OCI Week 10: Wrap Up

image credit: spursfan_ace

This Thursday was our last formal class of the year, which I guess means the last class of my degree. Kind of anti-climactic now that I think about it. Regardless, we still have two more classes for presentations of our new media challenge and the group projects we have all been involved with but more on that next week. This Thursday was all about the team work apparently and getting our projects done with a little bit of hand holding, which we probably all need at this stage. I'm disappointed we didn't get any real class time, the readings were quite interesting and there wasn't the token impossible to read article in there so maybe more people would have done them. The basic gist of the articles was talking about how our culture and research has all over valued 'change' and emphasised it as something necessary and glorified. The articles don't disagree with the importance of change but instead stress the need for more research in how companies can create continuity and sustainability. It rings quite true to my dissertation where I talk quite extensively about individuals who maintain organisational cultures as well as those who create and change it. Perhaps there has been an overemphasis on the change elements in the management literature because it focuses on managers in organisations. My observations have always lead me to believe that the continuity of organisations is pursued by individuals distributed throughout the organisation instead of vested in the upper ranks where change is often driven from. Since we're all getting ready to present our New Media challenge next week, I thought I'd share with you some videos about some of the things I would like to say but won't have time to.

Creative Common Copyright

All of the images you see me use here and in my slide shows are licensed under creative commons. To get images under this license search here and check the creative commons box at the bottom.

Academic Blogging

This guy has some different ideas to me so I thought I'd put him up. He's talking about blogging as an academic from PhD level and onwards, focusing on many of the challenges you face with transparency but also the great benefits.

OCI Week 8: Competing from Down Under

After a long class hiatus we finally got back into it last week on Thursday with the long awaited "Competing in a (not so) flat world / from New Zealand" lecture. Considering we had handed in our assignment a week before I was kind of hoping that everyone had done the readings this time. Skimmed them? Printed them? Next time? You Promise? Sweet. The readings did challenge the untold optimism we're normally able to spout about competing from New Zealand, it was great being challenged to not resort to the standard clichés as a point of good argument but conversations generally tend to drift that way regardless. Most enjoyable however was having previously mentioned Selwyn Pellet in to discuss his experiences as a business owner competing from New Zealand.

On Ownership and Business

"Ownership for me is about having more people on the train"

I think many people from the class enjoyed the business ethic that Selwyn brought to the table. That amongst all the profits was a genuine urgency to have fun and create wealth not just for himself but his friends and New Zealand.

"I think I enjoy seeing other people be able to make choices"

He also espoused much about his theories on ownership, including compulsive VC (vulture capitalists) avoidance and his governance policies for keeping them out.

"There is only one class of shareholder, no preferential shares"

Competing globally

"Communication and culture are the hardest things about going global"

I'm not sure whether or not Deb told him to say that one, but echoing our class themes certainly rang true for all the students in the room. He spoke on the challenges of running a truly global business and the folly of many people who want to have each manager in the direct vicinity of the function. He talked about how the global entrepreneur needs to also be a hardened traveller whose home is on a 747. I certainly hope not, and youthful idealism ignorance is bliss.

"You don't have a management team, you have a virtual team."

The Role of New Zealand for Hi-Tech

"The role of New Zealand is frankly limited"

In talking about the New Zealand Hi tech sector, the truth from Selwyn can be harsh, but hidden beneath the numerous disadvantages of operating globally from our physically distant country, Selwyn enlightened us to the various benefits he has identified running companies from New Zealand.

"Kudos to Helen Clark; we are welcome everywhere, there is not a country in the world that turns it's back on New Zealand"

He attested to the ethical perception that the world holds of New Zealand at the moment. This trustworthy image can become a source of serious competitive advantage. He also referred to the large innovative creative talent that we have particularly in the high tech sector:

"We get less hours out of them and trade on the fact that they are more creative"

However, his perception of employing them in New Zealand was less than optimistic even if it did pay off. It was great to hear his thoughts on the New Zealand engineers especially when compared to Australia. In later conversations he attested that NZ employees on average work significantly harder for considerably less pay, sometimes in the region of 35% more in total cost to company. Overall his thoughts on doing business New Zealand mostly related to the fact that he and his friends think its a great place to live and our people and our innovation seems to be the main things going for it. I think he summarised his thoughts best when he said:

"It's not a bad place to do business, it's just bloody far from everywhere"

Concluding Thoughts

Firstly, Some of the messages he sent you don't necessarily want to believe. I don't think he makes it look easy which is refreshing. Though this is probably not the message that would go in a PR release, it's a lesson that I'm glad as a student at Postgraduate level I have access too. Secondly, there are a lot of challenges facing New Zealanders, but there are things we can do today.

