	High
Time stamp	High	Less

Conclusions drawn:-

1. Because of the high productivity in less time, it is becoming imperative for every organisations to adopt the concept of new management.

2. How the coordination and relation among three levels in any organisation can affect the performance and production of it.

Learning by the GURUKUL way

While I was packing my bags for the NITIE, I heard lots of rumours about the kind of environment that I will face in any MBA colleges. Furthermore I was also told by lots of people that how hard the curriculum will be here.

The Desi style of teaching by Dr. Prasad aka Dr. Mandi surely helped me to get in the groove. The first lesson that I learned that Why education is important? He gave us the reason of choosing Education over other things for which you are investing your money? Dr. Mandi told us that it is important to choose between things which can help other to get something useful in return.

Welcome to Gurukul

After sometime Dr. Mandi showed us two toys, one was Newton’s cradle and the other was a simple ball with a World Map printed on it. Using the first toy he helped us to understand how a simple IDEA can be the seed of any business. He also told us the two and three ball theory using the Newton’s cradle.

But even now lots of people were dubious about the second toy, then he told us how that ball can be the source of learning. And in the end of that I understood the idea of “Earning while Learning and Learning while earning”.

The Gurukul way of teaching also taught me that “Seeing a lion in a Safari is more beautiful than seeing one in a Zoo”. In simple term it means that how an environment of free thinking generates more output than a traditional way of thinking.

In the end the my first confrontation with Dr. Mandi strengthen my belief whatever or how many new things will come but still OLD IS GOLD.

So until next time…..Happy Learning. :)