Aligning the Personal and Corporate Goals

      And so started yet another intriguing lecture by Prof. Prasad. And this time, Professor had a small black block of something in his hand. Magnets!! Yes, Magnets they were. As always, we were wondering what Prof. Prasad wished to teach us with the help of a thing as simple and commonplace as a Magnet. Soon, the Professor started throwing a volley of questions at us like "What was he holding?", “What is special about a Magnet?”, "Why does it attract certain things and repels others?". Many a tries were made at answering the final question, but none could come up with an answer that Prof. Prasad was looking for. And then finally, one student could say that magical word- Alignment- that gives the Magnet the unique quality that it has.

       A Magnet has the power to align inherent magnetic forces in metallic atoms. Thus, magnets align natural forces. Likewise, a Manager aligns his employees (subordinates) to get the work done. And eventually what happens as a result of all this, is that an organization as a force gets aligned. The bigger or better an organization, the more perfectly it is aligned. In the context of an organisation, Alignment is nothing but linking of organizational goals with the employees' personal goals. It requires common understanding of purposes and goals of the organization, and consistency between every objective and plan right down to the incentive offers. Managers have the power to align people and resources. They align tasks and objectives. They synchronize both time and space. Management is like an assembly line where each and every part needs to synchronize with each other and function perfectly, otherwise the end product gets botched up. And this is where Professor introduced us to an important Management lesson– Management by Objective.

       Management by objectives (MBO) is a process of defining objectives within an organization so that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand what they need to do in the organization in order to achieve them. The term "Management by Objectives" was popularized by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book The Practice of Management. The essence of MBO is participative goal setting, choosing appropriate course of actions and decision making. An important part of the MBO is the measurement and the comparison of the employee’s actual performance with the standards set. Ideally, when employees themselves have been involved with the goal setting and choosing the course of action to be followed by them, they are more likely to fulfill their responsibilities.

       Then going ahead, we compared the practical examples of two different schools of Management that we had studied in the previous lectures- the blindfolded tower building exercise and the three monk water gathering exercise and thus, arrived at the following important features and advantages of MBO:

1. Motivation– Involving employees in the whole process of goal setting and increasing employee empowerment. This increases employee job satisfaction and commitment.
2. Better communication and coordination – Frequent reviews and interactions between superiors and subordinates helps to maintain harmonious relationships within the organization and also to solve many problems.
3. Clarity of goals
4. Subordinates tend to have a higher commitment to objectives they set for themselves than those imposed on them by another person.
5. Managers can ensure that objectives of the subordinates are linked to the organization's objectives.
6. Everybody will be having a common goal for whole organization. That means, it is a directive principle of management.

        Towards the end of the lecture, Professor compared two giants of Indian Sports and helped us understand why they were unable to work together. We concluded that the reason why they were not able to work together was a mismatch in the skill sets of the two bodies. Having multiple skills is not always advantageous. It could prove to be counter-productive as one might get confused as to which skill out of the multiple on offer, he should go for. This where the Manager comes into the picture. He should figure out which all skills need to be nourished and which all need to be prevented.