Angus Blair

Masters Thesis: A Prologue

2009-08-06T21:28:18Z

I can’t remember the first time someone told me I could be a leader or that I needed to show leadership. But the idea has permeated my life for as long as I can remember, at least as far back intermediate school I can re-call the adult world telling me about it. They wanted more of it on the basketball court, in the orchestra, in the classroom and the community. I didn’t even notice the ambiguity of the concept, being developed as a leader seemed a totally natural thing.

After a while it became addictive, it was both empowering and legitimising for me. Leadership was a defining part of my identity and I had an almost uncontrollable urge both when I was in a group or when any type of leadership role was on offer to be the one in front. As an older high school student I would frantically buy and read any luminaries book with leadership in the title, most of which would discredit my work if I was to disclose them now.

Through my undergraduate degree the word began to pop up more and more although the lines between leadership and good management were being blurred as the roles were mixed both on campus and within my workplace. Even so, the leadership development opportunities propagated themselves through my timetable. I was even involved in the Massey University Leadership Programme: a ruse for outsourcing student retention to other students in exchange for development opportunities.

When I arrived for postgraduate studies, leadership was there as the answer to my problems. What was I going to study? How was I going to do my research? I knew I was interested in mergers and organisational culture, but even then, the leadership lens was applied all the way through to my dissertation.

Despite this in depth examination of the idea, leadership is still utopian to me. I’m even an active participant at the moment in leadership development, participating with Excelerator: The New Zealand Leadership Institute in their ‘Future Leaders’ programme. I first got told I should do this programme when I finished a management paper on leadership in my honours year, one of my lecturers was a facilitator on the programme and thought I should do it. I guess you can display leadership in the classroom after all.

I always try to place myself inside my research in some way. I’ve embarked on this journey to make sense of the cultural phenomena called leadership which I grew up surrounded by. It has shaped the decisions I’ve made, the expectations I put on myself, and the role I saw myself playing in the world. The more I think about it the less natural it seems.

The stickiest metaphor I’ve picked up through the Future Leaders programme is that doing leadership can be about asking the right questions. The facilitator I mentioned earlier, Brigid Carroll, likened it to a hockey match; you're dribbling, passing, stealing, intercepting, but at some point you just push the ball out into a new empty space. In that moment you create potential, opportunity, tension and energy for something great to happen. I’ve been given a few of those passes this year, and the challenge of doing this thesis was one of them.

So now I’m going ask you to put down your reverence for the word leadership, like I’ve had to, and put something out into space for a while so that you can help me answer the question; why and how has leadership played such a big role in my life?

The Arrival: Stage Production

2009-04-21T01:13:27Z

The Below is a review I prepared for the Storylines Children’s Literature Charitable Trust.

Kate Parker and Julie Nolan’s Red Leap Theatre adaptation of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival was a visually intriguing and remarkably authentic production of the universal migrant’s tale. The story we all know where danger forces us away from where we are from and what we know, to a new place where we must overcome obstacles in order to reunite with what was left behind. This adaptation of The Arrival powerfully illustrates this through movement, shadow, music and puppetry.

The movement on stage demonstrates fantastic power and fluidity. Performances from the cast demonstrate their prowess in puppetry, dance, acting and even becoming part of the set. The puppetry brings a whole new layer of visual intrigue to the piece. There is phenomenal attention to detail with one of the largest pieces of puppetry on display for only a few seconds. The production shows us that what can be deemed a puppet is simply any prop that that can be brought to life by an actor and that puppetry is not about making the puppeteer disappear, but about bringing an inanimate object to life. This is done with enormous success as the cast mix with the puppets recreating their movement and sound as they skirt around the set.

Naturally, in any adaptation between mediums there are numerous artistic decisions to be made and with Shaun Tan’s The Arrival being such an original book, the translation was bound to be a challenge. Like the book, the production recreates the universally mysterious and unidentifiable new land that, aside from our own empathetic understanding of it, is a mystery. However, the protagonist himself must also represent everyman; as such, the decision to have him speak any language (particularly English) detracted somewhat. The Arrival is equally accessible to people of all languages, cultures and backgrounds. This is a reflection of the true universality of the story told, that in all parts of the world the things we take for granted are often baffling to outsiders.

At the end of the opening show there was tumultuous applause with perhaps a dozen of us on our feet. I do, however, suspect that those who joined me are either familiar with Shaun Tan’s books, or linked with the theatre production themselves. The Arrival stage show is definitely a production best served as a complement to the original piece. At times the ambiguous nature of the action on stage had me confused; but thinking back to a conversation with Shaun Tan during his time here in 2007, The Arrival isn’t necessarily there for interpretation, if you don’t understand what’s happening then you’re probably getting the message.

