Khan Academy

The video shared by Dr. Prasad about Khan academy are provided below :-

The videos tells about Khan academy, teaching methodology adopted and how it has benefited the society. Salman Khan, the brain behind Khan academy is a MIT and Harvard graduate. If applied he could have gone for any of the blue chip company but instead he decided to serve people. He placed social welfare of people above his vested interests. The following video explains the vision of Khan academy :

It all started when Salman Khan began teaching his cousin maths lessons. On requests of other cousins he decided to share the same on youtube. After it was shared, the kind of response it received was overwhelming and the feedback that Mr Khan received was that this kind of pedagogy is much more efficient then the conventional classroom teaching. Thus Khan academy was created with a vision to provide education anytime anywhere and to anybody.

Khan academy is a live example wherein we can see that its only the passion and willingness to work that counts, rest everything follow the suit. Khan academy never faced any crisis monetary wise. They have lot of people supporting the cause in fact the supporter base is growing at a very rapid rate. This imply that if you have noble cause every one will support you.

A study suggested that online teaching is very effective as compared to regular classroom teaching. People or rather children will prefer online teaching if given a chance over routine class room teaching. The rationale behind it is that it more flexible, you can rewind it in case you have not understood something. It gives them freedom to learn things the way they want. This can be applied to a manager in a company. The manager if provide freedom to his subordinate to work on his own then who knows the employee may come out with a revelation.  If given this independence the employee will love working in the company and his productivity will also increase. This can be taken as case of Theory Y managers.

People are ready to accept new innovations. These days E commerce is in demand. E commerce websites are doing more business then the ones with regular business model. Thus a manager must always look for new innovations which can be helpful to the society at large. When we see Khan academy it has a global reach. The only prerequisite is  internet connection. If you have internet connection you can access Khan academy free of cost. The donation which Khan academy receives is from various parts of the world. Consider the situation in India where we don't have enough teachers to teach our ever increasing population, Khan academy is as good as God gift for the development of the country. Globalisation has played a vital role in Khan academy's success. The funds may be coming from developed countries but the prime users would be in developing countries who on their own might not have afforded that comfort.

We can see that innovation today is demand of society. Lot of companies are coming with new ideas and spending more and more research and development. Here is link to list of some of the world's most innovative companies in 2011 :

http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2011/

Under Education category, Khan academy is ranked 3rd among world's most innovative companies.

Learning from Khan academy
 
As the saying goes "education gives the best returns". The concept of E learning has revolutionised the society in such a way that various universities are adopting the same.

http://hbsp.harvard.edu/list/elearning
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

The above mentioned links are for Harvard and MIT only with lot of other universities introducing the same for the benefit of the society. Salman Khan took a bold decision to to become an entrepreneur foregoing high paying MNC job. It was his confidence, can do attitude and passion to help society that has led him to a position where he is. We should be focused in whatever endeavors we do, we should take the hiccups as challenges and should always strive to achieve the target. In short Goals are to be set first then means of achieving those goals are to be deliberated. 

In the end I would like to share one video of a courier company in which 99% employees are deaf.

 

LE03 Theory X and Theory Y

Theory X and Theory Y concept plays a significant role in a company. Both the theories were discussed at length in the class. In Theory X and Theory Y, L represents lazy or inefficient whereas G represents good or efficient employees. There are four situations w.r.t. Theory X and Theory Y  :-

Situation 1 - In this situation employees are lazy and the manager thinks they are lazy.

Once I had some problem with my landline phone. I complained many a times but for no good. One day I met the lineman, I asked him why he is not doing his job. He said I have loads of work piled for me you are not the only customer, I require lot of items like cables etc which my management does not give to me easily. Thus it is their fault not mine. Then I went to meet the manager and told him about my phone being dead for quite some time. He said that the linemen are not doing their job properly. We are getting a lot of complaints against them. They are wasting a lot of company resources.
Here the employee does not want to work so he puts the blame on management and the manager thinks he is inefficient and nothing can be done to improve the situation. In such situation the company cannot progress as within the company no one will work and everyone will just put blame on others.

Situation 2 - In this situation employees are efficient but the manager thinks they are lazy.

