Organization v/s Craftsmanship

It is fascinating to see that everything around us is made up of small blocks be it the Universe made up of Galaxies, Galaxies made up of Solar system, Solar system made up of planets or our human body made up of cell, molecules , organs. 
Similarly, though individual human beings can do the work which are required for individual sustainence still human beings come together to form organizations. So the question arises that what is the need of such organizations, what is the difference between an craftsmanship and organizations, the 3 E's of Organization etc. So in this blog I attempt to answer above questions. 

What is an Organization - 
Organization is a social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals.

Why do we need organizations - 

Organizations are required when we want to have economies of scale, profits, need to reach to the masses and so on. The concepts like scale, purpose, impact etc doesn't exist in case of a crafsmanship.

Below is the structure of a any Organization - 

So by looking at the above organization chart we can differentiate between Crafsmanship and Organization as below - 

Craftsmanship	Organization
Only one person doing all the job	More than one person do the job
No parallel processing of the work. Work is done serially	Parallel processing of the work is done.
Specialization in a each particular part of the work by craftsman is difficult	Smallest of the work being done by one person repeatedly. This is called specialization.
Dexterity is low. So time taken to complete a task is high.	Specialization leads to dexterity. As dexterity increases time decreases.
The whole work done by craftsman is black box. So how the job is done is known only to the craftsman.	The complete work is divided into different tasks and elements and the organization has complete knowledge about how each task is achieved.
Worker is the controller of all the tasks and elements	Non-worker i.e. the boss or manager is the controller of all the tsaks and activities.
The complete act  of doing the work is an act of skill i.e only that particular person has the skill to do that particular job	This is an act of deskilling. When we break the job into small parts skill required to get the work done is decreased.
Person based work	Process based work
Delegation of the work or replacement is not easy.	Delegation of the work or replacement is easy.
It has very simple structure.	It has very complex structure.
Worker has high satisfaction related to work.	It increases alienation towards work.So worker has lower level of satisfaction.

 Challenges in an Organizational structure:

  1. Workers in an organization feel alienated towards work.So worker has lower level of satisfaction. 

  Also the process of deskilling dehumanizes people. So have to remunerate the workers to keep them     motivated and satisfied.

2. As the levels of organization increases the channels of communication becomes complex. Also if the communication is not proper and effective then it can lead to chaos in the organization.

To demonstrate this our professor Dr. Mandi did one excercise. 

He asked one person to come up and create the tower of wooden blocks. 

 The rule were like below- 

1. It should be  single blocks tower.

2. Each movement of the block has to with a single block only. One cannot carry multiple blocks.

The person who came to create the tower could make the tower of 16 wooden blocks successfully.

Then professor Dr. Mandi asked a team of 7-8 people. The aim was same- to create a tower of wooden blocks.

But there was a twist in the rules this time -

1. There will be only one worker who can create the tower.

2. The worker will be blind-folded.

3. One person will give direct instructions to the worker.

4. The rest 6 people are senior managers who would also direct the worker from some farther distance.

This time the tower was created of only 8 blocks. 

 At the end of the activity we found the person who was the worker in the task about his feedback and his words were - there were too many voices from all directions that he couldn't concentrate on the work.

Learnings :

1.) Effect on Productivity - 

If the communication is not proper and effective in an organization then it can lead to chaos in the organization. There is considerable decrease in the productivity. Like in our case the number of blocks built decreased from 16 to only 8 blocks when we moved from craftsmanship to organizational structure.

2.) Loss of clarity -

 When a worker was made blindfold he was unable to see in which direction he is moving. And he was directed to work according to his supervisor's instructions. Similarly in an organization if a person doesn't has complete view of the organization he doesn't know that he is headed towards which direction. There no clarity about the vision, mission and direction of the organization. He is required to work as instructed by its supervisors which has a negative effect on the targets and overall health of the organization.

The 3 E's of Management- 

What should be the aim of an management. Even though there are some challenges and disadvantages in creating organizations, the organizations main objective is to achieve excellence. To achieve excellence, effectiveness and efficiency is required  in our actions.  Excellence, effectiveness and efficiency together make the 3 E’s of Management, and the co-relation between these three is as follows:

 

Excellence = Effectiveness x Efficiency

In other words it can excellence can also said -

 SPEED * DIRECTION

  In this equation, effectiveness corresponds to DIRECTION and Efficiency corresponds to SPEED.

Efficiency - Its a measurable quantity. It can be defined as the ratio of the effective or useful output to the total input in any system.

“More out of less is Efficiency”

 Effectiveness- It is difficult to measure.  Effectiveness corresponds to DIRECTION i.e. Effectiveness means the direction in which our organization will move. Its more of a strategic and decision making function.

The decision like what is the right thing to do at a particular point of time. For example decision by Nokia to expand its losing mobile phone market with introduction of Nokia Lumia Windows phone was a Effectiveness decision taken by its management.

So, “More out of less for more is Excellence”