Change Management and Change Agents

There are two types of turnaround/change leadership. First is the one in which you are a chief executive and you simply have to bring about the change down the hierarchy. The second type of turnaround/change management is the one in which you are not the chief executive and you need to bring the change/turnaround down the hierarchy as well as up the hierarchy. I have been involved in both the capacities. In the second type of turnaround/change management it takes at least two to three years to bring about a cultural change. Change is not only about hiring or firing,  which has its own side effects and repercussions, if not handled delicately. The real change is brought about your carefully chosen change agents and enabling them to post "small wins"  (low hanging fruits) for which all credit is given to them. You may lose unintended more valuable change agents by crude hirings and firings. The more difficult change is overhauling  processes and business process re-engineering. This requires attention to detail and ability to drill down and peep into the future realization of processes. Cultural change requires developing and empowering "change agents". The change is  communicated by your personal example and more potently through the example and communications of the change agents......

Visit to Baba KhorwaRi Shrine Ziarat

I had experience of meeting someone who predicted the rain fall time precisely. It was 1983 in ziarat, our NED batch mates of 1980-85 were on the study trip of Pakistan. We were around 200 students in three compartments that was attached to different trains and detached at various stations in the city for a few days while we visit places. We reached in July to Quetta and the compartments were detached at the Quetta station. After visiting a few places we went to Ziarat in three buses. We reached there around 12-1pm. As the students were waiting for lunch we started exploring the area. About 5 of us got more excited when we asked about places to visit and someone told us about a track leading to the shrine of Baba Kharwariz. We ventured towards Baba Kharwari's Mazar via mountaneous trek through a forest. We were told that it was a 20 minutes distance rural distance. We went along for 30-40 minutes. Each local wayfarer on the way, we asked how far is the shirne and he would tell us it was just a few minutes ahead. Those few minutes on and on became half an hour, and then another half an hour. It was around 245pm when we asked yet another local who was passing by, he looked at the sky which was then clear and then he looked at his watch. He then advised us to return. He warned us that there would be thunderstorm and rain at 3pm. The path would be filled with flash floods and then it would be difficult for us to return. We ignored him because it was sunny and clear and there were no signs of any clouds. But in around 5 minutes we saw some ominously threatening clouds moving towards us. Another 5 minutes and we could hear their grumbling. We got scared by the thunder and the impending darkness and decided to return. Initially we were just walking, but then it became dark, the clouds came so near, and the lightening and thunder became severe. Lo and behold as we neared 3pm it became dark and we started running. At 3pm there started vicious rain. The trek path soon resembled a stream and then a torrent. We started running as fast as we could. We were afraid of the intensity of the flash floods and were fearful that we would swept by the torrents. Soon we were fully drenched and running for our lives. By the time we reached the road, we were thoroughly drained, drenched, and fighting for breath...

Rest is another story

Taking on Challenging Responsibilities vs Trying to be a Superwoman

What is the problem with the following advice:
"Don't get too proud, she said, of your capabilities at handling anything — or soon people will expect you to handle everything. The world is always eager to find someone who can handle everything (because the world is lazy, and doesn't want to do the work) and soon you will be responsible for more than you can manage. You will be doing more than what is fair, or even sensible — and you will be doing thousands of things that you were never designed to do.

Don't get seduced by the idea that you are some kind of Superwoman — as much as the world wants to put that honorific upon you. (Telling women that they are superheroes is a trick the world has always played, for making women do all the work.)

Trying to be a super woman

Learning and Life is My Autobiography

Writing poetry, blogs, essay, or reflections is greatly cathartic. Things that greatly troubled me, once I got them out of my system through my writing, they stopped bothering me. Once expressed, they stop festering. This is how I forgot many of my longings. My long blog posts are my learning and my efforts in my life. The blog had been a great cathartic experience for me. I write blogs not as much to impress others but more so to organize my thoughts. My thoughts typically are running in circles. They go from one realm to another. And then keep coming back. Once I write them, they become organized and structured. During writing, I also identify the links that I have not explored earlier. I also find links that I knew but had not thought about so clearly and crisply. It is a wonderful experience.

