Navrang Puzzle - Blocks of Leadership

“There is no substitute for talent but, on the field, talent without unity of purpose is a hopelessly devalued currency.”

Navrang Cube puzzle

The Navrang puzzle was introduced to us in two lights:

       

       ·         As a product for MANDI, where our customer base spanned from the 4s to the 40s

       ·         A tool to depict management principles focussing on work behaviour

As engineering graduates, our first strike at the puzzle was the attempt to hack it. But interestingly, Dr. ‘Mandi’ came up with this concept of work behaviour with this puzzle.

So basically, all the students were challenged to arrange 27 cubes of 9 colours and make 1 big cube. The catch lied in the fact that each face should contain all the 9 colours.

Playing the Ball:

What it implies:

Break the Routine

Replace working by "rule of thumb", or simple habit and common sense. When you have the special skills of rationale employ them. Education isn’t meant to adorn your résumé instead use the knowledge gained to study work and determine the most efficient way to perform specific tasks.

Delegation

Skill-mapping is highly important to elevate oneself from the worker to resource scale of performance. Rather than simply assign workers to just any job, match workers to their jobs based on capability and motivation, and train them to work at maximum efficiency.

Collaboration

Nothing can steer a team than the leaders ‘walking the talk’ themselves. Be a leader of action than of words.

Verify & Evaluate

Monitor performance, provide instructions and supervision so as to ensure extracting the best out of the available resources. Its good to move ahead, but equally important to gauge if the movement is in correct direction.

Hence the Navrang puzzle exercise was not only intended to storm our logical aptitude to solve and market the product for MANDI, but on a higher note sensitized us to the essentials of leadership in management.

To wrap up, the essence of good leadership includes not only bringing great talent to the party, but also creating an environment that encourages people to come together around a clear and compelling purpose.