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Tag Archives: innovation

Reputation Doesn’t Come Khalessi

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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Business School, China, Daenerys Targaryen, Game of Thrones, GOT, Griffith University, Henley, Henley MBA, innovation, Khalessi, MBA, Nobel Prize, Peking University, Queensland University of Technology, QUT, THE, Times Higher Education, Tsinghua University, UMIST, University of Manchetser, University of Melbourne, University of Queensland, UQ, Wolrd University rankings

324161f0ab0d2895f953851e1646644d

Something of great significance happened last week that in the hubbub of the budget and forthcoming election seemed to pass with a mere whimper. All the more surprising because this event happened at the very time we are looking at innovation and talking about transitioning our economy from resources to services. Put simply – from digging to innovation. And where do we expect to see much of this innovation to come from? Our universities of course.

Last week the Times Higher Education World University Rankings published their top 100 most influential universities. For the first time two Chinese universities are featured in the top 100. The most influential university in China according to THE is Tsinghua in at a very creditable 36th. Established in 1911 and located in Beijing it has over 33,000 students just over 50% of whom are postgrads.

tsinghua

It will not be a surprise to most that the quality of tertiary education in China is on the rise. After all with rising affluence comes an aspirational middle class who see the road to prosperity for their children very much rooted in a sound education at a university of repute. In the past this has ordinarily meant going offshore and Australia’s learned institutions have only been too willing to oblige. When we look more parochially at Queensland, my home State this means our academic powerhouse the University of Queensland (UQ).

University_of_Queensland,_Brisbane,_Australia

What’s wrong with this picture now though? Well for starters only five Australian universities have made it into the top 100 with our top performer University of Melbourne falling short of Tsinghua by some seven places at 43. UQ comes in at a dismal 81-90 (they bracket quite a few this low in the rankings). Even Peking University out ranks our number one performer coming in at 41.

How long before middle class parents in China decide that their aspirations for their children can be better realized without leaving home? The knock-on impacts to the Australian economy could be quite far-reaching, especially as the transitioning of the economy envisages a significant role for higher education as a revenue generator. We are looking at innovation and services to take up where coal and iron-ore once held sway. If we consider education as a commodity we might find it will quickly move to where the biggest bang for the buck can be achieved. We might well be in for a shock if this means Chinese universities preferred to our own.

Riding the tail of the Asian Dragon is beginning to prove a darn sight more challenging than just jumping on board, Daenerys Targaryen style, and holding on for dear life. Our offering to foreign students needs to be made highly relevant and worth the extra money that parents and students have to shell out to support their studies. I suspect we need to work a lot smarter and harder in this area.

If we are to regain reputation perhaps we need to start thinking the unthinkable? And what is the unthinkable? The merger of universities to create institutions of scale able to cut a swath in the cut-throat world of attracting foreign students and securing research funding. For many this is impossible given the tradition and legacy of these venerable institutions. To that I say think again. In 2004 The University of Manchester merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). This wasn’t a mere case of a big university swallowing up some lower rated minnow. UMIST was where Rutherford and his team split the atom. Between them they have 23 Nobel Prizes. An institution dating back to 1824 surely has more tradition than one (UQ) which was established in 1909. If they have done the unthinkable it is beholden on us to at least consider it.

Perhaps it’s too big a step to merge two universities from the outset. Management theory would suggest undertaking a pilot study. A more palatable way and I think almost an imperative, would be to ‘float off’ a faculty. I could think of no better candidate than the business schools. Brisbane, our capital city has three universities (UQ, QUT and Griffith) each sporting their own business school with competing MBA programs. The joining of these in pursuit of the lucrative Asian market would create an institution of real scale, capable of making its mark internationally. It could be named Queensland Business School or Brisbane Business School. The name though is much less important than the concept.

What is slightly concerning is that there doesn’t seem to be a push for such an initiative. I remember mentioning it one time at an MBA fair to all three business schools only to be told in no uncertain terms that it was both unthinkable and unachievable. I have a Henley MBA. We were taught to critically and constantly challenge the status quo. Why then have the Deans of the three Brisbane business schools not done likewise? Surely as a strategic option it is what many of the textbooks used to teach in their courses would promote as a sensible way forward. The world of business – the domain in which they teach – is a constant changing environment where mergers and acquisitions, in the best interests of the business, are quite common. Tradition, in business, is a sentiment that is seldom part of the decision making process. Going down with the ship, or sliding in the world rankings cannot be allowed to continue. We have a reputation to hold and improve. Perhaps only innovation can enable us to claw our way back before it’s too late?

Channelling Oprah By Accident

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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accidental manager, authenticity, C K Prahalad, Caroline Myss, CMI, creativity;, David Gelles, failure, flow;, Gary Hamel, innovation, innovation economy, lucky country, Malcolm Turnbull, Michael Porter, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, OECD, Oprah, Oprah Winfrey, Pfeffer, risk, risk taking, self-esteem, Soul, spirt, Sutton, Wyatt Roy

oprah_northwestern

I went to the Oprah Tour of Australia in Brisbane recently . There I’ve said it! Fair play to Oprah she did, mid-show, acknowledge the 9 or so of us blokes in attendance, whereupon we were asked to stand and received the ‘love in the room’. It was just a momentary and miniscule glimpse of what it must be like to get adulation like Oprah does. She then went on to regale the audience with her ‘recipe’ for happiness, peppered with anecdotes from her life to illustrate junctures at which important things happened. All events that have helped her form her view on happiness and success. She touched on authenticity, having clarity of purpose, intention, dedication of service and surrender amongst other things. This gave me pause for thought. While her recipe for life seemed fairly common sense I reflected it wasn’t a bad recipe for achieving success in the business world either.