As I connect this with Donald Murray's 1991 essay "All Writing is Autobiography" I feel that this true.

http://www.umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/AllWritingisAutobiography.pdf

[to be completed]

Using Rubrics to Manage Anxiety Created by LMS Based Online Assignments

Open ended assignments such as case studies, project reports, real life problems that are open book and are take-home types often lead to a mismatch of expectations of the students with that of the faculty members. This mismatch can make students work on Final Assignments for even 10-15 hours, not knowing whether they have met the expectations or not. This often creates anxiety. The tool for clearly defining your expectations is known as a "Rubric":

"Rubrics are both assessment tools for faculty and learning tools for students that can ease anxiety about the grading process for both parties. Rubrics lay out specific criteria and performance expectations for an assignment.
They help students and instructors stay focused on those expectations and to be more
confident in their work as a result." Creating and Using Rubrics )

Assumptions of Conventional Exam vs Assumptions of LMS Based Online Exam

What are the underlying assumptions and presuppositions of conventional examinations and how do they differ from their counterpart assumptions and presuppositions of the LMS based Online Exams especially those conducted in asynchronous mode. The differences are explained below:

Traditions of Eid: Reflections of Past Eids and Future

This is a time to reflect on our traditions and culture of Eid. I am wondering how many of Pakistanis are still experiencing these. There are some disturbing posts on facebook and through some of my interactions that tell me that it is not only time to reflect but also to rekindle them through a sustained effort. Here I reflect on my life and learning over the last 55 years with many of these traditions

Traditions of Ramadan: Reflections of Past Ramadans for Rekindling

This is a time to reflect on our traditions and culture of Ramazan. I am wondering how many of Pakistanis are still experiencing these. There are some disturbing posts on FB and also through some of my interactions with others that inform me that it is not only time to reflect but also to rekindle these traditions through a conscious sustained effort. We can no longer take for granted some of these traditions wherever they are continuing. Here I reflect on my life and learning over the last 55 years with many of these traditions

A Tribute to Cricket for Spearheading my English Language Acquisition - Sports and Language Learning

I often see parents worrying about language skills of their children. A closer look at the hobbies of such children will indicate that they are not passionate about any hobbies especially sports. Here I would detail the role of cricket in spearheading my English language acquisition.  As my interest grew, with cricket and started following the cricket there were some milestones.

The book that I read in 1980s

[Work in Process]
Coming soon

Sir Najmul Hasan of IBA and How to Determine the Extent of Your Success in Life

Yesterday, during my PhD class with students I was trying to explain the complexity of real world and how models (and theories) help us in making sense of this complexity by focusing on a few concepts and their relationships. The discussion moved towards perception and reality and from there to this phenomenal lesson by Najmul Hasan Sb about how to determine the extent of our success in life. Sir Najmul Hasan did his MBA from 1955-57 as part of the first batch of IBA, Karachi offering the very first MBA program outside North America in collaboration with USAID and University of Pennsylvania. He served as a faculty member of IBA from 1969 till 2006.

Sir Najmul Hasan of IBA. Photo taken for NIC card in 1972-72 

Managing English Teaching Outcomes in Universities: An Experiential Learning Case Study of ESL/EFL

My recollections as Vice President and Dean about ensuring the learning outcomes of English courses at PAF KIET from 2002-2012. 

Around ten to twelve years ago in our academic discussions with the President of the institute where I was working at that time, we would often worry about raising the English skills of our students. President of the Institute was Air Commodore (R) Khalid Husain who hailed from the Engineering Branch of PAF and who had been in senior positions in training and development wing of PAF. One day he mentioned that the new inductees in PAF are mostly from rural areas who have never been to English medium schools, and have had no or little exposure of English speaking environment. However, within a few months of their joining the PAF training academy, they are speaking fluently in English. How can we ensure that students of universities also start talking and writing in English within a few months? We agreed that  there was merit in this expectation, and we need to try to design systems that can ensure a similar level of outcome.

6 Trends that will Determine your Career Success in the 21st Century

There are six major trends that are going to determine the careers of graduates in the 21st century:

1. Shortening of the life cycle of organizations and businesses.
2. From life-long full-time employment to short term, contractual, project-based engagements
3. From teaching to learning
4. From knowledge acquisition to enterprising creativity and innovation
5. From management to leadership. From managed employees to self-driven autonomous decision makers.
6. From choosing a career vision to choosing your purpose

[Based on my Orientation Speech for new students at IoBM on September 5, 2015.]

Nine (9) Dimensions of Ethical Leadership

[1]

There are three competencies of a leader which are necessary to inspire the followers on the path towards the destination. These competencies serve as a beacon of hope and encouragement for the followers to overcome the hardships likely to be encountered on the way. These are (i) the loftiness of vision (nigah-buland), (ii) heart-touching communication (sukhan dil-nawaz) and (iii) passionate soul (jan pur-soz) with empathy. 

