Three Idiots!!

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.




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

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.

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.