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Prof. Steve McShane - Australian for OB OB, OrgB or Organisation Behaviour - a subject most MBA students prefer to avoid, if possible - got a new lease of life with the introduction of innovative teaching methods by proponents such as Prof. Steve McShane from the University of Western Australia. Prof McShane was at the S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, one of the premier Business Schools in the country, to interact with both students and professors and to bring a new perspective to the study of Organisational Behaviour. Prof. McShane has published many papers in this field of study and is a visiting professor in many of the renowned institutions in Asia. At S. P. Jain, Prof. McShane started off his discourse in a riveting manner by analyzing the Columbia disaster as more of a study for organizational behaviour breakdown than an engineering failure. For the students who were of the view that OB was a dry subject, which had very little practical relevance, this was a revelation. Organization Behaviour. Prof. Mcshane clinically diagnosed the case and sectioned the causes of failure into Faulty decision-making, faulty problem-finding and team decision flaws. The reasons behind this were identified as a gamut of Perceptual and Communication problems between middle management and the executive cadre - the engineers, at NASA. The students were given an insight into the intensity of work at NASA and were made to know that the top brass was under a lot of pressure to get more lift offs... faster quicker and cheaper. This resulted in various compromises on issues in quality. The intensity of work can be estimated from the fact that every NASA engineer's desktop had a countdown clock till the next liftoff, constantly reminding him that his shoulders carried the immense burden of responsibility. This was a case of extreme Goal Focus. OB teaches us that such pressure sometimes causes people to make wrong decisions due to excessive dependence on the emotional rather than rational part of our inherent decision making process. Prof. McShane also demonstrated how impediments to clear communication could cause cost escalations by using the example of Holyrood - the Parliament of Scotland that has been under construction for five years and which is now facing a 400% increase in expenses to 200 million pounds from 50 million pounds estimated initially. The concept of Escalation of Commitment... where a commitment once made was perceived as one that had to be fulfilled, despite illogical circumstances due to the errors of Self Justification, the Gambler's fallacy - "We are losing now, but maybe if we invest some more, our luck might turn", Perceptual Blinders - "We did not see something as a problem before, and we continue to ignore it now" and Closing costs. SPJIMR students also came to know that despite all the factual and rational decision models that they were being taught to implement in the decision making process, emotion that demands attention to situations, was actually the driving force, which made them take the decisions. More than the content, what the students actually appreciated was the mode of delivery that Prof. McShane used to rivet the attention of his target audience. He used examples, which no one could have associated with OB and gave them a topical interpretation. Time management was his forte as he juggled questions, subtle humour and jargon to keep the entire audience focused on the subject. The final announcement that "The importance of OB is felt only by managers after they have served for 5 years or more in a demanding situation" drove home the importance of implementing correct models of Organisational Behaviour on a larger scale. Panache and delivery is the future of OB. Contributed by - |
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