The Khan Academy

The concepts and the framework for the Principles of Organization Management are numerous and fascinating. Any concept of any subject can be thoroughly internalized only by coupling it to the real world scenarios and quoting examples from the torchbearers and the change agents of  the modern business world. In this pursuit, what better organization than The Khan Academy that has redefined education . This blog is a humble effort to couple the two, and gain a better insight into these concepts.

What Does it actually do?


  The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. With the stated mission of "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
Now let us try to relate the concepts learned so far in class with this organization.

Vision

 Vision is one of the most important part of the organization. A vision of an organization defines what an organization is and what does it want to achieve. Vision is a reflection of the future. According to Dr. Mandi, a vision should be almost impossible to realize. Khan academy has a noble vision of providing education to every person in the world. Even though it is close to impossible to achieve this , it does have the ability to inspire a spark in every person working for Khan Academy.

Mission

 Vision without a roadmap is like a dream without any goal, therefore it has to be broken down further to something more tangible. Khan Academy lays down a broad roadmap by  asserting to use technology to accelerate the learning of each individual of all ages. With a clear mission , each person working in this organization , knows on what core aspects , his entire effort needs to be focused on.

Conceptual skills

 In order to be successful in achieving its mission, the Khan academy and for that matter any organization is to have very good command over the macro aspects of business. For Salman Khan it was teaching the world through technology.

Human Skills

 For the success of any organization, it must have a dedicated and motivated team. Khan Academy has been able to effectively penetrate the market, only because it has a dedicated workforce, right from the teaching staff to the technical personnel who take care of the course uploads. A motivated organization which takes care of its people is very important in this regard.

Technical skills 

 Khan academy’s vision can only be realized if it is able to breakdown the vision into very many smaller, well defined achievable goals. With a library with over 3200  videos, peer to peer tutoring and automated assessment of the progress of each student  and the depiction of those results graphically, the academy has managed to attain mastery over the technical skills needed for the success of a business entity.

The Khan academy epitomizes the perfect gelling of all the three aspects or skills in management, which cohere together to form what is known as Scientific Management.

Innovative, new generation organization 

 The Khan academy with its new and innovative business idea has redefined classroom teaching. It has enabled each student to learn at his own pace and made classrooms more relevant than before, as teachers don a new role of mentoring each student rather than engaging in a one way communications with the possibility of many students being left behind. Due to the unique nature of business, each person in an organization has very different roles and responsibilities.

Revenue models

  The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization, now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google. Several people have made US$10,000 contributions total revenue is about $150,000 in donations. Additionally, it also earned $2,000 a month from ads on the Web site in 2010, until Khan Academy ceased to accept advertising. In 2010, Google announced it would give the Khan Academy $2 million for creating more courses and for translating the core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages, as part of their Project 10 .
By choosing such a revenue model , the organization has moved further towards achieving its mission and vision, ie make education available to all. Therefore, each organization needs to  align its revenue model with the vision it has set for itself.

Bounded Rationality

  When Salman Khan started this company , it was a relatively a new concept, therefore he did not have any information about aspects like market penetration, resource allocation, and using youtube as a teaching medium, so Khan , based on the limited information made a decision regarding the business model, this is a perfect example of the concept of bounded rationality.

Final word

 Today organizations need to become more and more flexible and agile to adjust to the ever changing market scenario. The Khan academy is a perfect example of an organization which has put to use an innovative idea for the greater good of the society.

pom session 1 and 2

THE INITIATION

Working for more than Four and a Half  years in the industry . The decision to do an MBA was a tough one . One major reason for this was an apprehension, no,  I would call it dread of enduring through boring lectures once again. However this apprehension was blown to dust the moment Dr. T Prasad aka Dr. Mandi entered our class.

Session 1

THE AHA EFFECT

Generally in conventional classes the level of  interaction is low . However  our class  was anything but that.  One  important learning that day I  got was that a manager needs to be a great and effective communicator,  not only to communicate his ideas but also to bring people out of their shells so they too contribute effectively.In my industry experience I found many an idea lost due to lack of or improper initiative and lack of communication on part of the manager.

Har ek idea zaroori hota hai

One very noteworthy learning point that I took home from this class was the strength of a simple idea. Dr. Mandi showed us simple toys like a cube made of plastic sticks and an osscillating pendulum set. Even though these things were quite simple , we learnt that these can have two revolutionary effects.

AND WHAT ARE THESE EFFECTS:

1.      It can tranform the way maths , or for that matter any subject that is tought in schools, making learning fun at very low cost.( The cube can be used to teach simple mathematical formulae).

2.      It proves how simple ideas can be effectively transformed into value for customers, and hence can be used to do business effectively and without  needing too many resources. What is required is a proper grasp of the target market and and a proper organization and utilisation of the resources at hand, precisely what the managers need to do.

SOCHO BECHO

Mandi, the most important feature of NITIE captured my imagination, instead of going into the nitty gritties let me tell some of the learning points:

1.      Understanding of the product is very important, in order to sell it. Relating that to my experience, in industry it was very difficult for me to sell any idea to my seniors( example, a maintenance activity that I plan to take up), unless I have a thorough knowledge about the idea, and its pros and cons.

2.      A proper understanding of the customer base is also crucial, and targeting the right customer is critical to the success of selling. Selling the toys is much easier in case the customers are children and their mothers. I can somehow relate this to my own experience as a shift in charge,  wherein I

a proper understanding of the machines and my resources was so so critical for designing a proper maintenance schedule.

Last but not the least the importance persistence pays, not only in Mandi but in anything in life, whether it is a business plan or any new venture a person whishes to start.

Session 2

THE  REAL INITIATION

In session 2 we got a real feel of  a bschool life. The fascinating opportunity to relate business concepts , my experience  and classroom teaching through a fascinating game was enriching. The game was essentially very simple involving 3 players required to stack cubes ( one of them was blindfolded), however  the learning we got from this game about organization management and its challenges in real life was  a good experience. The salient learning points and its relation to my experiences are briefly listed below.

1.      Team work pays : The cubes can never be placed  successfully if the members do not work as a team. The strength of an organization lies in team work. No person can achieve big results alone, so collaboration is important. In my job too we did many difficult jobs, and shutdowns only  through the use of effective teamwork.

2.      Communicate  Communicate Communicate : In this game a person can only put the  cubes if  proper communication took place between the blindfolded person( worker) and the second person (manager), similarly in my job it was vital for me to communicate clearly as to what was required to be done, and some basic guidelines were given. I have felt that communication does make a difference and this game proved it.

3.      The top management only interferes if he requires to give certain specific inputs. In an organization the top manager has the highest stakes yet he does not interfere in the day to day activities of the entity. He interferes only when there is a need refocus the attention of the middle management and workers to something they might be missing out. In my plant the top management regularly communicates to us about the organizational challenges and goals.

4.      The worker needs to be in good mental and physical state to work productively. In our game the blindfolded person was working the hardest and the second person was trying to calm him down and give him some rest as and when needed. Similarly in my plant the safety, health and well being of the worker is very important for better productivity. Any organization which wishes to survive needs to take care of its employees.

All in all the first two sessions provided us with enough opportunities to relate whatever we learnt in class to the real world.