Tower building and team work

         

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” 
― Confucius

          It was another session of Dr.Mandi and another innovative way of learning.We were given with wooden cubical blocks. The class was asked to choose between two scenarios. One, a person has to build a tower with given blocks as high as possible and the class was asked to predict the possible number of blocks that can be used without the tower collapsing, lets call this as case 1.Two, a person will be blindfolded and he will be the building the tower with same blocks using verbal assistance from another person, also there will be a person to monitor this activity lets call this as case 2. To make the process more interesting a small amount of bet was placed on the winning scenario. 

                   

• Case 1:-

         As in the picture to the left, a student is building the tower alone. He had full authority to make any decision regarding how to build,where to build and similar other decisions on his own. Which means complete power of the process was given to the student. The time given to build was unlimited and the process has to stop if the tower collapses. The student could build a tower of 22 blocks.

• Case 2 :-

      As in the picture to the right, three students were asked to come on the stage. One was blindfolded, one was made as an assistance and the other was to be the in-charge of the whole process. The rules were the blindfolded person should use only his left hand, assistant should only given verbal instructions and the in-charge was not to say anything to the blindfolded person but he can discuss with the assistant. Even under these constraints the team could build higher tower of 25 blocks compared to 22 blocks by the person with no constraints.

Learning :-

• Case 1 was the old school of management where the worker had full right to make decision. As a result there was a risk workers becoming too social or easily swayed by personal emotions and opinions when making decisions, rather than relying on hard data. Further, It may be more difficult to reprimand employees for poor performance or dismiss them once they have become invested in the company. To add to that the worker could build only 22 blocks tower.
• Case 2 was the example of division of labor where the blindfolded person(worker without right to make decision) was instructed by another person(manager/middle level management) further who was supervised by an in-charge(senior management). This system brought in a method of separating decision making from actions. This is called Scientific Management.

Reference :-

• Management Science
• Scientific Management