LEADERSHIP IN A VUCA WORLD
The Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) and the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), in collaboration with the University of San Agustin (USA) in Iloilo, concluded a two-day Management Educators’ Workshop (MEW) with 56 participants from 20 universities and colleges in the West Visayas Region (Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan, Antique, Guimaras and Negros Occidental) attending. Many of the participants were university and college presidents, vice-presidents, school administrators, deans, and senior faculty.
The MEW is a long-standing project of the MAP with AIM. Started in 1992, the MEW, designed for multiple higher educational institution audiences, and its variant, the Seminars for Management Educators ( SME) for single educational institutions, have helped over 3000 senior college and university officials and management faculty ( both business and public management professors and teachers) rethink their management curricula and subject syllabi, the various contents of their subjects, and the methods they use in ensuring their students learn enough to “hit the ground running.”
The MEW/SME has since become a major mainstay project for MAP, which is able to mount as many as two MEWs and two SMEs every year.
“VUCA,” the topic for this latest MEW, stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, a catchy way to describe our current and emerging world. Wikipedia provides definitions for these four concepts as follows: • V= Volatility. The nature and
dynamics of change, and the nature and speed of change forces and change catalysts. • U= Uncertainty. The lack
of predictability, the prospects for surprise, and the sense of awareness and understanding of issues and events. • C= Complexity. The multiplex of forces, the confounding of issues, no cause-and-effect chain and confusion that surround an organization. • A= Ambiguity. The haziness
of reality, the potential for misreads, and the mixed meanings of conditions; cause- and- effect confusion.
A Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, “What VUCA really means for you” provided a useful matrix to situate the four conditions using answers to two questions laid out as continua.
The MAP-AIM and USA working group decided on this topic after some discussions. They thought the environment had indeed become all four for education institutions and the disciplines taught in these institutions.
The first day of the workshops was to provide grist for the mindmill.
Both the Commission on Higher Education ( CHED) representative, Mr. Jimmy Tolosa, ES II (who replaced Dr. Cesar H. Medina, CESO V), and the USA President, Fr. Frederick C, Commendador, OSA, expressed their hopes and expectations for what the workshops could do to help institutions of higher education in the region realign their bearings and improve both the standing of the region’s higher educational institutions (HEIs) and the competitiveness of their graduates.
To provide some anchors, four leading industry practitioners were asked to give their views on the expectations of organizations regarding the people they wanted to hire and run their organizations.
Helen Macasaet, Independent Consultant of the Supreme Court of the Philippines and former chairperson of the MAP ICT Committee, addressed the needs of the ICT industry.
Olive Limpe- Aw, President of Destileria Limtuaco and MAP member, addressed the requirements of the manufacturing sector.
Jess Carpio, President of P&A Grant Thornton Outsourcing, Inc. and Vice-Chair of the MAP Management Development Committee, spoke of the emerging events and the evolving requirements of the accounting and auditing professions.
Former MAP President Greg Navarro, Managing Partner of Deloitte Navarro Amper & Co., addressed the emerging requirements of good corporate governance.
AIM’s Professor Federico Macaranas, also a MAP member, gave the introductory lecture on VUCA, followed by a workshop that focused
The workshop is seen to help improve the standing of higher education in Western Visayas.
on the challenges confronting the HEIs in the region. He started the second day with a workshop that focused on answering the same questions raised the day prior but this time on a per school bases, an exercise that proved much more challenging and more fruitful for the participants.
The last afternoon of the MEW had AIM Professors Noel Cortez and Mario A. G. Lopez run a review lecture on developments in leadership theory and practice and a workshop on leadership requirements for the different schools in this VUCA world.
The USA group, based on informal feedback from the invited participants, wished to make the Iloilo MEW an annual affair, bolstered by one or two SMEs. The Negros Island-based schools also wish to have an MEW held on the island. Alternating Bacolod and Dumaguete venues were suggested.
And in the meantime, Jose Rizal University of Manila sent word it wishes to revive the collaboration with MAP- AIM for MEWs and SMEs.
It looks like 2017 will be a very busy year!