Group Dynamics

I was watching a movie called "12 Angry Men". 12 men holed up in a room as jurors and have to come out with a decision, and it is a decision on which the life of a person may depend. The jury can either declare the person guilty or not guilty. What starts as a 11 to 1 , guilty to not guilty slowly changes into a situation where the jury finally decides, the person under trial is not guilty. It's amazing to see how the movie unfolds. An absolute delight if you love watching how people around you interact and affect each other.

I think i have seen a hindi remake of this movie. i dont remember the name but i am sure i did see a movie like this. Quite obviously not a very well known movie in bollywood but i think Pankaj kapoor played a wonderful role in it. It's one of those gems that get lost in the crowd of commercial bollywood cinema. That brings one more movie to my mind... "Thoda sa roomani ho jaye". I am sure i had seen it on Doordarshan, at one of those time and situations when u did not have an alternate channel to watch. Nana Patekar playing the role of a professional rainmaker... a supposed charlatan who promises to bring rain. Whether he does that or not is a different question but he sure did change the lives of the people in that small setting shown. These kinds of movies are always great to watch. They leave you with a strange feeling ... Actually I think it leaves you confused.. may be what you thought right is not right after all..

Anyway coming back to 12 angry men, it reminded me of a blog post i had read somewhere a few months back about a few movies that they had been shown in the final year of their MBA term. Run Lola Run was one of them and it took me a hell lot of time to find this movie with the english subtitles and watch it. I would like to add this movie to MBA curriculum. A wonderful assignment to see some of the things that you read in OB (Organisational Behaviour) in action. Group dynamics at its best. May be you could take a lesson or two out of it. If you ever have been in a situation where you have fought hard to influence a group of people, you know how challenging it is and what excitement it brings.

I wonder if the HR profession actually does what it should. I now respect my prof, John K for his "Baptism through fire" lecture, yes.. that's how he used to put it. He used to say, "I started my career when HR was still called IR(that's Industrial Realtions) and in a cotton mill...That's the kind of place that teaches you what HR is all about." I guess i would agree with him, that certainly must have been a challenge worth taking. The industry where I am in (The Great Indian Service Industry!!!), HR is just a bunch of worthless paper pushers. Any conscientious one remaining among them should be having sleepless nights with visions of Paradise lost. Most of them are happy doing worthless clerical jobs (except may be the recruiters who grind their butts off day and night trying to make up for the utter failure of the one of main objectives of core HR personnel - namely retention). I wonder if one should take a closer look at the retention rates of companies and try to draw a direct relationship to the employee HR ratio in this particular industry (IT service).

But anyway, I highly recommend this movie and if you are watching it, i would suggest you to try and take note of how exactly the group changed its decision. How stereotyping, halo effect and group think actually unfolds..

If u never had a chance to sit in an OB or HR class and are wondering what these terms mean, i am sorry, i feel like flaunting my degree today ;) ( I would request my friends not to try reminding me that my specialization was IT/Systems and not HR)
Added hyperlinks with which you can start your journey into these exciting topics. Nothing more exciting than the study of human behaviour. The world around you is your lab...