inflexion points

Theories of Learning...

2010-10-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

An example from an organization, after a visit from the top brass at our office, whenever we have any (beautification) changes, people have started associating it with some more important guests expected.

That takes me back to the theory, how we are always learning. How we are acquiring patterns of behavior maybe different and also the same situation/stimuli may have a different reaction depending on person-to-person.

When something happens, we react in a specific way. It is elicited in response to a specific, identifiable event. Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov explained this concept of Classical conditioning with the experiment of teaching the dog to salivate in response to the ringing of a bell in expectation of meat.

But, most behavior- otherwise complex behavior is rather voluntary in my opinion. For example, not wasting too much time during office hours in unproductive activities. However, theory of Operant conditioning argues that behavior is a function of its consequences. B.F. Skinner argued that creating pleasing consequences to follow specific forms of behavior would increase the frequency of that behavior.

Another view, that we can learn through both observation and direct experience is called social-learning theory. Individuals can learn by observing what happens to other people and just by being told about something as well as through direct experiences. For example, much of what we have learned comes from watching models- parents, teachers, peers, movies, bosses, etc.

Personality....

2010-06-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

When psychologists talk of personality, they mean a dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a person's whole psychological system that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.

Under psychometrics, we have various personality tests that measure those relatively enduring aspects of an individual which distinguish them from other people, making them unique. At the same time, however, they permit a comparison between individuals.

Personality maybe measured by one of the following ways: self-report surveys, observer-rating surveys and/or projective measures.

Personality appears to be a result of both hereditary and environmental factors. However, the (rather surprising) result of a research suggests that personality development tends to better support the importance of heredity over the environment.

How different are values and value systems of an individual?
Values contain a judgemental element in that they carry an individual's idea of what is right, good, or desirable. Values have both content and intensity attributes. The content attribute says that a mode of conduct or an end-state of existence is important. The intensity attribute specifies how important it is.

When we rank an individual's values in terms of their intensity, we obtain that person's value system. They can be further classified into Terminal Values ( desirable end-states of existence, the goals a person would like to achieve during his or her lifetime) and Instrumental Values ( preferable modes of behavior or means of achieving one's terminal values). For eg, to achieve Equality (brotherhood, equal opportunity for all) which is a terminal value, the instrumental values would be being Courageous (standing up for your own beliefs).

Job Satisfaction as a concept...

2010-01-18T05:46:00.000-08:00

Simply put, we define job satisfaction as a positive feeling about a job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics. However, when we go to work our work cannot be successfully accomplished by doing our own work, somewhere and almost at most times it has others involved (unless we are creating and sending reports which no one is reading! ) thus, it requires a lot of interaction with co-workers, understanding of policies, complainces, performance standards, expectations and offcourse, the environment around.

To quantify it, we use the complex summation of a number of discrete job facets or the other approach to identify the key elements in a job and gather ratings.

Although job satisfaction appears to be a relevant concept across cultures, that doesn't mean there are no cultural differences in job satisfaction. Evidence suggests that employees in Western cultures have higher levels of job satisfaction than those in Eastern cultures. This result is not because they have better jobs but because Western cultures value positive emotions more and individual happiness.

Khabar Lahariya

2009-11-29T01:18:00.000-08:00

Business Objective- 'infotainment' for nearby village readers....

sounds amusing to compartmentalize a certain things in management jargons..

"khabar lahariya", one of the very good examples of e-governance for transformation..a newspaper written in the local language by the women of Uttar Pradesh, which won the 2009 UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize.

The award goes as a testimony to the efforts of a few

women who came together to spread news (read awareness) to about 25000 people across 400 villages of the Chitrakoot and Banda districts of U.P.

Khabar Lahariya has three key facets:

Firstly, it is believed to be journalism by the village, for the village and of the village,

Secondly, it has women as barefoot patarakars, ie, reporters, who write on all aspects, and,

Thirdly, it is the sole media for independent rural womenfolk.

Business and Religion...

2009-11-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

My experience of being asked to avail the services at a store only if i were to pay the FULL amount by the end of it and the SAME day led me to writing this.. I was made 'aware' that as it was 'A Wednesday'- credit of not even a single rupee could be allowed for she believed money if lent on a wednesday never comes back..!!

