Blog - Surfing the Change Management U in Cambodia

Location: Blogs The Change Management Blog
Posted by: Holger Nauheimer	7/26/2007 9:50 AM
Greetings fellow change management enthusiasts!! Holger invited me to write a few posts for his blog and I’m happy to oblige. I’m currently writing this post from a basic classroom probably of a similar style to a school from the 1960s or 1970s with those old wooden seats and a blackboard at the front room and little else... in Prey Veng, a small province of Cambodia, about 100km east of Phnom Penh. I’m putting the final touches on the first session of the subject ‘Change Management’ that I start teaching tomorrow to the local fourth year human resource management students. I teach two classes, one in the evening and another which is an intensive all weekend for four weekends. The University I’m volunteering my time to is called the Maharishi Vedic University (‘MVU’) (www.aacf.ws). It was established by a group of Australians (I’m Australian) several years ago and now has three campuses in Cambodia. There is a main campus that caters to about 1,000 students and two branches that cater to slightly less. The students here are a combination of fee-paying (introduced a few years ago to helps to support the structure) and scholarship students (for which I’m told there is intense competition for places). The ages range quite significantly. At the main campus I’m told there are people as young as 16, in my class at the branch, the youngest is about 22 years old with most in the 27-35 year age group and two in the 40-50 year age group... although out of 33 students, sadly only 3 are women. How did I end up here? I left Australia about a month ago to live with my long term girlfriend in Singapore and decided that I’d like to do some volunteer work in the developing world, anything really, just something to be of service and to give back for what I’ve received in my life. I’d come across the MVU website a few years ago and found it again buried in my ‘favourites’ on internet explorer. I made a call to discuss possibilities with their local representative and they suggested I teach a month long block change management and strategic management to the students here. And that began the adventure! By way of background, In Australia I’ve worked as a researcher, focusing on change management, leadership and transformation in business. The ‘ability to find out things’ is a skill I have been blessed with... although it’s not the skill I really want to use in my future work. I do, however, have a very unique approach and background which has been of substantial benefit to the companies that I’ve worked for on a research basis, one of which is a world leader in developing transformational leadership and change programs. Despite having an honours degree in business, I primarily rely on my feeling capability rather than intellect in completing research projects which means they can take a good deal of time, however, I usually come up with a very unique presentation as to what’s happening at the leading edge. (I have to say, like I think I read in Holger’s excellent survey, I’m surprised at how slowly change management itself sometimes seems to change.) I also have training in counseling and coaching and have done a good deal of my own personal development and have been blessed with very conscious mentors. So, despite being a Taurus, with a birth sign which is ‘fixed earth’... the least change worthy sign of the zodiac, change and transformation has been my life interest and passion and it’s what I want to pursue overseas. My girlfriend and I are hoping we can find work in Europe, although we’ll have to see what evolves. (Let me say here, I’m very open to offers! It is my ultimate dream to be able to work and live in Europe.) I’m really looking forward to teaching in Cambodia. My preparation for the course has involved a lot reading to see what’s going on in change and transformation and making notes to develop a course design from that. My challenge here is twofold, I don’t know where the students are really ‘at’ and secondly I really don’t like to follow convention! That means I’m not really interested in teaching in a conventional lecture style (I don’t think it assists in really learning the material) and I think there’s probably a good reason that most change efforts fail or don’t achieve their stated desires. I think that has a lot do with the awareness and consciousness of the people doing the interventions and leading the change and to a lesser extent the approaches they use. What I find with the organizational research that I do is that there is a lot of interesting work at the margin, that’s actually quite powerful, although for some reason usually not well adopted. I guess things at the leading edge usually are that way. Take for instance, Otto's Theory U. He's been working on that for several years and I'd suspect there are people here and there that have actually been using similar approaches for a decent period of time. Finding those gems though does make research and course design more challenging... although I guess in a sense more fun and also more rewarding. Upon first posing the question to myself... ‘What would the ultimate course in change be?’... I was excited at the thought and madly started jotting down all these great ideas like integral, spiral dynamics, consciousness, non-linear systems, emergence, extensive toolkits, practices, self awareness, leadership, relationships, experiential learning and.... more... and then realised, and it did take some time I’m a little embarrassed to say, that that type of content would mostly go over their head and in that sense not be suitable to the student’s context and therefore would not be serving them. So what have I ended up with?... a lot of notes and a process that’s going to be very emergent and dynamic for me and probably also for them! I’ve not taught before, so I’ve been through a wonderful process of beginning to look at and explore ideas such as interactive teaching, emergent learning, facilitation, experience design and learning styles. I have led small service teams before and I know that expectations are set extremely quickly... and that if the space is opened, held and ‘surfed’ skillfully (I'm still learnign that part!)