Image Credit: Shauntan

Angus Blair: Failure 1.0

2009-04-20T11:49:16Z

This post is a bit depressing so you might want to skip to the end where I try to impart some wisdom from this mess.

The story so far

I spoke about it's merit a lot last year, but transparency is often a huge problem when shit hits the fan. I wouldn't have put this information up last month when applications were still flying around the place but I'm happy to be honest about it all now. Last year when I was a fresh idealistic student to Auckland University, I applied for and received an offer from Deloitte consulting. This was the only company I applied for and though I was ecstatic to receive the offer I do admit to feelings of incompleteness about it.

So when we got to November, this feeling of incompleteness crept over me. 2008 had been so good to me, for the first time in 4 years I was surrounded with friends that were actually like me, I was having a lot of fun and really enjoying the work I was doing everyday. The club scene was fantastic with opportunities abound for involvement if I stayed. All this combined the the ambition of an international PhD on the long term horizon, the Masters programme just made sense to me.

So I chose. I would pull out of my contract with Deloitte, in the middle of a recession, and pursue my masters degree as well. Despite all the reasons above, I'd be lying if that was all there was to it. Of course I wanted to try my hand at other more prestigious opportunities, coming back represented a chance to live the dream. And I went for it.

However this year didn't really go as planned, lots of scholarships were not on offer, because it seems a recession can get you even inside this ivory tower. What's more the job market is of course much worse. So the news finally broke this morning, I will officially not be working at Deloitte next year. In addition, none of the other four consulting applications I put through panned out as planned either. This essentially puts my ambition to go into consulting, an ambition that has driven my entire professional development 'til now, quietly to rest.

Tell me about a time you have failed?

This was the question I answered most poorly at the Deloitte Assessment centre last Thursday (Think 8 hours observation while we chat, solve cases, interview etc). I talked about my time on the New Zealand Tae Kwon Do team, coming 2nd in an Australasian invitational, but to be honest it's a bad story to tell, there is little to be learned from what happened. But I also realised I've been extremely lucky or quite oblivious when it comes to my experiences with failure. Before this year I haven't had many failures, at least none that I have been wise enough to rigorously reflect on.

Now, after the last few months, I have a better story, one truly worth learning from. Simply I think it goes as follows; sometimes in life we take risks that we assume don't apply to us. What's worse, we take psychological and practical precautions so we can at least partake in the illusion that we ourselves are not to blame.

I spoke to six mentors last year before making a decision to do my masters instead of take the job offer with Deloitte. But sometimes getting this sort of advice is an engineered fallacy, deep down I knew I could convince them all that I was making the best choice. I would rather lie to myself and them so as to at least create the illusion of consensus that I was making a good decision. Again, arrogant that since I thought it was a good idea they all should as well, better to convince them of that than be wrong.

Where to from here

When I look all around at my heroes and successful people in general. They've all had there fair share of setbacks but they somehow make them look like they were meant to be. It was Steve Jobs who said that it's only with hindsight that you can connect the dots and this was after flunking out of college and getting kicked out of a company he had co-founded, sure he was a millionaire, but kicked out nonetheless.

So it's my turn to make it look easy, or 'meant to be' as everyone keeps telling me. I don't believe in any higher power or fatalistic bullshit though now would be a good time to convince myself on it. But I do believe that good, talented people, know how to make the most of their failures. I'm not one of them yet, but this might be the time I become one.

Angus Writes

2009-04-05T12:03:46Z

I've decided to post some of my academic writing online for anyone interested. Having the thesis online as I work on it is kind of experimental, but I'm hoping it will provide some insight into the writing process of a grad student. The material on this post will be available permanently on a tab at the top: Angus Writes, and will hopefully be expanded on.

Master of Commerce

An Examination of Management Consulting firms as a leadership Industry: A Production of Leadership Perspective

Thesis (Working Document): Here you can watch as my thesis this year develops. It is most definitly in the embryonic phase at the moment; a haphazard structure loosely filled with stolen quotes and jests of futility, enjoy.

Bachelor of Commerce (Honours)

Conceptualising Leadership in the Context of Mergers: Merging Cultural Leadership and Organisational Culture Theory

Dissertation: The biggest and most challenging thing I have written to date. For those writing a dissertation in management at Auckland University, please feel free to steal the formatting and structure if it suits your topic. It has served me well.

