Advanced Corporate Management: New Zealand Railways Research Assignment

The purpose of this paper was to examine the New Zealand railway governance structures and to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the new approach to rail system management. The paper begins by reviewing the literature on regulation, ownership, structure and governance of railway systems. The research showed that while changes to these aspects of railways governance have lead to short term efficiency gains, few of the approaches that have been used have lead to long term, sustainable rail industries without active management. The study moved on to discuss the market data, ownership and regulation in the New Zealand context and found that the rail system has had a tough time competing in a deregulated transport industry. Based on the financial data, market valuation and poor state of the railways assets; the government’s argument that it had to buy rail or let it die seems justifiable. The study moved on to analyse the new structures, strategies and legislation and found that there are significant concerns regarding the centralisation of planning and control. Specifically, issues include agency problems, information asymmetries, monitoring costs and the difficult task of measuring against the large number of social objectives that the rail system must now deliver on. The paper concluded that a vertically integrated, government owned rail system is probably the best outcome that twenty years of New Zealand style privatisation could have lead to. However, the pitfalls of centralised planning, legislative lag and co-ordination between public and private in a logistics chain need thoughtful management.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9bf7w7_330cqvc83c5

Systems Thinking: Analysis of Gen-i and ACC Change Management System using Soft Systems Methodology

This is assignment #2 for the systems thinking paper. It continues the analysis of the Gen-i change management system for the Accident Compensation Corporation account. The totosl used in this assignment are from soft systems methodology, specifically rish pictures and congnitive maps.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9bf7w7_311f499jffc

This presentation shows the diagrams from the document.

Negotiations: Exam, Dabhol Power Company case

This is my submission for the negotiation paper exam. The exam uses the Dabhol Power Company case study and covers issues of uncertainty, culture, poltical interferance and the use of third parties in negotiation.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9bf7w7_306w2p5c32v

Leading Change: Optimal Usability Case Study Presentation

This is the presentation given by my study group to Sam Ng or Optimal Usability. This accompanies the report that is also found on this blog.

Leading Change: Optimal Usability Case Study

The purpose of this report was to explore the question of what the services company Optimal Usability can do with their software product Optimal Sort. The report explored some strategic options, and arrived at the idea of building a product company structure that would generate ongoing cash flows from the product. The functions of a product company were discussed and it was found that many of these functions can be outsourced. The report moved on to explore the potential delivery mechanisms for software, and highlighted the potential for the software as a service business model. The benefit of this model is the potential to scale. However, sales and marketing costs will initially exceed subscription revenue. The market potential of the product is also discussed with key markets being the usability industry, web design organisations, marketing organisations and web design schools.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9bf7w7_220g5rjnwc4

Creative Leadership: Experiment in Autocracy

This is a presentation I did as part of my wildcard project. The idea was to use this as a backdrop to a experiment in creating autocracy as described in the film Die Welle (2008).

Creative Leadership: Leadership Challenge Presentation

Creative Leadership: Experiment in Autocracy

At the Wellington film festival I saw an intriguing drama called Die

Welle (2008). This film tells the story of a group of high school
students in 1990’s Germany who go to a history lesson on
Autocracy. The teacher is a punk rock kind of guy who is a bit
miffed that he didn’t get to teach the Anarchy history class.
When he starts to discuss autocracy with the students they tell him
that they already know what autocracy is, we know it’s bad and
it couldn’t possibly happen again i.e. we are bored of hearing
about it. The next day the students arrive to find the classroom
rearranged into orderly rows of desks, desks are assigned to each
student and new rules have been implemented in the classroom. No
talking without permission, sit at attention because this allows you
to breath deeply and feel better, stand up when answering a question
and ask it in as few a words as possible…and so begins a
journey that will answer the question “do you really think it
can’t happen again?”

