Santosh SHARMA

What is Inverted-U Theory?
It is a theory that throws light on the relation between performance and pressure / arousal. In the original study, rats got electric shocks as motivation for escaping from a maze. The Inverted-U Theory owes its name to the line, in form of an inverted U, that appears when there is a correlation between pressure & performance.
 

 
A quick look at the curve reveals that performance lags behind when there’s little pressure, and that performance is positively influenced when there’s some more pressure. If even more pressure is added, performance is influenced negatively and efficiency decreases. The worker’s efficiency and performance can reach an optimal point if the pressure or arousal have reached an optimal point.
Inverted-U Theory was developed by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson in 1908. Despite the fact that the model was developed long ago, it continues to be relevant.
 
Interpreting the Model
When looking at the left-hand side of the graph, it’s notable that low pressure or low stress levels result in a stress response corresponding to ‘boredom or lack of challenge’. Even if the task itself is a critical activity, the attention, concentration, and precision required to properly execute a task is absent in the absence of an appropriate level of pressure or stress.
On the right-hand side of the graph from the Inverted-U Theory, we can see that extreme pressure levels or high stress levels don’t automatically result in good performance. The opposite is true: if pressure gets too high, or a too high stress level is activated, this results in a feeling of unhappiness, stressfulness, and anxiety. These are all results of overwhelming stress.
In the middle of the graph, however, is a region where the worker performs best. This area is where an optimal amount of pressure is applied. In this region, the moderate pressure leads to an optimal stress level, which is manageable as well. Eventually, this results in the highest performance level for the user.
 
Four Influencing Factors
It can be hard to determine how much impact pressure, and stress have because the desired amount of pressure is influenced by four factors. These factors are also known as influencers. Inverted-U Theory recognises the following four influencers:
Personality
Different personality types benefit from different levels of stress or pressure. Generally, extraverted personalities are more resistant to stress and better able to keep their head above water when stressed than introverted personalities. Introverted people usually have a higher chance of performing well in environments with little stress or excitement.
Task Difficulty
The degree of complexity of a task relates to the level of attention and effort a person requires to successfully complete it. People are generally able to carry out simple activities even when pressure is high, but complex tasks are better taken care of in quiet surroundings.
Skills
A shop manager and an accountant have completely different jobs. Each has more knowledge of the work they do individually than of the other’s job. If they would swap jobs, the challenge and the pressure would be so high in the beginning that it would strongly motivate them. After a while, when tasks get easier, they would have to use a new form of pressure to keep their performance up.
Fear
Inverted-U Theory shows that fear can also have an effect on performance. This mainly relates to the ability to set aside or ignore feelings of fear in order to be able to keep one’s focus on the situation and the tasks. People who are better at this also perform better under pressure. People who are not good at it will enter into challenging situations more often.
 
Complexity and Motivation
In situations that require carrying out tasks with a high level of complexity, or solving complex problems, motivation plays an important role. There have been various situations in which the relation between motivation and complex problem solving was studied. These have yielded several theories, such as McClelland’s motivation theory and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
 
Using the Inverted-U Theory, To get the best performance from the team…
The simplest way to use the Inverted-U Theory is to be aware of it when you allocate tasks and projects  to people on your team, and when you plan your own workload.
Start by thinking about existing pressures. If you're concerned that someone might be at risk of overload, see if you can take some of the pressure off them. This is a simple step to help them improve the quality of their work.
By contrast, if anyone is under-worked, it may be in everyone's interest to shorten some deadlines, increase key targets, or add extra responsibilities – but only with clear communication and agreement.
From there, balance the factors that contribute to pressure, so that your people can perform at their best. Remember, too little pressure can be just as stressful as too much!
Try to provide team members with tasks and projects of an appropriate level of complexity, and work to build confidence in the people who need it.
However, bear in mind that you won't always be able to balance the "influencers." Motivate and empower  your people so that they can make effective decisions for themselves.
 

Knoster Model is a Change Management Tool. It defines six elements that we should address to affect desired behavior change :
1. Vision, 
2. Incentive,  
3. Agreement, 
4. Action Plan, 
5. Skills,
6. Resources,

Addressing every element increases our likelihood to achieve the desired results. Failing to deliver on any of the elements will result in predictable reactions from stakeholders / end users. 
Reactions (ref : fig) that help us pinpoint our experience strategy falls short. All we need to do is pay attention. Our ability to recognize the reactions will impact our ability to spot where our change plan is falling apart.

What’s Good About the Model
It is an excellent tool for Managing Complex Change in both situations viz To diagnose issues when a project is already happening or to plan Change. It provides a consolidated list of all the elements needed. I particularly like the focus on Incentives, as this is too often missed in many alternative models.
 
What’s Bad About the Model
There is nothing inherently bad about this Model for Managing Complex Change, except that it does not focus on sequence of the elements. Compared to Kotter’s model, it lacks the direction or phasing of the various elements.
 
Conclusion
This Model for Managing Complex Change gives a clear advantage because it allows to truly understand the importance of every element that is required for Change to be succeed. It also gives a clear understanding of the Negative Change outcomes in case any element is not considered / left out. Using it as a “matrix” that ensure consistency and coherence is a must in any change process, as it creates the right mindset for success.

Catchball is a practice that make Lean one of the most effective methodologies for managing teams. Which allows us to align company’s goals and objectives with the actions of the people on all hierarchical levels of organization.
 
It has a vertical application meaning that top level of management sets goals for the company and creates a strategy. They toss it like a ball to the lower level and wait to receive tactics proposition and feedback.
 

 
In next step, mid-level management tosses the goals down to front line managers, and process is repeated until “the ball” has reached the person at bottom of the pyramid.
The final goal is to give input & align every action in a common direction, provided by every person who is working towards achieving the company’s goals. There may be some iterations before the consensus is reached.
 
In Lean, tactics and process improvements are tossed up by lower management levels and regular team members, Although strategy is usually thrown down by executives. This makes this process extremely suitable for companies that have embraced a culture of shared leadership.
 
It is a effective way to make sure that employees understand how they fit into the picture and become more connected to the organization's.
 
Benefits of Applying Catchball
Catchball is a practice that can lead to a rapid increase of engagement in the team, which will help to achieve continuous improvement.
 
When looking at new ideas / plans for company, this element of Hoshin Kanri method can help get a better understanding of practicality of the plans and help executives to decide whether they will be success or not.
 
This is done by allowing people from multiple areas to contribute to the analysis of the plan/idea. They will be able to suggest practical improvement coming straight from the “gemba” and will be more determined to execute the plan wanting to prove that their suggestions have an actual value.
 

It is difficult or impossible to offer computer the talents of a one-year-old and easy to form computers exhibit adult level performance.”
Reverse-engineering a person's skill was expected by AI practitioners to be proportional to the quantity of your time that skill had been evolving during mankind's evolution. In the early stages of AI, skills that appeared effortless were expected to be difficult to reverse-engineer (typically cognitive functions like reading comprehension, visual perception , speech recognition). Teaching a machine to beat a human playing chess has been considered comparably easy by AI practitioners as it is a skill that only requires effort (mainly compute power).
The Moravec’s paradox is a factor that held back developments in AI. The availability of pretrained cognitive functions by hyperscale cloud providers is breaking it and fueling the current wave of AI.
The Moravec Paradox was assuming the following:
Oldest human skills are largely unconscious, so appear to us to be effortless.
Therefore, Skills that require effort may not necessarily be difficult to engineer at all but we should expect skills that appear effortless to be difficult to reverse-engineer,