... that some amazing things can happen. I kind of think of it as there’s what I think I want for the group (as leader or facilitator), what the people in the group think they want and then, the most powerful, ‘what’s wanted’ for that particular group... and in the right space, the third one comes through in quite unexpected ways, yet it can be truly magical... hence the need to ‘surf’ and give up control, kind of like Otto’s U, just not always so neatly packaged! In Australia I was used to using multiple business intelligence databases, very extensive business libraries and advanced searching on the internet to complete my research assignments... it’s just a given and it struck me at one point that the students would have access to pretty much none of that. I think I’d be totally lost without my tools and knowledge and that either I’d be forced to become much more resourceful or change would be much slower and much less conscious. Unfortunately, it would likely be the second process that would dominate. What concerns me most in the developing world having traveled extensively in Asia is firstly the rapid destruction of the environment and local culture and that it’s becoming more and more homogeneous... Asians pretty much directly copy the West, and usually some of the worst aspects. You can go to most of the major cities here, whether it’s in Thailand, Malaysia or Myanmar and find the same chain stores as in the west whether they’re selling Nokia phones, 7-11 or iPods. The girls don’t want to wear what is quite a beautiful national dress... they want Levi jeans, the latest Roxy t-shirt and designer sunglasses. In the last year I’ve seen ‘home boys’ in Myanmar and this week, rappers in Cambodia... dressed in the traditional – American – clothing. And that’s not to mention the rapid adoption of the ‘franchise dream’ popularised by Michael Gerber where as the owner of the business you retire rich to do what you want to do with your life by having an army of people underneath you in the same uniforms doing the same thing, every day, day-in, day-out, in the same way... asking ‘would you like fries with that’... the slow destruction of soul and culture in pursuit of the American dream, rather than their own dream. Singapore has mastered that art and most stores in Singapore are franchised or ‘wanna-be’ franchises. I recently asked a moto driver in Cambodia to take me somewhere I could get a quick and tasty meal before visiting the Angkor temples. I had visions of being driven down back streets to a small market stall with a wooden bench out front and an old woman out the back cooking up the most delicious bowl of noodles full of fragrant herbs and spices and with a herd of locals hungrily scoffing theirs down before going back to their daily routine. The driver took me to a Circle-K food station in an internationally franchised petrol station serving day old hot dogs and pies in the warmer in a store design to be exactly like I’d find a petrol station anywhere in the world! The course content I was given as a starting point that had been taught here previously is very western. It’s largely based on Kotter’s model, some of the internal and external forces for change, some basics around reactions to change and some of the tools and techniques. To be honest, in many respects I was extremely disappointed to see what was being taught in Western universities with respect to change management and probably, by extension the other subject they’re teaching in management degrees. The content doesn’t seem all that holistic and the methods of instruction are mostly traditional and the content is relatively 'generic'. I feel sad that our upcoming leaders are being taught in this way, which is much the same was I was taught 15 years ago. I don’t think the content and methods being taught are that all that relevant to the upcoming generations and the emerging business environment. I think they deserve better. Unfortunately, there’s probably not a lot of people currently that are sufficiently skilled to be able facilitate a more innovative process. I think those people in the change management industry can play a part in facilitating that. What’s really engaging me though is the process of the heart... the more I move into what I want to teach, the more I know that I want to give my best and to truly be of service, in whatever form that may take. A few organisations have donated some great resources for me to bring here and use in my teaching and I will discuss them later as I’ve picked some really good tools, some that may be of use to you in what you do. The generosity of these people and organisations has really touched me and I know there are lots of people out there that are looking to make a difference in the world in whatever way they can. I won’t make this post much longer than it already is. I’m fascinated by what might western concepts might work here and what might not. I’m equally fascinated by the learning and teaching process... so if any of the readers have any ideas for tools, resources, even processes (I want to make the learning as experiential as much as possible) for my change management or strategic management teaching I’d love to hear from you. I’m also happy to hear your experiences if you’ve worked and taught in different cultures, or just questions and comments in particular. You may want to comment on what you think might be the ‘ultimate course in change’. I will post some photos later as the lighting is really bad for taking photos today. [Thanks again to Holger for letting me post here. I came across his site while looking for tools and a framework that I could use for the course and I really like the self, group and system framework that he uses.] So, thanks for reading... all the best for your journey, whatever that may be and wherever that may take you... Best wishes David Ragg

Permalink \| Trackback

Comments (0)