OLS 399 Presentation 2 parts one, two, and three

Presentation Notes:

Transition notes

“It’s not the Change it is the Transition”

Agenda:

Transitions have a beginning, middle, and an end

· Losses and letting go

· Neutral zone

· Closure/ new beginning

Focusing on the behavior and keeping focus on what the people are going through allows leadership to feel and see what is really going on during transition periods and allows leaders to manage that transition effectively.

Key Points:

First: Identify the losses and learn to let go – power, status, access, office windows

From loss fear or resentment may arise, if loss is not compensated or if the loss is not changed to be viewed as an opportunity gain, then the individuals that are dealing with that loss will go through stages of grief that may hinder the organizations ability to manage the transition.

It is paramount that leaders show set an example of it being ok to “let Go” of what they have lost, if as a leader you can’t let go yourself it will be very difficult to expect your followers to do so as well.

Education, information, and reinforcement of the company vision is important.

Second: neutral zone – the middle is the neutral zone – work to be done

When the hype has subsided there is work to be done. Leaders must be seen to be working and must become the change they wish to see. Many uncertainties will be tested for leadership and the followers.

Upper management must expect and prepare for missed deadlines or quotas and must be actively involved in organizations learning process.

Those who have still not let go of the “old ways” must be identified, understood, and encouraged not singled out or become scapegoats.

· Intra-group relationships must be solidified or created if there has been a disassemblement of the old relationships.

· Provide boundaries to give strength in a time of uncertainty

· Leaders should draw on the creativity and innovation that is inherent within their organization, allowing flexibility for others to solve newly arisen problems

Third: closure/ new beginning –transitions do not stop at the end. Transitions are not a linear static process, it is dynamic and human. People have to adjust personally and uniquely to the organizational transition.

Closure does need to occur again and leaders must be aware of their followers and know if they are still dealing with any of the personal issues within the transition.

The 4 P’s

· Purpose

· Picture

· Plan

· Part

Is the purpose to the transition understood by all?

Is there a clear picture of where the organization is going and of its goals?

Is there a plan in place for people to look to for guidance during times of uncertainty?

Does everyone feel like they are part of the organization?

Agenda:

Transitions have a beginning, middle, and an end

· Losses and letting go

· Neutral zone

o Intra-group relationships

o Provide boundaries

o draw on the creativity and innovation

· Closure/ new beginning

o Purpose

o Picture

o Plan

o Part

Closing:

Finally when all this is made aware in the minds of an organization’s leaders and passed through the organization as it deals with the transition, leaders should not forget to celebrate what they and the people of their organization has gone through.

Personal Application:

The key to managing my own personal transitions that I have recently gone through are as follows:

· Organization

· Creativity

· Education

While the Purdue OLS curriculum that I have had experience with does a very good job at providing the education and creative opportunities, I feel that the Managing Transitions class missed out on an opportunity to provide a technical lesson that would improve the organization skills that we as future leaders will be expected to have.

· Organizational software

o We used 3 books

o Groove, Outlook, Visio, PDFs

o Google apps, workspaces, portals

It is my belief that OLS students should be required to learn more than how to create PowerPoint presentations and create single user papers using Word.

The creation of a class change to using a new software application could have allowed us classmates to undergo many of the transition phases and to apply what we learned in class to the transition issues of learning the new software. We would have also learned a new skill in application not just theory that we will be expected to know upon graduation.

OLS 399 Presentation 1 parts one and two

You tube videos will appear here

Presentation Notes:

Global Leadership

What does it mean to be a leader?

· An influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes and outcomes that reflect their shared purposed.

But what does that really mean? First some back ground.

Agenda:

· History – Past – Local, small nonmoving populations

· Present Global, large moving populations

· A breakdown of the Definition

First: 2 paradigms

· top down, stability, hero

· horizontal, crisis management, humble man

Management vs. Leadership conflict of today

First paradigm seems to imply that managers were needed to ensure that short term goals are met in an organized and predictable manner. People where seen as commodities and units to be managed. Management is understood as inflexible. This is the Old way.

Second paradigm seems to imply that there is a measure of unpredictability and that leading people (with all their human emotions) toward a long term vision and empowering them to solve short term goals is more appropriate for today’s economy. Leadership is understood to be flexible. This is the Modern Way.

· One hundred years ago the majority of people in western society just never left their county of residence, not for work and not for play. Today most statistics would tell you that the majority of Americans drive 30 -60 minutes to work easily taking them into the next county or across several. Today we can pick up a phone, boot up our computers, and travel in a digital environment across the world. This is in fact a common thing for people to conceive of, hear about, and even dream of as well as do, directly or indirectly. The best example of people’s indirect relationship to world travel is one’s trip to Wal-Mart.

Today there is an increased potential for a diversity of situations

· occur in marketplace economics

· at work

· our own communities

First paradigm – western ethnocentric and self centered

Second paradigm – recognizes cultural influences and embraces them

This requires the recognition of the Roles that are required to complete a job or task and effective leadership needs to be able fill these roles within a cultural context that is no longer guaranteed to be western.

Example:

· There are emerging leaders in “self built” housing on the outskirts of Nairobi in East Africa, Mexico City, and Sao Paulo in Brazil. In Sao Paulo and the urban area surrounding boast a population that exceeds 16 million people. The streets in these make shift neighborhoods are complete with non-government regulated markets, black market power distribution, and self organized sanitation policies and structures.

With half of the world’s population earning a dollar a day or less it is probable that the future leaders of the world will come from a more diverse background than currently existing today. An understanding of this diversity will play a great part in the “influence relationship among leaders and followers” that is within our definition of a leader.

Conflict Dynamic:

New paradigm conflict is natural and healthy, this was not always so.

Often leaders have a shared purpose but culturally different ways to achieve this purpose or reasons for having this shared purpose. In order to achieve this shared purpose compromises and understanding must occur. Leadership as opposed to management is open to these compromises and understandings.

Example:

· Everyone would like for world poverty to be alleviated. In India the Grameen Bank http://www.grameen-info.org/ has brought micro financing to the impoverished and globally ostracized. If they did not have an understanding of the socioeconomic conditions and gender roles of women in Indiana society the success would not have been possible for non-profit Grameen Bank and for the many women in rural India who are now contributing to the uplifting of many of India’s poorest people.

Agenda:

· History – Past – Local, small nonmoving populations

· Present Global, large moving populations

· A breakdown of the Definition

Conclusion:

Hopefully the definition of what it means to be a leader is clearer.

First it implies that there are human relationships involved between leaders and followers that must be understood personally and culturally.

Second it implies that for shared purposes to be achieved and thus change to be made the person(s) who understand these relationships and helps to achieve these shared purposes is using the skills of leadership.

A leader is one who effects change for the benefit of more than just him or herself, by understanding those that he or she is affecting.

Fall DLC African Naturalists, Nairobi, Cameroon

I tried to learn from them instead of having them learn from me.

If I could have changed anything in the course it would be to work into the curriculum a project with students from another country.

· There is diversity in the US, but not enough to create real conflict

· It would have also added technical skills that are lacking within the OLS curriculum