POM learning's Video

SAP

ORIGIN And HISTORY

}  SAP was founded in June 1972 as System Analysis and Program Development by five former IBM engineers in Mannheim.

}  The acronym was later changed to Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing.

}  Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was SAP's first ever customer in 1972.

}  In 1973 the SAP R/1 solution was launched.

}  Six years later, in 1979, SAP launched SAP R/2.

}  SAP developed and released several versions of R/3 in 1992 through 1995.

VISION and MISSION

VISION : -

}  Consistently deliver high quality solutions focused on improving customer satisfaction.

MISSION :-

}  Research and develop new methods and standards.

}  Proactively communicate and share knowledge.

Apply the knowledge to enhance our products, processes and services.

Industry	Enterprise software
Founded	Weinheim, Germany (1972)
Founder(s)	Dietmar Hopp Hans-Werner Hector Hasso Plattner Klaus Tschira Claus Wellenreuther
Headquarters	Walldorf, Germany
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Hasso Plattner (Chairman) Jim Hagemann Snabe (Co-CEO) Bill McDermott (Co-CEO)

AWARDS and RECOGNISITION

}  SAP Labs listed as one of ten finalists in "India's Best Companies for Rewards & Recognition - 2012," a study by Great Place to Work Institute and Eden red, a rewards and loyalty solutions provider.

}  SAP received "European IT Workplace of the Year 2012 Award," from Best Quality Institute (BQI), BITKOM, and European Commission.

}  SAP Hungary selected "Most Desired Employer 2012" by Aon Hewitt and AISEC.

}  SAP named one of Computerworld’s 2012 Best Places to Work in Information Technology (IT). The honour is given to the top 100 organizations that challenge their IT staffs while providing excellent benefits and compensation.

PRODUCTS

q  SAP's products focus on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). The company's main product is SAP ERP.

q  SAP ERP is one of five enterprise applications in SAP's Business Suite. The other four applications are:

}  Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – helps companies acquire and retain customers, gain marketing and customer insight.

}  Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) – helps manufacturers with product-related information.

}  Supply Chain Management (SCM) – helps companies with the process of resourcing its manufacturing and service processes

}  Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) – enables companies to procure from suppliers .

Three Monks...

"Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”

- Ryunosuke Satoro

Its a short and delightful story story of 3 Monks who understood the importance of team work from the simple need of carrying water bucket .Sounded simple at first but it had all the ingredients for understanding the need of teamwork for accomplishing a task.

Strategies Employed  :

One monk fetches the water

The monk fetches the water faithfully and regularly every day. As his needs are limited he doesn’t mind carrying two buckets with a stick on his shoulders.

Two monks fetch the water

When the second monk moves in then the first monk thinks of distributing his work. Initially they both fight over how to carry water but later on they find a solution. They find a pole and jointly fetch a single bucket of water every day. Although they work as a team but it seems as if they are not satisfied with each other.

Three monks working as team to fetch out water

When the third monk moves in, both monks try to delegate entire work to the newcomer. Infact, third monk fetches the water once but he consumes all by himself. After arguing with each other constantly over whose turn it is to fetch the water, nobody goes to fetch the water. No water gets fetched even after they all are thirsty. 

Lessons Learnt

Continuous Improvement

Method 1 and Method 2 are the examples of using old techniques but continuous improvements over time. It leads to better efficiency and process improvement.

Productivity

Method 2 brings us to an old debate Individual Vs Team Productivity. As per productivity analysis method 2 is more productive than method 1. To make it clearer, here is a table illustrating the productivity statistics in either case. Assuming 1 Man uses 1 unit of energy to lift 1 bucket. 

Event	Output (No. of buckets)	Input(Worker Energy units)	Productivity = Output/Input
1 Man – 2 buckets	2	2	1
2 Men – 1 bucket	1	0.5	2

Innovation

Transition from method 2 to method 3 is innovation.  When the monastery is on fire they realise that it is better to think in terms of team goals rather than individualistic goals. The monk at the bottom fills the buckets, the middle monk works on pulley system and the third monk at the top douses the fire with water in the bucket. This shows difficult situation inspires ingenious solutions. 

Responsibility

This story teaches a gentle, humorous lesson about responsibility. Three monks allow personal pride to interfere with the performance of daily tasks, each believing that the other two should be the ones to go downhill to fetch water. When a fire breaks out, however, they understand how silly they’ve been and work together to save the temple.