For my wildcard experiment I thought I would try to recreate some of
the aspects of this experiment in class through the use of common
symbols, group exercise and ritualistic chanting of slogans. I want
to do this because I want to demonstrate how easy it is to get sucked
into these kinds of movements and also to discuss with the class how
many movements use these techniques. Outward Bound is one such
organisation. Firstly, they use the technique of forming specific
groups and then make the groups self disciplining. This is done by
telling the group that each member must check on the other members to
make sure that the group as a whole make it to each exercise and that
no one is left behind. The implication of this is that if any
individual fails the group fails which is a clever way of making a
group self disciplining. Groups are given specific names and are
encouraged to form group identities that are backed up with shared
stories. One exercise involves making a theatre production that
demonstrates the group’s values in the form of a mythological
story. As you can see these are common features of many movements.
As a participant in the Outward Bound experience I lapped this up and
even agreed to keep secret exactly what goes on in the camp. I’m
not saying that Outward Bound are trying to create an army of
fascists out in the bush and then sending them back to infiltrate the
business world, but what I am saying is that if a movement has a
cause that is less noble that what Outward Bound are doing then the
techniques of building loyalty to a movement are much the same.

Why am I doing this as my wild card? Because I want to raise the
awareness in the class of exactly how easy this is to do, what the
look out for and to always be sceptical. I am a typical generation X
seventies baby, over educated, under utilised, paranoid and sceptical
of everything. For me to take a step back and analyse what leaders
are doing, how they are doing it and what their message means is a
natural state. What I hope to achieve through doing this exercise in
class is get people thinking about the movement to which they belong
and asking questions about what they do, how they do it and what the
implications of their message are. I would hate for anyone to
suddenly drop out of their church social club or anything as a result
of this heightened awareness but I think it’s important for
people to be able to recognise the signs.

A lot of people have been willingly sucked into all sorts of
movements over the history of humanity, some good and some not so
good. To me the issue seems to be that humans are instinctively
programmed to do this and that’s something that some leaders
seem to be able to recognise and manipulate. Way back at the
beginning of this journey in discussion paper one I put forward the
proposition that leadership has instinctive elements to it. I think
that this kind of group mentality is part of that idea and it’s
worthy of further study. Nature itself seems to encourage humans and
lots of other animals to join groups, to follow the leader of the
group, to make the group strong by rejecting outsiders and to defend
the group. Part of this is about natural selection, propagation of
the species and basic survival. My belief is that this is a powerful
force that we as humans are powerless to resist without a deep
understanding of ourselves and our values. I would like to think
that only the unsophisticated can be manipulated by these instinctive
tendencies but the fact of the matter is that some very intelligent
people have willingly joined some pretty horrifying movements in the
past.

I will consider this experiment a success if I have taught just one
person to take a look at what’s going on around them and
thought about the question “is this what I really believe?”

Creative Leadership: Leadership Challenge

Overview

For my
challenge I decided to concentrate on the idea of leader as teacher.
The reason for this is because it’s the face of leadership that
appeals to me the most and I enjoy working within. I would like to
think of myself as a visionary, creative leader but what I find is
that I’m not so good at having ideas. What I am good at is
imagining the possibilities of an idea, what it could leverage off
and where it could go. I figured that the easiest way to reach out
to people who have had the idea is to be a teacher who helps them to
make the idea all that it could be. The approach to this took many
paths, the main on being to put myself out there as an advisor for
start up companies with ideas. I approached the organisers of the
Cable Car Challenge, a Wellington business plan competition, and
advertised my services on their web site. After what seems like an
eternity I finally had a reply! We had a meeting and we chatted to
this about his idea and I gave what I thought was some pretty useful
advice and some ideas to take the project forward. I got an email
from him later saying that he had taken the advice and the project
was on the heat. I found leadership and I think he did to. Job
done!

Searching for a path to leadership

I hate
leadership and I try to avoid it at all costs. I don’t mind
sticking my head out in public and having a rant and rave on my
soapbox but the thought of actually creating a movement and having
followers feels like a responsibility that I can’t abide.

So what
the hell am I doing putting myself out to a world of strangers as an
expert on business matters? Am I insane? During some points of the
challenge I was beginning to think so. So, without any further ado I
will tell the story of how it all happened.

At lecture
one I was sitting there writing the passage about finding leadership
into my journal and thinking about what it is that gets me pissed off
enough to want to do something about it. I thought of my heroes who
are all punk rock poets and decide I wanted to become one of them.
The plan went something like this: form a band, put together a
political message and get going with a hard core punk song. It
sounds daft now but it’s not actually that hard. I already
know some musicians in Wellington who are pretty good and I’m
not bad at writing lyrics. The trick was to figure out how to get
the song out there and then I realised I could volunteer at the
Victoria University radio station and sneak my song into their
playlist while I DJ on the graveyard shift. It’s also quite
easy and not very expensive to get your music into iTunes and the
potential sales bonanza that is the internet. Add your tune to a
crazy home video and it can be a YouTube hit in days. The
possibilities are endless! Unfortunately this enthusiasm was short
lived because at the end of the day I’m quite a homebody and I
just didn’t have the gumption to get out of my comfort zone and
do this thing.

