THEORY X AND THEORY Y

The famous X-Y theory was proposed by Douglas McGregor in his 1960 book ‘The Human Side Of Enterprise’. When it comes to the field of management & motivation these theory are still referred. McGregor’s X-Y theory remains central to organizational development, and to improving organizational development.

For Douglas McGregor, the X employees are lazy by nature and you have to threat them to make them work. The Theory Y employees are motivated by need, they want self-actualization.

To know more about Theory X & Theory Y manager concepts refer to link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Primarily Theory X and Theory Y have to do is with the perceptions manager hold on their employees, not the way they generally behave.

Q1. What is Theory X?

Theory X can be defined through following points:

1)      In this theory management assumes employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can and that they inherently dislike work.

2)      According to this theory, employees will show little ambition without an enticing incentive program and will avoid responsibility whenever they can.

3)      According to Michael J. Papa, if the organizational goals are to be met, theory X managers rely heavily on threat and coercion to gain their employees' compliance.

4)      Beliefs of this theory lead to mistrust, highly restrictive supervision, and a punitive atmosphere.

5)      They will blame the person first in most situations, without questioning whether it may be the system, policy, or lack of training that deserves the blame.

 

Q2. What is Theory Y?

Theory Y can be defined as

1)      In this theory, management assumes employees may be ambitious and self-motivated and exercise self-control.

2)      They possess the ability for creative problem solving

3)      They believe that the satisfaction of doing a good job is a strong motivation. Many people interpret Theory Y as a positive set of beliefs about workers.

Broadly managers are divided into two categories based on how they perceive their employees. If a manager isn’t able to understand their employee it’s better to treat all employees as same & motivated. To give an example in my previous company I saw certain managers who used to judge performance of an employee by the no of hours in an organization & not by the quality of work that he/she delivered. He used to think that those who leave office early are lazy employee which in actual is false. If we see this is just a perception of mangers about these employees. Perception has nothing to do with reality here. Such a manager belongs to Theory X manager. A theory Y manager possess Positive attitude, inspiring, motivating, trusting employees etc.

Q: The most important question is to which category one should belong?

If a matrix is drawn between Theory X-Y manager & Lazy, Motivated employee then we get 4 categories which can be seen in figure below:

The obvious choice of any manager is to be part of category 4 in which both the employees & manager are motivated.

But if we look at category 2 where a manager treats a lazy employee as motivated employee, it seems to be very challenging task. 

CONCLUSION

In life there could be both lazy & motivated employees but I have seen lot of employees who were lazy but became motivated & are among the most valuable asset for an organization now. So be a Theory Y manager & if you fall into category 2 then take it as a challenge and convert lazy employee into motivated employees.

Keep looking this space for more updates !!!

Mera Tower Sub Se Voonchaaaaaaa !!!

In continuation with our promise of Knowledge Sharing let me share with you something which you would have encountered at your workplace at some point of time.

Today Prof. Mandi gave us a interesting task. Here is the task       



SCENARIO 1 

Task:
Somebody among students has to come in front & make a tower as tall as he can using wooden cubes.

I was planning to volunteer but there was a catch involved. The catch is that the person interested for task would have to pay Rs 500/- which wouldn't be refunded. Finally after a long wait one fellow among us volunteered for it.

Rules
Yes there were certain conditions bounded with this task. The conditions are mentioned below:
    a) BASE would be single cube
    b) If tower falls down then game is over

Target
Prior to starting I was expecting that the  person who volunteered would be able to make a tower of at least 15 cubes. But he made a tower of 16 cubes. That's Great !!!
So the 1st learning that I received is never underestimate anybody.

SCENARIO 2

Task is same but rules are changed now. A team will be performing this task. Total team members volunteered were 9. Team comprised of:

    a) Worker: Blind folded person who will be doing the actual work of putting the cubes one over
                        another. [Say a System Engineer performing coder job in IT industry]
    b) Helper: A person in direct contact with worker will be instructing him on how to put these
                      cubes. [Team Lead in an IT industry as he is the direct point of contact]
    c)  Manager: Who strategies the way of doing. Keeps on passing so many instructions at a time to team lead who in turn passes the same on to the worker. [For example: PM, SPM in an IT project team].

Exactly similar was the hierarchy in my IT organization where I worked. I as a coder in a project didn't new where my code is going to be used. I was just working on the instructions imposed on me my Team Lead, Managers.

After end of this task the worker was just able to place 7 cubes over each other. It was very less than expected as this time a team of 9 people was involved.

CONCLUSION: 
When Prof. Mandi asked the worker about what was going in his mind while he was performing the task. To this he replied that he was hearing so many suggestions at a time that he couldn't interpret them.

That's the main problem with today's mid-level management professionals. Building the tower or performing a task becomes a tedious due to involvement of overheads. Even we all can see similar environment in our workplaces.
Another major difference to notice is the difference between remuneration of worker and managers. According to Prof. Mandi be a manger who is able to  justify his remuneration.


Keep reading will post other lectures soon !!!