Team analysis and Reflection: Antecedents to Dissolution

Journal: One of the most unique pieces I had to put together last year. This is a reflective journal that draws upon social loafing theory and connectivity issues in a team environment. Reflective journal writing is a popular assessment form in postgraduate management studies and the University of Auckland and I was really baffled by it so I hope this helps anyone wanting to put one together.

My Return and a New Year

2009-01-12T20:32:59Z

As of last night, I am back in New Zealand after my fantastic 2 month hiatus in Asia. My third trip to the region in as many years was rewarding as ever, visiting a while new set of cities from my usual base of Hong Kong.

Japan: Osaka, Kyoto, Fujikawa & Tokyo
China: Beijing, Souzhou, Hongzhou, Shanghai & Hei Feng
Thailand: Phuket

Most Epic City: Beijing

Though this was my third trip to China, it was my first trip to the capital and it was most definitely the most epic city I visited. Temperatures were between -10 to 5 degrees centigrade making it the coldest city I've been too. We had snow on the Great Wall which apparently is a rapidly deteriorating phenomena.

Beijing gives a completely different feel than most other large cities in Asia with it's circular city planning, extremely wide roads and relatively low skyline. The people there were extremely foreign friendly, especially when compared to say the Hanoi; the capital of Vietnam.

Did I mention it was cold?

City I Want to Return to the Most: Tokyo

I absolutely fell in love with this city. An amazing, vibrant and action packed place that, despite its size, feels and is remarkably safe. I need to go back to this city for at least a week as I'm only just scratching the surface. I did achieve my primary goal however; eating a plate of Fugu, the famous Japanese puffer fish (poison fish, poison fish, tasty fish!). Fortunately our good friend is moving over to Tokyo to become an interpreter so I may get to return sooner than I originally thought.

And now that I'm back...

It's time for the major announcement of 2009: I won't be going to management consulting at Deloitte as originally planned, but will instead be completing my Masters at Auckland University. Quite a few reasons led up to this decision, some of which I hope to discuss here at a later time. This however means I've got the opportunity to participate in other aspects of university life such as sitting on the committee for Spark (The student led entrepreneurship initiative on campus) and on the executive of our local Toastmasters chapter. More on both of those in the future.

So know that I'm back to technology I guess that means I should start writing again.

OCI Week 10: Wrap Up

2008-10-11T03:15:13Z

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 9: The best/worst class ever

2008-10-02T20:33:06Z

"I could go back home, but what would I do in a town of 280 people"
"You could be Sheriff Darl!"
"But we don't have any crime, once someone broke a window but we know who did it"
- Darl Kolb

Interesting title yes, and since my day was so dichotomous, the post will reflect that. Didn't want to spoil the mood and the awesome lecture. Lets go.

Best. Class. Ever.

Today was fun, for some heaps of people rocked in quite late, so unless you're a member of the new all nighter Wednesday club (seriously) then you don't really have an excuse. We started out with a oddly structured debate over Thomas Friedman's popular theory: The World is Flat.

It was odd because the harder angle (Negative) was given a huge numbers advantage against those who rocked in late on the affirmative, but they also had Darl, ironically one of the only people in the room capable of arguing the negative.

Personally I side with Friedman for the most part, I see the world being flat as a construct that is inherently useful for us to make sense of our international state. We can continue to argue that the the world is simply "flattening" and that it can never be truely flat. But then again neither is a sports field ever perfectly flat, but its still useful for us to be able to describe it as such.

On the other hand though it would be an academic fallacy to write about it as such, and I certainly agree with Darl's work on on connective gaps and our need to redefine distance. But I guess that's why he gets published in Organizational Dynamics and Friedman has to stick to the New York Times, each to their own I suppose. At the end of the day, academia very quickly teaches you that it's good to be able to think about things from multiple perspectives and some how believe both of them.

New Zealand 2.0

We went on to have a discussion and break into groups on what we thought New Zealand 2.0 might look like if we were to be competitive. Duane came up with the idea of thinking of the world through the metaphor of an organisation, where here at the edge of the world, like at the edge of the organisation, innovation can best occur. For that innovation however we need focus, and resource allocation in line with that focus.

In line with these thoughts we saw New Zealand focusing on several key industries (E.g. Ag Tech, Bio Tech and Hi-Tech) thereby engaging in predominantly weightless economy goods and stressing activities that are not dependent on economies of scale. It quickly became obvious that to do this we would really need a major cultural shift in New Zealand. New myths, new stories, new attitudes.