This is most dangerous situation wherein the employee is efficient but the manager thinks he is not efficient. This situation fits aptly to one of my friend. He was working very diligently in the company, whatever work is assigned to him he was able to complete everything within the time limit. But his manager always used to keep an eye on him. He used to note the timing when my friend comes to office and the time when he leave the office. He always insists on staying back late in the office no matter whether work is there or not. My friend, even though he was meeting all the deadlines never ever had a single word of appreciation from the manager. The result was that he quit the job after 14 months.

Thus it can be seen that this situation is very dangerous as it may lead to mass exodus of efficient employees. The company will have very high attrition rate.

Situation 3 – When the employees are lazy but the manager thinks they are efficient.

This situation can be explained with my own real life experience. After my graduation, I joined a public sector undertaking with a notion that no one in a psu work. In the company I started postponing whatever work was given to me. One day my manager called me and asked the reason for the negligence I was showing in work. He understood what exactly was going on and he asked a very simple question that what you would have done had it been your father’s company. I said I would have worked day and night to make sure that the company prospers. He said that this is our nation’s company. The money involved in the company is public’s money. When public’s money is at stake you cannot afford to be complacent. That session with my manager really changed me afterwards and I started doing my work efficiently. The work was also appreciated by the company and I was accorded the award of best employee of the company.

Thus I noticed that if the manager has confidence in his subordinates, he can do wonders. He can make them work and that too in a healthy working environment. Companies which have such managers have low attrition rate. The output of the company and productivity of employees keeps rising always.

Situation 4 – When the employees are efficient and the manager thinks they are efficient.

As mentioned earlier after the session with my manager, I became very efficient employee of the company. My manager had faith in me right from day one. This instilled in me positive energy and my productivity also increased. Since I knew I had my manager’s backing, I never hesitated experimenting with new ideas and some of them really clicked. My team was among the top performers of the company.

Thus the point which can be noted here is that the companies which have such managers will always be market leader. The companies will come out with new ideas and innovations at regular intervals. The attrition rate in such company would be minimal. Employee satisfaction will be highest in such a company.

Learning

The first two situations can be clubbed under Theory X where the manager thinks the employee is inefficient which may or may not be the case and the other two situations can be clubbed under Theory Y where the manager thinks the employee is efficient which again may or may not be the case. From the above I have realised that one should strive to become a manager associated with Theory Y. In such a case it will be better both for the manager and the company. The manager should also increase the targets make the employees achieve those targets by motivating them, by having continuous interaction with the employees. If such a case is there then the company will definitely reach new heights.

LE01 and LE02

The first lecture of Prof Prasad was an eye opener for me. It was on that day I realised that if I can spend X amount of money I can definitely earn X amount. So if I am spending Rs.100 a day, it is my duty to earn Rs.100. For earning also what better way then selling innovative, informative small toys made by children in an NGO.  Prof Prasad also informed about MANDI, the platform through which we are supposed to sell the toys and earn every penny whatever we have spent. He also informed about Hamara Dhandha, in which students have to register their own company and have to run that for atleast 2 years. If things turn out to be good then the same can be continued further.The way things were conveyed was really astounding. I (and I think everyone in class) have never seen such pedagogy in my life and I feel this kind of pedagogy is very effective.


The second lecture dealt with goal settings as well as importance of communication while performing a job or while working in a team. This was explained with the help of a simple exercise.

Exercise

One has to make a tower out of small cubes. Everyone was asked to quote number of cubes that can be placed over one another without letting the tower to fall. I put the number at 20 initially then he said it is to be done with your wrong hand i.e. if you are a right hander you have to do the job with left hand. At that very instant my number came down to 15. When one of our batchmate performed the job he end up piling 19 cubes as against 10 as quoted by himself.  Next Prof Prasad asked to quote if the person is blind folded and one more person will give him direction to make the tower. My number came down to 10.

Analysis 
In the class there were some students who said that number will come down from what they have quoted for the previous condition, some who retained their number and none of the student increased the number. The reason for this was the presumption that when two person work together there might be a communication gap thereby reducing the efficiency of the student doing the job. I was surprised to find out that in other section that students were able to complete 17 with the given condition. This clearly states that the number was achievable even with the second condition.

Learning

 I learned that its the responsibility of management to put that "i can do" spirit in the employees so that they can perform better which can be done through proper communication. Message should be properly conveyed to the employees that irrespective of the hurdles, they have to achieve whatever target has been set. Management means communicating right things at right time which in turn means performance thus management means performance.