POM Class 9

There are many ways to learn about team work and managing a team but none quite as quirky as using a unique cartoon strip. The cartoon strip we used in class is shown below.

Sky-walk 

As a manager our task is to make this team of three "Idiots" to perform the sky-walk.

Let me first explain the three basic premises in this exercise:

             1) Three people need to cross a deep "valley".

             2) The distance between edges is more than one step but less than two steps.

             3) Jumping from one side to the other and walking on a pole placed on the two edges is
                 DANGEROUS.
             4) The only item they have with them is a small thick pole/stick.

In the above exercise, each person faces 3 states of riskiness:

          (a) Safe

          (b) Half Safe/ Half Risky

          (c) Risky

Using these states of Risk we can define the various ROLES in this exercise:

Category of tasks	Role Definition
Safe	No Effort.
Half safe	Slight Effort.
Hanging & Unsafe	No Effort; Depends on other members.
Fulcrum & Half safe	Effort is needed to maintain fulcrum ; Depends on others.
Pull down	Most Effort; Others depend on you.

The steps involved in crossing the "Valley" can be summarized by the table given below:
                     

Step	State of 1st Person	State of 2nd person	State of 3rd person
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half-Risky	Safe	Safe
3	Full-Risky	Safe	Safe
4	Half-Risky	Half-Risky	Safe
5	Safe	Full-Risky	Safe
6	Safe	Half-Risky	Half-Risky
7	Safe	Safe	Full-Risky
8	Safe	Safe	Half-Risky
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

                   We should understand that in the course of the entire exercise the work done by each person is EXACTLY EQUAL. No one person does more work than the other. This is an important lesson in how we must DIVIDE LABOUR. Let us make a table and quantify the work done by each worker whilst in each of the three given states of risk.

	Safe	Half Safe/ Half Risky	Risky	Total:
Worker A	6	2	1	9
Worker B	6	2	1	9
Worker C	6	2	1	9
Total:	18	6	3	27

                    We now can clearly see that the work done by each worker is exactly the same. We can also see that  66.6% of the time the worker is fully safe. In fact we could argue that the worker is actually safe 88.89% of the time given that Half Safe is also safe. Hence Division of Labour also share the risk and mitigates it. The work of a manger is to minimize the risk on each individual worker.

Now, what good is an example if you don't do it practically?!! That is exactly what we did. Prof. Mandi had actually arranged for a thick long pipe and we were going to try out the cartoon.

More from the next class!!!