I respect it, and so just out of curiosity, wanted to understand - How religions or rather religious beliefs affects the way we do business.. it may be a bit different in Indian parlance..as we are a rich country in terms of diversity.. but on probing deeper..it has presence in international trade as well..

The religious practices and beliefs throughout the world are influenced by many factors:

What the religion's holy book says.

How the book is interpreted by theologians and clergy

The impact of scientific findings.

Individuals' personal experience, and above all:

The culture in which the religion is embedded

Particularly in Asia and the Middle East, religious and cultural perspectives have a strong influence on the conduct of business and the creation of business values.

For eg, Islamic banking is associated with the avoidance of charging interest on loans, or a Buddhist approach to work is particularly from the perspective of employees.

Now, as world population continues to grow and as new technologies are developed, MNC's are the biggest social institution of our time.

So to understand the global environment in which they operate, corporations must consider and attempt to understand both the religious traditions (sacred and civil) and the philosophies of those countries with which they do business, because these systems guide human behavior,in turn economic behavior.

controversial... ;)

2009-11-24T22:02:00.000-08:00

Analyzing the results of a study (assuming the study was conducted using scientific research tools and methods):

Activity Average manager Effective manager Successful manager
Traditional management 32% 19% 13%
Communication 29 44 28
HR management 20 26 11
Networking 19 11 48

AVERAGE MANAGER- is the one who does what is assigned to him/her, but has a reactive approach towards problems or unforeseen situations.

EFFECTIVE MANAGER- not only performs his/her duties adequately, but also is also proactive towards problem solving.

SUCCESSFUL MANAGER- is the one who performs all tasks efficiently, is proactive at problem solving and also does future planning (designs effective systems so that chances of same problems coming up again are reduced)

Looking at this study, we can infer-
1) An average manager, spends maximum of his time in ‘planning, decision making and controlling’, i.e. just traditional management and then, in communicating and co-coordinating. Thus, for almost 61% of his/her productive time, he/she is doing basic management activities.
2) Whereas, for a successful manager while the time spent on planning is the least (13%), he/she spends considerable amount on communicating and liasoning (28%). Hence, reinforcing the fact- to be a successful manager you need to know-what you do best and what others can do best.
3) An effective manager spends around one-fourth of his time in activities such as motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing and training whereas, for a successful manager this percentage is the lowest of all the activities performed by him.
4) The difference between an effective manager and successful manager likes in the ability or rather the effort taken to network. “Guanxi”- as the Chinese may term it- in the business world, it is the network of relationships among various parties that co-operate with and support one another.

Behavioral Economics

2009-11-05T21:58:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered why in our day-to-day experiences at times we may choose something over a more seemingly rational decision..like for instance, an employee may willingly forego a promotion to continue doing what he/she excels in?, why a satisfied customer defects to competition?

The answer lies in understanding human nature -- and that human beings do not always behave rationally.

This intrigued me and i wanted to gather some information on this subject- came across various remarkable studies done by Dan Ariely, Richard Thaler, Daniel Goleman

Behavioral Economics as a discipline assumes people are irrational even though it is not against classical economics..it attempts to collaborate with classical economics..it is planned psychology in the classical eonomics

Economics does not encompass everything, we need to look beyond.. in a broader perspective, we need to analyse human nature- that is what we are..!!

Thus, Behavioral Economics experiments, what we are good at when we are actually irrational, it is about accepting certain facts that we certainly do get easily confused-human conditioning is such that, we make mistakes, we are vindictive,we just can't think about the future.. but recognizing where we fall short..is the promise of behavioral economics

In addition, to such studies i came across a very interesting concept by Daniel Goleman..it's an evolving concept which talks of an entirely new science of human relationships..one interesting study is about how humans connect with the 'brains' of other human beings and our eyes act as catalysts.. :)

Painting the College- Blue, Red, and all the other available marker colours...!!! :))

2009-10-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

This picture is of one of our class assignments- believe me we have tried to be 'decent' and thoughtful about the house-keeping guys- considering this time the walls, glass windows, ceilings and the floor were spared....!!