Mismatch of Curriculum with Realities at Stanford, MIT and other Ivory Towers

From ivory towers to realities 

By Dr Asad Zaman

Published: June 28, 2015

Curriculum Mismatch with Real Life

As MIT freshmen are wont to do, we were up way past midnight discussing big absorbing questions like the meaning of life. We realised that none of us had a clue and decided to ask our professors. A natural candidate was our history professor, who seemed approachable and had engaged us in interesting discussions in class. He gave us an answer which seemed satisfying at the time. He said that we had to learn the basics we were being taught, before we could tackle the big questions. It was many decades later when I realised that we had been swindled. In a classic bait-and-switch manoeuvre, we were tempted with the possibility of learning wisdom and sold an entirely different package.

From Disposable Cups to Throwaway Relationships: Costs of Disposable Culture

Transforming a Disposable Culture

By Dr. Irfan Hyder

Disposable Relationships

The emerging lifestyle of today requires that we restrict ourselves to a small cocoon. We are sold that we should gain expertise in only one particular subject. Our occupations are specialised, limiting our view to a narrowly focused area, and our daily chores revolve around our jobs, which we dutifully report to every day of our lives until the time to leave this world comes. The chimera of “convenience” has made “consumerism” the purpose of our lives, where our only objective is to buy, consume and throw away. It is not important to know how something is produced, nor what feelings, culture and tradition is associated with it. The importance of things is devalued, as we focus only on the short-term utility and not the extensive process of its development and nurturing. We forget that in life, the value of a goal is not just in its final output, but also in the process – the effort, toil and struggle for that goal.

Time Management of Social/Marriage Events in Karachi: A Case Study of How to Create Social and Youth Impact

It was first week of May of 2014 and representatives of Youth Impact came to see me at CBM. I was impressed to meet the team. They talked about the impact that they wanted to create on the youth and through them. They told me about their experiential learning program in which they take the youth for outdoor activities such as hiking, and other tours during which they impart training on leadership, problem solving, thinking skills, time management and other skills using the learning by doing approach. I was already excited about the concept of learning by doing, and had been implementing project based learning, problem based learning and "Experiential Learning" through various interventions described elsewhere in this blog. This had convinced me that our education methodology and our curriculum is totally disconnected from reality and real life problems. This disconnect has created a situation where the only thing on the mind of our graduates is their desire to leave the country (Why ). 

Revamping Business Curriculum in Collaboration with Industry for Impact

The model followed in Pakistan in the design of curricula is basically based on rearrangements of popular course names that correspond to some established (typically foreign) text books. A typical university in Pakistan designs a program by copying and pasting course names from some of the foreign universities and prominent local universities, making a semester-wise list of courses and throwing a few electives for each specialization. In the end the course descriptions end up being summaries of table of contents of selected text books. The final program mainly represents a rehash of the personal experiences of the academics of that university. Some of the universities may also invite a couple of people from industry or other universities to tweak this program in a forum pompously named as Board of Studies, which mainly involves playing with the names of the courses and their rearrangement. When HEC (or PEC) invites a curriculum meeting, it ends up rounding up the usual suspects (using the famous quote from Casablanca) i.e. university professors linked to the discipline. Industry executives and societal representatives are seldom invited/present in such deliberations. Major issues in such meetings revolve around courses, credit hours and the prerequisites. There is neither time nor the energy to go down to the contents of any of the courses.

How to Create Impact on Society: A Case Study of Experiential Learning Intervention in a Course on Social Advocacy

It was around 2007-08, I was chatting with some top decision making executives of five private universities/institutes in Pakistan. As is customary in Pakistan, the discussion invariably turned towards lamenting the sorry state of affairs in Pakistan, how Pakistan is going down the drain and how its situation is increasingly becoming deplorable. After a while, I could take it no longer and was forced to make an outburst that went something like the following:

Of all the people in Pakistan, we who are sitting around this table have no right to blame others for the sorry and dismal state that we find ourselves in! We, gentlemen, are in command of at least 20,000 students in the three major cities of Pakistan and these students often remain with us for at least two to four years. The students of our institutions hail from resourceful families. Our universities have enough resources. We can influence the type of courses that we offer, the content of these course and even the teachers who are conducting these courses. We can even fire or change the teachers. Collectively we are churning out over 4,000 graduates every year who have gone through the process designed and approved by us. Why can't we produce even 400 change agents who can transform the business and societal environment of Pakistan and who can turn the tide of our social deterioration?