Avondale College hosted their annual open day, and Avondale Business School took a different approach to presenting to potential students. This year we asked a potential 2019 graduate Yannick Coutet to conduct our interactive student session. BS10 was filled with interested students, in fact it was standing room only! Yannick discussed with the students the benefits of a Bachelor of Business degree here at the Avondale Business School, and gave them insight into what it means to be a student here at Avondale. He answered the many questions ranging from what is the accommodation like to the important questions of what activities are there after classes finish for the day.
The use of a student to present on behalf of the Business School allowed potential students access to a real live case study for studying at Avondale. They could clearly see he was passionate about Avondale and about his Marketing major. Yannick discussed his personal journey at Avondale, and the advantages of small class sizes and lecturers who care.
Thank you Yannick on behalf of the business school for so openly sharing your Avondale experience with the high school students that attended our open day.
More often than not, the tradition approach to senior leader assessment and development fall short. Such is the assertion of David Reimer, Adam Bryant and Harry Feuerstein in their excellent article ‘The Four X Factors of Exceptional Leaders’ (click here). The two main failure points raised in the article are an illusion of validity of the skills of exiting leaders, and a disproportionate focus on skills that should be prerequisites.
What does this mean? Simply that pace of change in business today means that the existing skills of leaders are generally out of date in a short period of time. When recruiting, organisations need to focus on the future, not the present in terms of what skills are needed. And secondly, too many organisations similarly emphasise the need for skills like having a strategic mindset, financial acumen and other typical skills. However, what organisations need are the ‘X factor’ skills that are going to take the organisation to the next level.
So what might it be that ‘X factor’ leaders do? The authors list four such skills, and while you really need to read the whole article to get the most about these, following is a quick summary for you:
The X factor – do you have it? The Avondale Business School can help you develop your leadership potential. To find out how, simply contact Dr Warrick long, Leadership postgraduate studies coordinator at [email protected].
Employees good ideas are wasted on managers who are too threatened to implement them, right? Not really, according to new research and reported in an article in HBR by authors Elad Sherf, Subra Tangirala and Vijay Venklataramani (read it here). While employees’ do regularly get frustrated that it seems like their suggestions for improvement are ignored by their managers. Too often this is assumed to be because the managers are threatened by these ideas, but this new research indicates otherwise.
In fact the research has found two predominate reasons associated with the organisations putting the managers in impossible positions. These two hurdles are that managers are all too frequently not empowered to act on these good ideas, if they do act, they feel the pressure to deliver short term results rather than taking a longer term view.
Not having the autonomy to make change is just as frustrating for managers, who are often seen as “go betweens” who have to use clumsy and cumbersome centralised decision structures that show short term immediate results rather than looking for longer term sustainability.
Quoting from the article, “it is unreasonable to ask managers to solicit and encourage ideas and input from employees when they are not empowered themselves and are asked to focus on short-term outcomes.” Consequently it is important for senior management to instead give managers the required autonomy and allow time for great ideas to find their way from the front-line to the top management. Do your structures allow for nimble and innovative ideas, or are you more focused on bureaucracy and controls?
Avondale Business School (ABS) can help you with your organisational design, just contact Dr Warrick Long [email protected] to find out how.
Refer Ken to the Auditors or not? That was the dilemma the final year ABS students debated in the annual Great Debate to finish their semester. Each year the Professional Ethics class have to analyse a case study full of ethical dilemmas and report to a manager on what options they have, and what to choose and why.
This semester the students were faced with a pharmaceutical company that was donating soon to expire drugs to a developing nation, and their agent was requiring higher and more frequent ‘tea money’ payments in cash to get them off the wharves and into the hospitals that needed them. The senior finance person in the company head office knew this was a bit “off” and was considering whether to report the activity to the company auditors or not. Given the circumstances, the differing cultures of the countries, and the personal issues facing Ken, this was not a clear decision and required students to often consider competing values.
For the final class of the semester, the students were divided into two teams and assigned either the yes or no case to prosecute. A small audience of staff and community members watched the students deliver their arguments and had the difficult job of deciding which team won the day.
Dr Warrick Long, the lecturer for the unit had the even tougher job of marking each students efforts, which because of the high quality of their presentations, was not an easy task. The students were incredibly professional and made their cases passionately, clearly and with plenty of evidence to support their positions. One of the community members was so impressed she has spread the word of the event to her colleagues who are now wanting to come to the next Great Debate.
This particular unit caps the students experience and challenges them through extensive use of real-life case studies and often very animated discussion, to consider the why, values, moral framework and consequences of decisions they may face, with an emphasis on the SDA Christian foundations that form the basis of ABS.
ABS congratulates the students on their efforts, knowing that they are well prepared for the workplace, and will add value to where ever they choose to start their careers.
Is good ethics good business? This is a challenge my ethics students ponder for a whole semester. This new book on Christian ethics makes a welcome contribution into this space by looking at ethical issues in the workplace with a Christian perspective. The book is Honourable in Business: Business Ethics from a Christian Perspective by Annetta Gibson and Daniel Augsburger (2019, WIPF & Stock)
Drawing from the Bible as the ethical foundation, the authors make a strong case that God is interested in how we do business, and that He provides numerous principles and tips on how we should do business as Christians. Numerous case studies are explored, which brings the discussion from theory to practice with some very useful and interesting conclusions and recommendations.