This is the power of mindmapping.. 'pictures- do speak a million words'...it is a depiction of a lot of ideas flowing in an encapsulated form..

This diagram, in particular is of a business idea, we designed completely driven by customer experience.. with the power of group think we came up with fantastic ideas of how technology at various touch points could act as a catalyst to enhance the customer experience at a retail shopping mall..

In the last one and a half years of my (MBA) life.. I somehow feel 'innovation and design-thinking' have become overused words, abusively used too often as we tend to do analysis by paralysis by getting into the semantics of it..
however, if we come to think of it 'innovation' is the buzz word.. It is 'The Gameplan'.. because to be saleable you have to offer something different or same thing differently.. but just a thought, if it is soo obvious than why are not everyone doing it.. or wouldn't have all different ideas been taken.. ??

Life Before and After Internet

2009-10-23T11:48:00.001-07:00

Before internet- computers were glorified word processors, not much storage capacity, etc.

Coming of the internet- the evolution and impact
If we come to analyze the impact of internet on our lives to how facebook, twitter, IMs, RSS feeds have became an indispensable part of our lives and yes, blogging :) ..which is a mode of social expression for some.. :)
we realize that the web has become an indispensable part of our eco system, it is all pervasive.. today, we are 'growing up online'

it has affected the modes of communication, the way one searches for their resources, our expectations and offcourse our patience...!!

Life after the internet
i remember my first stint with digital multitasking dates back to around 9 yrs..vaguely, 2000..when i could use the same time span to do instant chat with 3-4 people online
and thus, i set up the internet skills for a bigger internet experience with each passing year..
during college and post graduation, it offered me the largest pool of resources..
with the evolution, we have social networking sites wherein I can check the updates in my friend's lives, invite them for events hence, loosing the sheen to call them up and find out 'what's happening'?
we are using e-learning tools like moodle to learn a new language..!!!
On hindsight, we find it easier to 'manage' digital text..as it is flexible and fast (assignments can get completed last minute too..)

Internet is impacting global business: you get paid to write e-books, buyers buy and pay online, internet has infilterated in our lives so much that we are focusing our lives and business on web based models..but a thought, does it not affect the way we would be employed..
businesses need to be there when it counts.. information has to be transformed into a digital format is an obvious conclusion

interesting fact, when one makes an e-product you never run out of supply..!!

Particularly, in the case of India..
it is interesting to look at how different countries and cultures use the internet..1/5th of the earth population..2/3rd of the country's population is in abject poverty..but the internet affects everyone from top-bottom..

Inflexion Points- Introduction

2009-10-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

‘INFLEXION POINTS’… ahh haan seems like a very intense subject… but with my first stint at blogging.. I wanted to use it as a sharing space not just to share my learning’s academically/professionally, but also experiences or observations that may be small in magnitude but have made me think or reflect upon in life and thus, the terminology ‘inflexion points’
My belief, ‘each day we are given new opportunities to choose and act and, in doing so, we create our own unique journey’…so keep going… ☺
In my first blog, I would like to reflect upon a continuous learning experience called ‘MBA’ which has been a major transformation platform for me. I dedicate this blog to the ‘change in my life’ during the tenure of my course, due to a set of varied experiences, opportunities and nuisances (the best learning’s).
The best part of the journey- meeting a lot of new people, making friends, managing change and learning to accept and love the change, and can never ever undermine the importance of education..
The over-used statement actually holds true..!! MBA is not about JUST class-room learning.. But, is a great collaboration platform
Now, am one and a half year old in the city, and 4 trimesters old in the institution..and, we are the ‘seniors’ at college..And in this tenure, the evolution from 1st year to 2nd year has been majorly between making the ‘best-looking’ PowerPoint presentations, to a business plan as soon as we opened our mouth to top-notch turnaround strategies…it’s now time, when we delve into something that ‘we’ are very passionate about in our lives. I can safely assume ‘we’ as most of us have chosen our specializations based on what we are passionate about in life or at least are interested in investing our time and efforts in.