SOCIAL BUSINESS, GRAMEEN BANK - MD YUNUS

WORLD WITHOUT POVERTY 

Muhammad Yunus (Bengali born 28 June 1940) is banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient. As a professor of economics, he developed the concepts of micro-credit and micro-finance. These loans are given to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. In 2006 Yunus and Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts through micro-credit to create economic and social development from below". Yunus has received several other national and international honors . He was awarded the U.S.Congressional Gold Medal in 2010, and presented with it at a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol on 17 April 2013.

In 2008, he was rated #2 in Foreign Policy magazine's list of the 'Top 100 Global Thinkers'.

In 2012, he became Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. He is a member of the advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology. Previously, he was a professor of economics at Chittagong University in Bangladesh. He published several books related to his finance work. He is a founding board member of Grameen America and Grameen Foundation, which support micro-credit.

Yunus also serves on the board of directors of the United Nations Foundation, a public charity created in 1998 by American philanthropist Ted Turner’s $1 billion gift to support UN causes.

 HIS WORKS :

He is famous for his Idea and implementation of micro-credit and micro-financial structure of Grameen bank .

Muhammad Yunus has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into practical action for the benefit of millions of people, not only in Bangladesh, but also in many other countries. Loans to poor people without any financial security had appeared to be an impossible idea.

From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty.

Brief of Grameen bank through the video. 

In his speech he explained how he developed the micro-finance model in the poor villages of Bangladesh which eventually got replicated all over the world. He set up a system of Social business whose main purpose was not profit maximization but serving the most pressing problems of the society.He explained , how simple non collateral based loans can transform the lives of poor. He visualized " we have created a society that does not allow opportunities for those poor people to take care of themselves because we have denied them those opportunities"

DIFFERENCE B/W CONVENTIONAL BANK AND GRAMEEN BANK 

He was also one of the main reasons of pouring ADIDAS and Water Purifying Companies into the Social welfare service . This proved a way out for Adidas so as to make a slogan " no one remains barefooted ". he gained market easily and in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility was also fulfilled with both the company and the poor people getting benefits .

The whole class was very inspirational and motivating in understanding the basic problems that poor people face around us, how the schemes become unfruitful and how to create and deliver value to our society through innovative ideas . This type of models take CSR to a very high level and the companies can help in establishing such fruitful organisations across the world so that no one dies of hunger and poverty.

Learn from the Idiots

This session of Dr.Mandi was about "THREE IDIOTS". Please don't mistake it to the  Amir Khan entertainer. Let us see what this is all about.

Sir, demonstrated this whole story in class with the help of three of my classmates. Three people have to cross a valley which is more than one step of the member and less than two steps. They have a long rod with sufficient length. They attempt to cross the gap with everyone holding on to the rod. As soon as someone is on the gap, he would hang from the rod and the other two members would take his weight. This way they can cross the gap. Also it must be noted that load distribution was effectively managed. Also, the role of one will depend on the role of another.

Why does this story teach us?

Team Work

                       Teamwork is absolutely necessary while carrying out any task. It helps the manager and the organization as a whole to achieve targets. It cannot be possible for a single person to handle everything. It is the teams effort which matters in the long run. Also in the above task team effort was necessary to a large extent. Hence team work plays a pivotal role in management.

  

Communication

                    

When working in a team, communication will need to be established. If a team can't communicate - it can't and won't work. In a team, there are lots of different individuals from different walks of life, being brought-up in different environments. The individuals of any team will have varying personalities, and so working in close proximity with these different characters will get you used to how to communicate with them. As I'm sure you know, what may be okay to say to one person may not be appropriate to say to another. Working in this environment will help to round-off and develop communication.

Trust

 

This is again a very important factor. Whenever a manager assigns a task to his employees he definitely has a faith in them. This faith encourages the employees to work harder because it gives them a feeling of consideration. This particular thing is showcased very well in the above task. The person hanging in middle has to have complete faith in his teammates about their ability. Only then can a goal be achieved

Togetherness

 

 

Being part of a group where good team management is present will mean that tasks will be fairly and evenly distributed to all team members. When this is done, team members will feel like they are properly a member of the team, and when a team achieves what it sets out to achieve, then this feeling will only increase.Also, by not being sidelined, there is a good chance that your confidence levels will increase as you are being treated equally alongside everybody-else in the group.

 

These are some of the lessons that could be learnt form the story.  Thank you.

 

 

 

 

Tower Building exercise for managerial enlightment & SMART goal setting

Tower Building

            Dr. Mandi gave us a set of small wooden blocks. With this we have to create a tower as high as we can build. He laid out some rules to this exercise such as.

• Only one person should touch the cubes. 
• The tower levels should be made of only one block.
• The exercise gets over at the first instance when the tower falls. 

Apart from explaining us about goal setting in a practical manner. He made us set mission and vision of our own tower building company. With this he made us understand how the organization is built from the scratch.The role of middle managers in modern management was explained. He also explained the difference between organization builders and craftsman by using the tower exercise in two demonstrations. One was where the tower was built by a blindfolded person supported by instructors and the other one was the building by a single person(craftsman).