What's other peoples opinion on this? I know you're reading this I see the stats :-) If New Zealand is to move up the OECD rankings (It's harder to go down much further) how do you see this being done? What will a successful New Zealand look like. And by the way, I don't mean winning the next world cup.

Worst. Class. Ever.

Darl dropped the bomb yesterday, one many of us wish he'd done a long time ago. Basically the grades were put out today for the first assesment. It was an academic essay worth 30% of the course (A double points paper) which translates to the most heavily weighted assessment (1st equal) in the entire department. The catch is it's only 2000 words... They were not pretty (the grades, the words as well I guess)

I thought about it for a while but decided that actual grades weren't something I thought should be online. But I will say that it was the lowest grade I've received in any assessment at Auckland University, and I'm not saying I didn't deserve it because I couldn't do that without reading everyone's essays and seeing their marks. But I do know that I'm in trouble now.

What's more people are worried now; when I went back to the lab around 7 last night, there was a very sorry feeling. We all felt it and it wasn't good. I'm really concerned about motivation in class, sometimes a shock to the system inspires people to work harder but other times it demotivates them. At the moment I feel that the class, at least in discussion, is being carried by a few key individuals. When these people stop participating it's going to be bad for everyone, I certainly need the conversation to learn this stuff and I get the feeling Darl and Deb need it as well to teach it.

On the bright side, it was ~~bitter~~ nice to get a taste of my own medicine tonight. I generally the one comforting people and helping them figure out a way to get out of the mess. So it was good to hear people turn around just be honest with me. "It will be OK, do what you can about it and move on", they would tell me. And there right, It's one hell of a hole to dig my way out of if I'm going to meet my goals. But All we can do is try.

So fellow class mates and casual observers, it's time for us to lift our game so high they can't catch us. Don't show up next week with just the 10 pages + 10 Slides x 10 Refs, bring everything you've got. Get started on your team reflections and bring those, challenge them to keep up with how hard we're trying. Get started on your tech challenge now and ask them about it. Talk to each other and for crying out loud start talking in class more. Read and argue, that's all you have to do. First time I've ever drunk beer on my own writing this post. This is what the end of a shit day looks like at my desk, not the tidiest.

OCI Week 8: Competing from Down Under

2008-10-02T09:49:39Z

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"

National Case Competition League

2008-09-07T00:44:38Z

Image Credit: letmein As an interlude to my regular posting regarding OCI I thought I'd let you guys all in on the last couple of days of the National Business League Case competition. I was able to attend the last two days of the 5 day finals held at Massey Albany. The Thursday was a development day held with various entrepreneurship super star appearances and the Friday was the last day of competition and the prize giving dinner. Massive fun had by all and it was amazing to watch such talent.

Thursday: Entrepreneurship Challenge

The challenge was this: how can we create more entrepreneurs in New Zealand. Pitched the idea for a potential solution by Selwyn Pellet, the 24 minds of the case competition had three hours in which to prepare a comprehensive proposal to give a panel of New Zealand entrepreneurs. The students definitely delivered on this one as a fantastic demonstration of their fast paced analytic ability, realistic understanding and what must be epic co-ordination skills. What was produced was a feasible entrepreneurship apprenticeship model combining New Zealand's top young talent with New Zealand's top entrepreneurs on a one to two year program designed to create a platform that will create New Zealand's top business owners of the future. The best thing about this is that on Monday, Selwyn and two of the programs students will be presenting this same proposal to government minister Pete Hodgson. Following the presentation we had the pleasure of being exposed to some jewels of wisdom from the panel. Among them was Sam Morgan who told us some stories from his time at Deloitte before he went on to start Trademe

"If there's any more than 5 consultants on a project you can pretty much do nothing and get away with it" -Sam Morgan

In addition, we got to hear some criticism of common organisational culture approaches in New Zealand from the Chief Enthusiasm Officer of Rivera:

"If you've got a bad culture you just throw alcohol at it until it comes right" -Wayne Norrie

Fortunately he now spends a lot of his time teaching people how to do it right.