Work for each other, no selfishness

The great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, once wrote "I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea." The story of the three monks teaches us that everyone is capable of being selfish, but doing so diminishes our ability to cooperate with one another. People must rise among themselves and see the group as whole. People must be deliberative in their collective decision making.

Pursuit of Excellence

Increase in excellence directly leads to the increase in effective productivity. Excellence can be defined as the product of efficiency and effectiveness. Moving from method 2 to method 3 is the increase in excellence. In the story there is no dearth of talent as all three monks are equally capable, but still as a team they struggle.

Conclusion

The moral of the story, sane group can make bad group decisions if the group dynamics is bad.

Valley Crossing

Learning Management through games is always fun , in the next lecture in POM i learned some new lessons through a Valley Crossing exercise

VALLEY CROSSING

People Involved:

3 persons were required for this task.

Steps Involved:

All the three persons were required to cross the valley safely with the distance between the cliffs as more than one step and less than two steps.

Observations:

1. All three members have equal distribution of different kinds of situation.
   •  High Risk 01 times.
   •  Half Risks 02 times.
   •  Fully Safe 02 times.
2. All three members have the same role in terms of effort and risk. Nobody was overloaded or relaxed.
3. Communication and feedback is essential while working in a team.
4. Every member is indispensable in completing the task.
5. There were equal instances when one needed each other.

Learning:

Teamwork:

Teamwork is absolutely necessary while carrying out any task. It helps the manager and the organization as a whole to achieve targets. It cannot be possible for a single person to handle everything. It is the teams effort which matters in the long run. Also in the above task team effort was necessary to a large extent. Hence team work plays a pivotal role in management.

Trust:

This is again a very important factor. Whenever a manager assignes a task to his employees he definitely has a faith in them. This faith encourages the employees to work harder because it gives them a feeling of consideration. This particular thing is showcased very well in the above task.

Khan Academy - Organisation on a Mission

Education For All, have heard these line so many times before but never saw them being implemented the way Khan Academy is doing . Its pure example of how a man's vision can bring about such a big change.

The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,200 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics,history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics and microeconomics, and computer science.

All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years. The main advantage of learning in this manner is that student can go on with the pace they are comfortable and can learn the entire concepts not just the one's which are required to pass a classroom exam.

          I really liked the way Salman Khan (The Founder ) explained the current education system  with an example of a child learning how to ride a bicycle in which he learns the basics but doesn't learn how to take a left turn or a right turn but it is as equivalent of passing with distinction so he moves on to the next level ,sounds odd but hats the way it is .This thought gave him a vision to bring about a change.

Learnings :

It is the best example relating to Theory Y concept in which a manager continues to come up with positiveness all the time no matter how the road is in front of him .Here Khan academy has worked with an attitude to bring about a change for the betterment of students leaving behind the roadblocks in the way of new and creative thinking.

 It was only possible with the innovative thinking of founder backed with a organisational model for earning revenues as every organisation small or big needs funds for functioning properly.

Khan academy has a significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google. Several people have made US$10,000 contribution. Additionally, it also earned $2,000 a month from ads on the Web site in 2010.

Tower Building Exercise

The Beginning

Much to my surprise the class began with no presentations stuff , no book reading  but pure intellect coupled with a very good interactive session where Dr Mandi showed us a video of Pink Floyd discussing the loop holes in the current education system and motivated us to be involved in entrepreneurship ventures and showed how small concepts can make up to big business which was really very exciting to see .


Tower Building Exercise

In the next lecture of POM we were told about effective goal settings and we had a very exciting exercise for understanding it , namely the Tower Building exercise.
Dr. Mandi asked us to build a tower by placing a square block dice over one another and asked everyone in the class about the maximum height which can be reached ,the student came up with varied responses ranging from 8-30 cubes which can be inferred as their Ambitious Goals in which mine was 22, the professor then came up with a twist and asked what can be the maximum height attained if this exercise needs to be done being blind folded but with the help of a guiding partner and told us that the Historical performance was 17 Cubes after which some students lowered their targets including me while some retained the original targets.
I myself went ahead with the exercise by setting my goal equal to the Historical performance thinking that it will be Ambitious and Realistic as well but in the end managed one more than it.

Learning's 

Seeing that my Potential before performance moved beyond my Potential afterwards what i learned through this exercise is that

• There are no Realistic goals as such and everything thing can be achieved through effective goal setting , communication and support which is Management in real terms .
• One should have a Risk appetite in support for the goal setting.

Finally the day ended leaving me hungry for more such exciting experiences and new methods of teaching .

Hats off to Dr Mandi for making the day so special.