This book has been written for use as a textbook, or for practitioners who want to dig into the ethical issues they may face in the workplace and find some tips. It is really well organised, and very easy to read.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in ethics, or ethical business practices.
Meetings can be a great use of time! That is the key message of this excellent book on meetings by Steven Rogelberg entitled
The surprising science of meetings: how you can lead your team to peak performance (2019, Oxford University Press).
Drawing from his own extensive research into meetings, as well as that of others from around the world, Rogelberg provides a range of very simple, yet highly effective strategies that will ensure meetings are effective and productive. Meetings need not be a waste of time, or viewed as interruptions to work; then can in fact be very effective uses of time that optimizes the participant’s time and gives them a feeling of having contributed to the advancement of the organisation. Who wouldn’t want that feeling after a meeting?
This book has become the primary text for my training programs on effective meetings. It covers all meeting types, and its tips and strategies are incredible practical and simple to implement. It is really well organized, and very easy to read.
I highly recommend this book to anyone involved in meetings, but particularly meeting leaders and organizers.
Reviewed by Dr Warrick Long, Leadership and Management Postgraduate Program Coordinator, Avondale Business School
The employee you need to care about the most? You! That’s right, you need to endure that you are caring for yourself at least as much as everyone else on your team, otherwise your contribution will be short-lived and not as productive as it could be. However it is not easy to do, and too often we sacrifice our own well-being.
A recent article by Craig Hudson, Managing Director of Xero NZ appeared in a blog I read (find it here) which dealt with the importance of self-care. It is a short article, but very punchy and straight to the point. He highlights a few key strategies (that are basic common sense) that if implemented, will be very beneficial to each of us:
Hudson expands on each of these in the blog, and it is well worth taking the few short minutes to read it all, as it may well change your life.
The first joint meeting of the Avondale Women’s Network and the Alphacrucis College Executive Women’s Network was held Monday 20th May 2019. It was held at the two separate campuses but linked by video link to share in the expertise of the guest speaker.
Professor Cristina Rocha (PhD) is an anthropologist and the Director of the Religion and Society Research Cluster, Western Sydney University, Australia. She is the President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion. She co-edits the Journal of Global Buddhism and the Religion in the Americas series, Brill. She has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Utrecht, Kings College and Queen Mary College, CUNY Graduate Centre, and the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity.
Her publications have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Her research focuses on the intersections of globalisation, migration and religion with a special focus on Brazil and Australia. Her publications include: John of God: The Globalisation of Brazilian Faith Healing (Oxford University Press, 2017), The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions (with M. Vásquez, Brill, 2013), Buddhism in Australia (with M. Barker, Routledge, 2010), Zen in Brazil: The Quest for Cosmopolitan Modernity (Hawaii University Press, 2006).
The topic that Professor Rocha spoke about was the challenges women face in academia. She referred to the “glass cliff” a term coined by academics Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslem in 2005 in the British Journal of Management. The paper entitled “The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over‐Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions” discusses the phenomenon of women entering the board room only to find they are disproportionately represented in untenable leadership positions. A link to the full article is shown here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00433.x
The issue of mentoring was also raised, where women are encouraged to seek mentors especially those who are in their early stages of their careers, and those in leadership positions were encouraged to mentor others, be it informally or formally. The meeting was successfully run, where the two campuses were able to communicate with each other and share their experiences and hope for the future of women in higher education.
Today Avondale College ran an innovative staff workshop on Research Collaboration. Facilitated by Associate Professor Maria Northcote, it featured stories from academics such as Dr Malcom Anderson and Associate Professor Lisa Barnes from ABS.
Participants were encouraged to research outside their discipline, outside their faculty and especially outside of the institution, to gain benefits such as:
The ABS shared its current Smart Hub Project success with its reciprocal benefits for Professional Advantage, the students and staff at ABS.
Participants learned that an effective collaborative research project is characterised by:
It is hoped such sharing of knowledge will encourage more staff will participate in collaborative research projects. For more information about the Australian Code for the responsible conduct of research click here
When senior executives craft the culture of their organisations, enacting and implementing the ways their organisations ‘get things done’, it is rare that it directly impacts on those responsible for the development of such a culture. But at Netflix, the development of a ‘tough love’ culture did indeed impact on the chief talent officer who, while working for the content streaming giant for 14 years, developed its pioneering culture that has been considered by many, including Facebook's COO, to be “one of the most important documents to ever have come out of Silicon Valley”. Speculation still surrounds how Patty McCord was moved on from Netflix, but it is clear that she may have fulfilled her charter a little too well.
The development of Netflix’s culture has been documented in Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility, and has become an organisational culture icon. The 124 page document documents Netflix’s unconventional HR practices and is considered ‘must read’ material for anyone charged with helping to shape and create corporate culture.
You can read more about this in a great article by (read it here), which includes the link to the Netflix culture document.
By Dr Peter Williams, Avondale Business School