Friday: Case Competition Final

The final case for this year was on the New Zealand Fejoa Growers Association and written in part by our very own Liliana Erakovic. As with any non traditional business form this provided an interesting challenge to all the teams but unfortunately fairly homogenous strategic choices from most of them as well. As it often does, it came down to the teams or could clearly articulate their strategy as a viable solution, the manager of the firm alluded to financial viability as his key concern at the awards ceremony. The awards dinner was a great chance to meet the talent, judges, coaches and various parties who supported the program. After a massive dinner, huge dessert and plenty of drinks, the part we had all been waiting for came:

Final Day Results

1st University of Waikato 2nd Auckland University 3rd Auckland University of Technology And the overall placing for the inaugural National Business case League 1st Auckland University 2nd University of Waikato 3rd Canterbury University On the rumour side of things there was word going round amongst the participants that Deloitte may not be sponsoring the league next year. If that's the case I'm really disappointed, one of the reasons I signed with them was because I felt they took an active stance towards what I consider to be the best form of business education in New Zealand. Their presence at the competition has always been I thought to establish a talent pipeline, something which I was proud to be part of. For me these competitions are in large part about the talent you meet. Often in commerce degrees, people are just there to get a degree and aren't passionate about being successful or engaged with what they do. But the people you meet in these programs are all going somewhere, all want to be engaged and most of all, know how to have fun doing it.

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image credit: Justin Soong The best thing about the above photo is that everyone is having an awesome time and the winners of the competition aren't even in the shot. I hope to hav a shot of the auckland team up shortly. Update: Here are the champions

image credit: Chris Jenkins

OCI: Week 6

2008-08-28T11:25:50Z

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

2008-08-23T00:03:11Z

"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

2008-08-14T10:11:28Z

"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

2008-08-08T02:42:32Z

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

OCI: Week 2

2008-08-05T03:58:39Z

"They projected the population of New Zealand would reach 50 million by the year 2000" "They did that, they're just all sheep, wrong species!" - Darl Kolb to Deb Shephard

Last Thursdays class continued our conversation around purpose. We started by discussing among ourselves companies that we new well focusing on why the organisation exists, what its purpose was, any meta-purposes the organisation engaged in and any judgement values on these purposes stakeholders may have. This all sounds like a bit much for first thing in the morning, but I enjoyed talking about Ingram Micro in a "we're not that evil" kinda way. After purpose we did a lot of focus on context during this class, we did this by looking at the wider New Zealand context through a talk given by NZ historian James Belich and a case study that deb worked on for Macpac. Though the content was very interesting I felt that there was quite a lot of disconnect between what we were covering and change and innovation, our course themes. It was however of interest to bring in the concept of connectivity, particularly with our relationship with the U.K. The conversation jumped around a bit from New Zealand nationalism, competitive advantage and foreign revolutions:

"We [New Zealand] could take over London; one day every investment banker will just stand up and say: 'we're taking over'"

Our groups were dished out which was good didn't get anyone from the black list and have some people in the group I can count on. Collaboration tools have been set up for document management and everyone is happy to work over email which is good. From what i understand we're working on the development of the ability to measure an individuals connectivity, both social & technical. This looks great despite the idea of one person being connected without the need for other actors. Image Credit: Damien

MGMT 722: Organisational Change & Innovation

2008-07-29T03:54:38Z

Americans are kinda dumb and fairly formulaic - Darl Kolb

Last Thursday I had my first lecture of the semester, a 7 hour class in a monolith of a paper designed to educate us on change and innovation in organisations with a re-occuring theme of connectivity. As my only paper of the semester aside from my dissertation it looks to offer no relief on my workload, however the 30 points attributable to the course seems incentive enough. The paper is lectured by Darl Kolb and Deb Shepherd who with the different styles each bring there own kind of enthusiasm to class. Things are casual kept conversational which is nice great and pretty consistent with my postgrad experience thus far, the lecturers are keen to dish out words of wisdom not typical of traditional roles.

Everyone should wag at least one day per year - Deb Shepherd

The real highlight is however in the content and the way in which the course is assessed. Though there is a lot of team assessments which i normally despise, we are going attempting to be connectivity consultants on various projects which should be rewarding and challenging. In addition there's a focus on reflexivity on our own connectivity which present great opportunities to utilise more contemporary means of communication which I definitely enjoy. In addition to that great work we're also being asked to utilise "new media" in order to reflect on on our learning experiences and class themes. So consider this my first post of reflection, guess I better do some of that. After our first class (like everything else in postgrad) I now know that I don't know bugger all about innovation and change, academics love ambiguity it would seem. In social reflection however the class is great, one person showed up with only three hours sleep with alcohol on his breath, a quick trip to shadows at lunch had him going again and the meal of champions you see pictured can get you through any lecture. Teams for the projects should be allocated soon and I'll be content working with most people in the class. As this is meant to be a traditional use of new media I will endeavour to keep it fresh with a blogging style and ignore the fact that my lecturers may actually read it. This may mean some honesty I wouldn't normally impart in an academic environment, lets see how that works out.