"Kiwis have to get away from investing in bricks and mortar"

Finally, He doesn't put any polish on the challenges that exist if you want to be successful.

"The way I see it there are the 4 M's that form the impediments to success; marriage, management, mortgages and then you get myopia"

But his emphasis on personal resilience and self reliance is advice we can all afford to take.

"If it's got to be, it's up to me"

OCI: Week 6

View whole presentation here
Today class was certainly eventful. After having a presentation dropped on us yesterday, I spent the latter parts of last night preparing it and gave it this morning to a no doubt sleepy class. People tend to be a bit shocked the first time they see me present and I get a stream of people asking how they can make totally sweet slides and whether they should get a mac (The answer is yes, you should). Anyway, the majority of people in the MIB department have got pretty used to my presenting style and thus are a bit over it I'm sure. In a discussion following class it would seem I haven't improved my speaking too much this year (one of my goals) but I think I've just got a lot better at doing it with less preparation, thanks Toastmasters. Following everyone's haphazard, made in the morning night before presentations. We got into my favourite case study "Icebreaker: The China Entry Decision", but I guess I only really like it because it was the case from the national competition last year. As usual, there is a lot to learn from Icebreaker but I was amazed to see just how few people knew about the brand. This of course is kind of awkward when your talking about what a great marketing company they are. I thought I'd take some time today to talk about why I write about this paper. I never intended on doing this but as my lecturers stumbled upon the blog I found myself explaining to Darl why it is I do it so I thought I may as well do the same here. Really it comes down to three things (so far); first it is the reflexivity I gain by writing about something that I think we take for granted as mundane, secondly it is a demonstration of the unknowable pervasiveness that has come about from the entire new media revolution, and finally it is about experimenting with transparency. My final point on transparency I think is key, organisations gained a lot when they started to allow employees to write about the company. Suddenly people were criticising the company from the inside, talking about what works, what doesn't, why they love their job, why they hate and so on and so forth. I think to many people, this sounds like a scary thing to let people do and perhaps it's generational, but to me this is exciting. This kind of transparency made organisations more human, more fallible and in the end, more trustworthy. Companies stopped being like giant boxes that shoot out product and started being collections of people that struggle and fail just like the rest of us. Now the classroom isn't a company, but I think introducing some transparency to it can be beneficial. Everything I write might not be shining glory upon all that is postgraduate studies at Auckland University, but it is that honesty that makes what I do say about the class credible. One hope that I do have is that someone who is thinking about doing Postgrad studies will read some of these stories and get a real understanding for what it's all about, more than any prospectus could offer them anyway.

OCI: Week 5

"When someone asks me to do something about 5 times I'll go 'oh, they mean that,' and get on to it. But surprisingly, the 'sticking your head in the sand like an ostrich theory' does work the majority of the time."
-Deb Shepherd

That was a really quiet class on Thursday, and I don't want to point any fingers but there seems to only be a few people who are contributing to the majority of the conversation. I think in undergrad I would have appreciated this as the majority of student interventions in the lecture are fairly off topic, monotonous or un-informed. However, when there is a lecturer like Deb, who thrives on class discussion, it really hampers everyone's learning if the majority of people aren't heavily involved in the discussion, haven't done the readings, or are just to plain scared to contradict their peers or the lecturer.

