Building the Heritage…
One of the first few things that I noticed in and around Bangalore was availability and use of stones in construction, like compounds, walls, ceiling’s and even road pavements. The availability of good quality stone has nurtured special communities which work around all the aspects of stone quarrying, cutting and carving…
While passing by banaswadi extensions we encountered a group of people busy constructing a temple made of stones, their work area, tool making, tools types and even creative execution itself…
It is such a fascinating thing to explore and interact with these artists, yes artist and they create such a wonderful artifact out of nothing! The work begins when these people arrive and decide the architecture, layout and actual stone that they will use the create the marvel…
The tools are predestined but are of various types accordingly for various uses. The work begins after the selected lot of stones arrive at the location, everything happens there with raw hands, the casting of the tools from basic iron rods, hammers and sharpening the tools etc everything is done at site…
The work can spread from a month to several months based on the no of people and actual scope of work; finally it shapes up from foundation till temple top piece by piece.
Ok did I mention this, the entire work is in the mind of the supervisor thus nothing yes nothing is there on paper like design, calculations and schedules are managed with discussions and reviews on daily basis…fascinating isn’t it?
“I was a born genius but education spoilt me”
When most managers find it difficult to “manage” their personal projects, these artisans some not even educated use comman sense to manage such hugh projects.
It makes me think back to egyptian pyramid days, Taj mahal days.
There were to blue prints, budgets…
where did mankind go wrong…. inventing calculation?
No Mohan,
The decline of mankind started with the invention of Assembly line.
This is the age of mediocrity and mediocres will use all the tools available to bring down the geniuses to their level.
Moreover, we do have to provide jobs to people who are not creative enough to do the actual work. And what better way than to put them on top of people actually doing the work.:)
I have always wondered that how come the person who is unable to do a work is supposed to manage that work.
Rajesh has shown this wonderful Indian way of managing, whereas the supervisor who is himself a senior artisan, thinks of it and then gets it done. He is not someone, who is not part of work.
Anyway guys, that is lot of ranting from me.
:):):)
Sanjay
yes mohan, interestingly point, sometimes the best of the management institutes salute most illitrate teams for their six sigma work, yes I am refering to the ‘mumbai dabbawala’s’. For the efficiency of their supply chain it has been claimed that this virtually achieves a Six Sigma performance rating, (i.e. 99.9999% of deliveries are made without error, is at CMMi level 6)
Agreed on dabawallahs, they are an example.
but,
CMM is and can not be made equal to six sigma.
CMM just says am operating at this efficienty with this many defects and shows the scope for improvement.
Six sigma measures and tells you are not yet 99.99% sure of your deliveries
In a banking software by CMM level 5 company, there can be bugs found in the usage maybe after 1 year, 2year etc but this is a controlable error and the system LEARNS from that.
In a medical equipment which calibrates the dosage of radiation for patient, a small round off error would cost the lives of patients and the system does learn but is EXTREMLY COSTLY.
So CMM tells you the scope for improvement while six sigma tells you this is not ok since you are not there.
Great post, Rajesh! Loved reading the post and comments!
Thanks chitra. keeps me going!!
Pink Floyd::
We dont need no education
We dont need no thought control…
well said ‘Mysore’