 
This exercise was all fun and full of learning.

Dr. Mandi lecture was about setting goals. This he explained to us using a very interesting activity using small toy blocks. First of all, let us see what  SMART goal setting is.

 

SMART GOALS	Are Defined As	Other Representations of S.M.A.R.T. Goals
S	SPECIFIC	(significant)
M	MEASURABLE	(meaningful)
A	ATTAINABLE	(achievable) (action)
R	RELEVANT	(realistic) (rewarding)
T	TIMELY	(tangible) (task oriented)

You can understand this even more about SMART goals by watching the below video by Arina Nikitina

Dr. Mandi made each one of use do this (to set a SMART) goal regarding the tower building exercise.In this four criteria were given to us in respect to this tower exercise The numbers in the criteria is the height of the tower.

1. Goal set
2. Goal achieved
3. Tower record
4. Tower potential

In this case we discussed about each one of them and came to a conclusion that. The potential is always the sky. There is no limit. So consider 4 as infinity.

4 > 1 > 3 and 2.

This conclusion gave us a better picture about goal setting and that too setting it in a SMART manner.

The Chinese Folktale and its management teachings

              Dr. Mandi, as part of our course activity asked us to watch and understand the Chinese folktale : Three monks. The  Three Monks is a Chinese animated feature film produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. After the cultural revolution and the fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animations created as part of the rebirth period. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.

The story revolves around three monks who come to a temple on top of a hill to do service to God.

The first monk arrives at a temple built on the top of a hill. The monk used to lead a simple life, meditating, tending to his vegetable garden and fetching water from a cold stream.Everyday he used to get two buckets full of water from down the hill and carry them back to temple using a shoulder pole Rain or shine, he never used to miss a day lugging this burden up the mountain to the temple. The water he got was more than enough for one person.

One fine day the  second monk visited the temple and started living there. The second monk happily took responsibility to fetch water. The first monk tried to act smart by putting all the burden on the second one thereafter. One day the  monk got aware of the first monks ill thoughts and

refused to do it alone. therefore they decided to share the responsibility but the shoulder pole was small and could accommodate only one bucket then.The water they got was still enough for both of them. 

Later a third monk came to stay with them. As soon as he came, he drank all the water and there was no water left in the jar. The short monk and the tall one asked him to fetch water by himself. He carried a bucket of water, and drank it up immediately. From then on, nobody would fetch water, so they had no water. Everyone chanted his own mantras and knocked his own wooden fish. As nobody would add water to the holy water bottle, the plant in the bottle withered soon. At night, a mouse came out stealing, but everyone pretended not to see it. As a result, the mouse was so rampant that it knocked over the candle holder and caused a fire. Only thus did the three monks make a concerted effort to put out the fire, and finally awaken. After that, they started hanging together forgetting the animosity among them and came out with an ingenious idea to fetch water where one monk would fetch the water from the river into the bucket, the other would pull it up through a pulley arrangement and third monk would then receive the water for storage and handover the second bucket. This greatly improved the productivity.

Finally all the three monks got together to fight the fire and started working together to get the water every morning and no one suffered from thirst thereafter.

1.Team Work

                  This is the most obvious lesson learnt form the story. The three monks in crises statrted to work together and reaped benefits which they were not able to do alone. I am able to relate this to a situation that happened on my office where the post-production team was struggling to get the work done when they were overloaded after an exhibition. At this time the management decided to indulge every one available to engage in this work by teaching certain easy concepts to them. Thus the work was split and end result was achieved well within the due date.

                                2.Technology and Innovation
                       Eventually, when the pulley came into action the monks were able to pull off the work more easily. This reflects the significance that technology and innovation can have on any current working system.


3. Right resources at the right Place 
                     The idea to use the monks at the right place according to their strengths was an important decision to make the whole process more efficient. For example the fat monk was used at the bottom so he will drink the water from the pond when he is tired after working and the reserve at the temple will remain in tact.


                     The monk story helped me understand the effects that good planning and management can have on any result . I hope this has helped you too. Thanks for reading.

 

  

 

Craftsmanship Vs Modern Management

                               

            

              

                 Vs

Dr.Mandi gave us insights about the  arts of craftsmanship and modern management. Let us understand in principal what these two are.

What is craftsmanship?
                    A craftsmanship is all about one person performing all the activities in an occupation. The craftsman is very skillful and dextrous in the occupation that he does. His legacy stays with him.

What is modern management?
                    Managing to build an organization is all about bringing people together, sharing work among themselves and working at a very large scale towards a common goal.

Let us try and see how these two arts differ from each other

	Craftsmanship	Modern Organizations
1	It is centered around the single craftsman	It operates around a huge number of people
2	Non parallel process	Parallel process
3	Less Dependency and greater accountability.	More inter- dependent and less accountability.
4	Person oriented	Process oriented

With this understanding Dr.Mandi talked about the need for budding mangers to have the vision  to look at the bigger picture and motivated us to be up and ready to take up the challenge of building such big organizations in future.

How we are going to do this is what we are going to learn in organization management. With respect to this one important concept was discussed.