After that rant you're probably thinking I didn't enjoy the class but I can assure you that's not true. I love the style of this lecture, I like the fact that I don't have to spend all day looking at terrible powerpoint slides. I mean sure, the ones that she uses are pretty terrible, but she doesn't like using them either, what a relief. After years of lecturers reading out facts we're finally learning through stories! This means if you're a Daniel Pink or a Presentation Zen fan, you know that these lectures are a million times more enjoyable. For example, I was in a blur about Institutional Theory and company archetypes before Deb told us the fantastic story of the Veterinary firm expansion. It's these illustrations that really help me learn. What's more, it makes the most boring academic dribble theories come to life as we realise how they can be applied to real firms. To anyone whose not in commerce you might be amazed to hear that I'm only just experiencing this in my fourth year, but I can assure you, undergrad is anything but applicable and anyone who wants to really understand this stuff needs to do more.
On a lighter note, after the class and on Duane's recommendation, myself and my partner did go check out Ray Avery's talk on social entrepreneurship. If you didn't (which is pretty much all of you) you missed out on a fantastic and inspirational talk. I did see them filming it so maybe it will creep out online. Anyway, you should check out his great venture Medicine Mondiale.

image credit: essjay

OCI: Week 4

"I'm going skiiing for ten days so... don't try to contact me unless it's about the snow"
-Darl Kolb

This weeks class took an interesting turn, with no readings and no specific class theme. Instead we all had to prepare to talk about our essay topic for the first assessment worth 30%: Explore and critically assess how and to what extent culture (local, national, global) and communication (technical and social) enable and constrain growth and innovation in New Zealand SMEs (2000 words). After working my way through a recent case book by Ian hunter I decided to pursue Navman as my SME of focus. The book contained a case by Darl and another management lecturer at Auckland Uni, Barbara Plester, that covered off the central themes of connectivity and culture that are required in the essay. The firm also offers a great opportunity to look at how a US company purchasing an NZ firm both constrains and enables growth and innovation. A story that rings true to my professional experience... but that's another story. Just when I thought we were about to get into some theory or learning, our seven hour class abruptly comes to an end. Darl gave us a quick sign of, dons his jacket and disappears off skiing in Wanaka. Apparently our email contact is also restricted to snow condition related questions which means we're on our own for a while in terms of the personal connectivity survey. It's amazing how it feels when suddenly you have 5 hours given to you that you weren't ready for. There is this sudden feeling of relief that you actually have spare time, quickly followed by the realisation of dread as you think about how much you really have to do and how sad busy your life must be for you to get excited by an extra 5 hours. We decided to spend some time in our groups and get a wicked brain storm going, I tried to go all GTD on them with a bit of natural planning: starting with outcomes, developing next actions etc.

Following this and given all the free time we had been endowed with; Duane, Ollie Alex and I decided too minimise the burden with some philosophical banter mixed with some high quality beer... Best. Class. Ever.

OCI: Week 3

During my undergraduate a Massey University I really loved sociology, I took just one paper on it as an elective but it was by far the most interesting. Today Darl offered us a taste of why it may or may not be my scene as we delved into dualism, duality and human agency. Our focus was to uncover and understand the metaphor of connectivity and how it explains the socio-technical aspects of our connectedness as individuals The afternoon was spent with a little bit of futurology, brainstorming in groups as to where we thought the workplace and communication would be in 20 years. I stuck to what I know and spoke a bit about the semantic web and a future where data portability has become all encompassing. I also rifted on a bit about how A whole New Mind would become a reality as almost all analytical and technical tasks become automated. If this sounds fun its cause it really is, no hidden academic essay behind the brainstorming, just a conversation and an idea. My key thought on things that would change was our need for social interaction with physical proximity and that no degree of virtualisation available in our homes will negate the need for a physical workplace to interact in. Somehow we managed to tangent onto human drivers with someone arguing that human nature has never changed and Alex had to put him in his place.

At the moment I disagree with you so we're having an argument, but 3000 years ago I would have wanted to smash your brains in. -Alex worker

Sometimes we're all a little disappointed things haven't changed. After the future session we broke up into our groups to discuss the upcoming projects, my team of four and another are working on the development of an instrument to measure someone's personal connectivity, think Myers-Briggs except instead of telling you you're extraverted we tell you you're on facebook way to much you over connected freak and might be eligible for disconnect anxiety. Good thing I have an iPhone then huh? Image Credit: Smull