Building blocks of success

Building blocks of success 

 

Let us consider four different scenarios for the tower building exercise.

Parameter	Index	I	II	III	IV
Historical Tower height achieved by team LOW	1	5	5	5	5
Historical Tower height achieved by team HIGH	2	18	20	21	23
Achievable Performance -(Estimate / Guess )	3	18	20	22	25
Goal proposed by the Manager	4	18	22	22	18
Goal proposed by the worker	5	12	12	12	20
Goal Mutually agreed for building the tower between worker and manager with the support of the manager	6	15	22	18	15
No. of cubes Tower manager and worker team could build / achieve at the end of the exercise	7	18	18	18	18

With respect to goal setting, an analysis of gaps reveals a lot about the types of managers in organizations as shown below:

Gaps	How to?	I	II	III	IV
Gap if any between Tower height Performance so far achieved and Achievable performance of tower	3-7	0	2	4	7
Gap if any between goal proposed by the manager and mutually agreed goal by team	4-6	3	0	4	3
Gap if any between goal proposed by the manager and the goal proposed  by the worker	4-5	6	10	10	-2
Gap if any between goal proposed by the worker and mutually agreed goal by team	5-6	-3	-10	-6	5
Gap if any between  performance achieved ( at the end of the exercise ) and  goal mutually agreed by manger and the worker	6-7	-3	4	0	-3
Gap if any between  performance achieved ( at the end of the exercise ) and  achievable goal	7-3	0	-2	-4	-7

Scenario I: 

This is the case where there is a manager with very high expectations and workers with low aspiration. What starts in a bad spirit, the team shapes up during the course of the task, to strike a middle ground, where the workers perform more than what they thought they could, but they do not meet the expectations of the manager.

Scenario 2:

Here we have a Steve Jobs, for a manager. He has very high dreams, and wants to break records and reach for the sky. The best part comes next.  He does achieve the records. Such managers in reality are rare.

Scenario 3:

Scenario III is perhaps the most interesting amongst all and offers powerful insights. Not just with respect to a realistic initial goal setting, but the manager has been successful in mutually agreeing to a goal with the worker which reflects a sense of motivation in the initial stages itself. The worker has raised the bar to 6 towers from his proposal of 12 while the manager has dropped the bar just enough to 4 towers to motivate the worker and make him realize his value. As a result, the goal achieved by the team has been in line with the mutually agreed goal. Certainly, in this case, the manager has taken a holistic view and not compromised either on the organizational goals or the feedback from the worker.

Scenario 4:

Scenario IV is a submissive case of a manager who has lowered the bars, wants his team to work lesser than what they think they could.!

Such scenarios in reality are very very rare. Such managers add no value to his team nor to the organization.