The 3E's of Management

 # Efficiency
         Efficiency can be given as doing things in a right manner. This can be done by fine tuning the process that we do.

 # Effectiveness
         Effectiveness is doing the right things. This is the challenging part. As managers we have to be making certain decisions to make sure that effectiveness is accomplished. 

# Excellence
        Excellence is achieving more out of less for more.

                                   

                                       "Excellence = Effectiveness x Efficiency"

 

 Thank you for reading. I wish all the very best to you to achieve excellence in your quest in life.

 Theory X & Theory Y

                                                   

Dr.Mandi lectured us on the famous  theories of human motivation created and developed by Douglas McGregor.                      

He started explaining to us that the managers can be divided into two categories based on their attitude towards their employees: Theory X managers (negative managers) and Theory Y managers (positive managers).

Theory X managers:

These managers think that most of the people don’t care about the needs of the organization they work for. They think the team lack ambition and has very little creativity and problem-solving capacity. These managers never believe in the potential of their employees. They never think of channelizing the potential of their teams in the right direction to produce the desired results. Instead they criticize the team resulting into dissatisfactory performance of the team.

Theory Y managers:  

As opposed to Theory X managers, Theory Y managers trust their employees. They believe that most of the people are high performers in a proper work environment. These managers will always do something that will keep their employees motivated. The team will also work for the organization with great passion. The motivation is the key these managers use to make the team work in proper direction.

The following figure shows the mentality of workers on how the two different managers will have a paradigm about them

Dr. Mandi further explained us there are two category of workers, Lazy workers and Motivated workers. The following analysis describes the various possible scenarios within an organization.

Category 1 : Employees are lazy and the manager also thinks that they are lazy

This situation the team does not perform at the level it can perform. This situation leads to low productivity. The similar situation occurred during my tenure in metamation eventually lead to termination of employee

Category 2 : Employees are good and the manager assumes that they are lazy

Most of the people think that they have been through this situation. This is very harmful situation to have. In this situation even if the employees are good and willing to work, their strengths and potentials are not used to that extent. They are never encouraged or motivated by their managers. It may lead to dissatisfaction of worker and may reduce productivity & interest of worker. Such team lacks the healthy communication and synchronization between the levels.

Category 3 : Employees are lazy but the manager thinks that they are good.

Let’s take example of parents having children. Even if their child is not doing well in the studies, parents still believe in their child. They always encourage their child to perform better by saying that their child is good. This the way managers can make their employees work and channelize their potential in the right direction to produce the desired goals. This improves team productivity.

Category 4 : Employees are good and the managers also think that they are good

This is the ideal situation people can be into. This is the situation where we can expect maximum productivity out of the team. 

Dr.Mandi and we tried ranking the most desired situation in an organisation. We then decided upon the following result. The most desired category is ranked 1.

                                   

Rank	Category
1	Category 4
2	Category 3
3	Category 2
4	Category 1

My Perspective

               I am in agreement with the common consensus that category 4 is the ideal situation. But, I would personally relish to work in a category 3 situation. This would have more scope for improvement and could present a challenging environment. My aim will be to transform the organisation this category 3 situation into a category 4 situation.  

Journey Starts at NITIE

     Having received a hearty welcome from the rain-gods. I was awestruck by the beauty of the lush green campus and the shimmering lakes. I already started feeling at home. Getting myself used to the ever-present rain, I was gearing for our first management lecture on organisation management.

    Then came Dr.Prasad, who was full of energy came with a refreshing smile surprised us by handing us a set of toys and he even encouraged us to play with it. Suddenly, the class became more vibrant and I started feeling at ease. He explained us about the innovative pedagogy Mandi wherein NITIE students go to the streets of Mumbai and sell toys made by an NGO. Mandi is a flagship event at NITIE which was conceptualized for students to gain managerial wisdom by applying classroom concepts out there in the real world and also helping by donating all the money collected to the NGO. Mandi is the brainchild  of  Dr. Prasad himself who innovated it based on the concept

   

"Soacho.. Becho !  Becho.. Seekho ! !   Seekho .. Soacho ! ! !"

 

after which he is fondly called as Dr. Mandi. 

     Dr.Mandi is a shared his vision to revolutionise education in India. His mission is to take education beyond the walls of a classroom to the masses, to people who can't afford it. We realised that through this novel concept the best minds can share their knowledge to the whole country it can revitalise education in India. Great men think alike, Dr. Mandi  shared about Salman Khan, a Bangladeshi American educator who had a similar thinking towards the concept of education. Salman Khan has founded Khan Academy , a free education platform to facilitate this concept. Dr. Mandi made me realise that even I could contribute to this great cause.

Aaj Ki roti...Aaj hee,  kamyaenghae  ! 

Earning by Learning . & .Earning for Learning  !

    Dr. Mandi made us realise certain harsh realities of life. He talked about the importance of us being responsible individuals. To do justice to our parents, our teachers, our country and most importantly ourselves. After Dr.Mandi's lecture I feel proud to be  NITIE and be a part of this great culture. I conclude by saying  Dr. Mandi was enlightening, revolutionary and inspirational and I am looking forward to sir's lectures.