After a good long holiday last week, I rolled up my sleeves and blew the dust off my books. Caught up with everything that was covered until now, since we had our MacroEconomics midterm coming up. Oh, did I mention we had a retest also sheduled this week for our QM1 disaster? (We seem to be making this re-test thing a habit, no wonder I'm studying all the time!)
The week passed by like a bad English movie in theaters. And then began our classes. In Macro Economics, we studied a little more about the IS-LM curve, and how they dance together. For those who don't know, the fiscal policy and monetary policy are handled by the government and Federal Bank respectively. And as two distinct bodies (or however distinct they can be), they need to ensure that balance is maintained in the economy. IS talks about the investment behaviour, LM talks about money supply and demand (The amount of ready cash, or liquid cash and the bonds). For now, just think of the IS-LM thing as an X mark. As and when one of the curve shifts, a change is made to the other to modify the position of equilibrium (the centre point).
Managing Organizations took an interesting turn this week. First, we discussed how an organizations lifecycle is. We learnt how it starts off as a dream, and an entrepreneur takes it on and brings it to life. Then it has to be "disciplined" and you need to look into the finer details, and that's something entrepreneurs are not good at. They know how to dream, the bird's-eye-view they got down pat, but on the ground they're... vulnerable. So you need to bring in a professional manager with an eye for detail, who'll get down into the nitty gritties and hammer processes and rules in place. He's the one who tweaks the company to bring it to an efficient body. Once this is done, another crisis hits the org. People begin to ask for more responsibility, they resent the one-man-tell-us-what-to-do approach. So then you need to give way to "divisionalism", give the sub-teams more responsibility for their domain. Once that phase gets over, the next crisis is how to bring these divisions that are too far apart, to the same vision. Once you've managed to again bring all these teams under control, after a while it becomes a little looser, and then you see your firm become a place where all the teams collaborate, and share information. And this is so far the last stage of the org's growth.
I think I just understood why we need to differentiate, and then integrate. It sounds stupid to an engineer, but it makes the parts stronger. In many ways, this seems to show how we grow up from kids to adults. You start as a baby with infinite possibilities, you're the most flexible thing, and you zip around in every direction stopping to sleep,eat or poop. And then begins our "education", where it's hammered into us that 2+2 = 4, not 5. We're taught that 42 is the answer to everything. At one point, we begin to question this 42. Why's it not 43? With our new-found knowledge of how the world works, the me-teenager goes out and rebels against everything, and asks for some control of my own life. Once we go and make all those mistakes that our parents kept protecting us from (Dont put your finger in the fire, kid..), and come back wiser (Ouch, mom, where's that balm?), then slowly our parents now getting a little wiser treat us like adults and involve us in family decisions. Differentiation and integration right there. So, does this mean that apply human life to org life and you dont need to do an MBA? Sounds far easier, can tell you that. And that was just the first session!
In the second session, we got to know of a bunch of organizations that did things in a completely different way from what our ancestors/wisemen/leaders/writers told us. And they succeeded! Stuff like letting people decide their own work-timings, giving all information on the company (including everyone's salaries) to the employees, letting the employees decide what other companies should be bought over! How was it even possible, how did it even work?! And life seems much more nicer for the guys who work in those companies!! And then we began to wonder, wtf?! What was all the last half-quarter (octer?) all about?! Our prof expected this, he's most probably been seeing this reaction for ages now. He just calmly tells us that this worked for these companies, doesnt mean it will work for everyone. FYI, the companies are SEMCO, ABB, Imagination and some company in Copenhagen, Denmark (dont remember the name, will get back on this). Try seeing how things happen there!
BizStats, wow. After an octer, ok, half a quarter, we get to *really* hear the word statistics. I dont know how we didnt wonder about that before? We NOW got to see how you take a sample from a population, and how you make sure it's a RANDOM sample. Not haphazard, but random. This word is apparently taken very seriously by people who poll (pollers?). And then we got to see how every possible random distribution will ultimately get mapped onto a Normal Distribution using their means. Basically, just think that there is one curve called a Normal Distribution, and that EVERY possible random chart that you have can tend to move towards this. The rest of the class was a blur in some math calcs, need to read up and get back, nothing specific to summarize here right now.
Finally, to talk about the exams. Sigh.
How is it possible that you study so much for a subject (Macro Economics), and then when you're just about to write the paper, you forget the basics of the IS-LM curve. For God's sakes, I just read it yesterday!! And I totally understood it!! The paper was awesome, like last time it tested the basics. And unlike last time, I was lost. That's all I want to say about that. So, just to remember, reading for 20 hours for a topic does not necessarily mean u understood it.
BizStats was easy-peasy. I'm just hoping our prof doesnt think we're not worth his time, and just wants to get it over with. Hang in there prof, we're not dumasses, we'll get better! :) In any case, this paper was very easy to do, an almost no-brainer.
And the surprise entrant! We had a Managing Organizations surprise test on Sat! He asked us to describe what made SEMCO do well. If only most of us knew what the hell SEMCO was. Apparently, a surprise test covers not just every reading meant until that day, it also includes the reading FOR the day!! I just wrote something, came back and read the SEMCO material. I couldn't have been farther off from the truth. But that's what happens when you try to act like you know something, when you dont. And you get caught with your pants down. On fire.
One thing for sure though. That SEMCO process, it stands against everything we've learnt so far, and yet, I still want to experience it. Sounds like a real fun place to work. Look it up, here's a link on it:
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