Just a couple of weeks ago now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull released the much awaited policy on innovation. In his own words this is the best time to be alive in Australia. That point may be moot but you could prosecute a strong case to say it is perhaps the most interesting (and not in a Chinese proverb sort of way). In short the main issue confronting us is the re-calibration of the Australian economy from one of pulling resources from the ground (Coal, Iron Ore and Gas) to one of innovation. We were once the ‘lucky country’ and now we are striving to be the ‘creative’ one.

Out of the earth we once extracted wealth and now we must extract from our minds and spirits (the well of creative ideas) the new wealth. Once we extracted resources and sent them overseas without much in the way of a value-add, only to buy those goods back as steel and other value-added products. Now we must do the value-add bit here. When the commodity is ideas and we don’t value add in our own backyard it’s called a brain drain. We must have ideas and then shape and polish them if we are to maintain our enviable OECD position in terms of absolute wealth and also in terms of stature and national self-esteem. This is a nice segue to Oprah  who talked a lot about self-worth. Little it appears can be achieved if this is not at its optimal level. The real challenge now will be how we manage creativity and ideas within the workplace. Just the word ‘workplace’ sounds like a misnomer  because creativity, long associated with play, may seem a slightly awkward bedfellow to work (grind) which is what we get up each day for.

The Executive corridor (or C Suite – a term I really don’t like) is populated with managers whose qualifications fall into one of three distinct groups:

  • technical experts with a management qualification tacked on;
  • professional managers whose expertise lies solely in the art and science of the practice of management; and
  • technical experts with no management qualifications to speak of.

In the past knowing more than the other ‘bloke’, and yes it has generally been a male, has been the prerequisite for promotion or advancement in the workplace. This has had two impacts:

  • the most knowledgeable person in the chain has been taken out of the position immediately lowering the knowledge quotient at the pointy-end;
  • a position requiring an altogether different skill set has then been occupied by someone ill-equipped to handle it. Arise the accidental manager.

There is nothing wrong, per se, in promoting a technically proficient worker. This can act as an encouragement to others to strive to do better (or as Oprah might phrase it, to be the best you that you can be). However before doing so there are four precursor activities that need to be set in motion first:

  • working with the soon to be promoted team member getting them to realise there is a whole body of knowledge that they don’t know but will need to;
  • helping them realise that falling back on their default technical knowledge to define their sense of self-esteem in the new role is not appropriate;
  • providing some baseline management training before the promotion; and
  • instilling in them the notion that they are now on a path of lifelong learning.

In short it is necessary to do succession planning, or as Oprah might say, find your thread, follow and nurture it.

Regrettably the world is littered with accidental managers. It has become so acute that the Chartered Management Institute in the UK, the peak body for management professionals, has identified this as a key risk to the UK’s success in the digital age. The impact of accidental managers in the workplace is varied. It ranges from small business failures to meltdowns of global enterprises; the shockwaves of which ripple across the globe. Seldom do such impacts happen without individuals and families being affected. Compare an accidental manager to a not yet fully qualified pilot. At least s/he has auto pilot to rely upon. The promotion of managers without the requisite insight, training and commitment to lifelong learning is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Those who have put in the hard yards of learning and study over the years are often left to pick up the pieces and in ‘repairing’ those mishandled by accidental managers oftentimes find themselves reaching into their wider families to help salve their wounds.

With the need for Australia to generate ideas and turn these ideas into commercial successes, there is a greater need now than ever to have managers in place who are anything but there accidentally. There are four generations in the workplace – boomers (me), Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z. As managers we will need to add this additional complexity to the existing skills necessary to run a successful business. Add to this the requirement to be able to create a culture where ideas can be encouraged, shaped and presented to market and we can begin to see that not only is the accidental manager well out of their depth but the assured manager may well be coming up short up themselves.

The ability to generate ideas is not enough in its own right anymore. The testing, hot housing, incubating and prototyping will require courage as it involves risk and risk taking. If we are to survive in the digital age and this new era of innovation, our approach to risk must change. Our default position of being risk averse can no longer protect nor sustain  us. This begs the question as to whether the existing breed of assured managers are up to the task (me included). Oprah may well prompt us to ask the question as to whether were are getting our team members to embrace their failures and allowing them to learn from them. We cannot innovate unless we fail some of the time. We cannot grow as individuals without some elements of failure in our lives. Failing in front of our subordinates is a huge display of vulnerability but without leadership by example how can we expect our team members to learn from us?

Failure starts to take us into areas where very few assured managers are comfortable to travel. Many of us may not even recognise that such terrain exists. Failure and success, creativity and innovation start to go to the spirit or soul of a person. To become successful managers we are going to have to embrace the soul and recognise the way it affects those about us. We will need to know about energy and flow. Required reading should now include Csikszentmihalyi, Myss, Chopra and Sheehy while still including Hamel, Prahalad, Porter, Pfeffer et al.

Oprah has a head-start here because she was able to build a successful media empire based on self-belief, focus, intention and surrender. She knows intrinsically that the spirit requires nurturing and in doing so, flow – the well from which we draw ideas – can bring happiness. As assured managers we are going to have to continue to learn and do so in new areas; some of which may not sit that comfortably with our scientist selves.

Highly developed intuition will be required (future blog topic on the way). I suspect business school learning will not be of great help here. Sure we can learn about digital marketing and the importance of cash flow at B School, but to learn about soul and spirit as Oprah would reflect will require us to attend ourselves. Perhaps the way of the future for managers is retreats built along the lines of ashrams? The drive that made us devote our own time to improving our management skills must be re-kindled to encourage us to learn new skills and acquire new knowledge that awakens new dimensions; those that will lead to innovation, business success and above all true happiness in the workplace and beyond.

 

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