The next
idea was to piggy back off someone else’s political movement
and being a computer geek the One Laptop Per Child program seemed
like it was the ideal way to use my skills and do something in the
volunteer space. I found that there were already some projects on
the boil in New Zealand so I contacted the people involved and found
that the projects were not really on the boil at all and that most
people seem to be too busy to really contribute a lot of time to a
volunteer program of this kind. It’s not the type of volunteer
program were anyone can just rock up and hand out bread or anything,
this is hardcore computer programming. It also struck me that the
people involved in this process were mainly concerned about promoting
their own companies which I didn’t think was the point of the
exercise at all.

Finally, I
thought of something that ended up being the answer, although I
didn’t know it at the time and strictly speaking it wasn’t
my idea at all. I was bitching about the challenge in class and
asking Sophie if there were any things I could do at VicLink that
might help out some businesses that they had on the go. She
indicated the VicLink has a bit too much Intellectual Property for
volunteers to be moseying about in but she suggested that I put
myself out there with the Cable Car Challenge people as a free
business advisor. She had thought of doing this herself but as a
judge on the challenge it was a conflict of interest so she didn’t
think this was appropriate. I got the contact name of the Cable Car
Challenge organisers and contacted them the very next day to see how
I could go about being a business advisor.

Taking the path to leadership

Initially
the organisers were very receptive although a little concerned. At
first they suggested that I might get inundated with replies as there
are over two hundred entrants in the competition. I know how these
things work on the web and I wouldn’t expect that any more than
10 percent of the people who read the newsletter would even bother to
contact me. Carol, the organiser of the Challenge offered to put my
details into an email that would be sent out to the challenge
entrants to get the ball rolling. I took the initiative and built a
web site in Google Pages that was advertising my services and then
sent to link to Carol to add to the email notice. Job done! Or so I
thought…

While I
was awaiting the plethora of emails from people seeking my help, I
got on a roll with sharing knowledge! Leader as Teacher! I started
a blogger site for all my MBA musings, published all my assignments
on Google Docs, added Google Analytics so I could keep track of the
site activity and thought this is it! I’m sharing my knowledge
with the world! Come feast on the wealth of my experience. It was
satisfying and gratifying to know that I was putting back into the
world at large. Meanwhile, I was waiting for the emails to roll in…

And time
passed. No emails. What the f^&k? I thought? The MBA is so
useless that I can’t even give away the skills I have learned?
Does not one respect me? Is it all about me? I gave Carol a ring.
No we haven’t sent out the newsletter. What? We thought that
there were professional liability issues with associating ourselves
with a free consultant. Hmmmm, what about if I post something in the
blog on the Cable Car Challenge website? Oh yes no problem! So off
I went again. I added an entry to their blog and awaited Carol to
moderate it so that it would actually be visible to the world at
large. And waited…and waited….checked the
site…nothing. The due date of the challenge is rolling up
fast. Cue state of depression, desperation and self doubt then give
up.

Now what
do I do? Can I rely on no one in this world to deliver what they
promise? All sorts of thoughts filled my head. Do I abandon this
and crack on with something else? In desperation I thought I would
create a social/politics interest group in Face Book. Surely with an
election coming up that would work! Even if I only get 5 members
then it’s better that failing this task!

Then one
day I checked out the statistics on my website and found that I had
received some new hits. I checked the referring page and found that
they were from the Cable Car Challenge website. Finally some action!
Only four hits in the first day but it’s better than nothing.
Then an email turned up from a young chap looking for some help.
This chap had actually failed to make it to the final of the
challenge but he was not prepared to give up and wanted to pursue his
idea anyway. That’s the kind of spirit I can respect so I got
in touch and we agreed to meet up on campus so I could get some
information on his background, idea and see what we could come up
with. We met up and chatted for an hour about his idea. I
understood his idea straight away and thought it’s not bad at
all. I mentioned some other possibilities that he hadn’t
thought of and his face lit up when he realised how much potential
this thing has. Finally, I advised him on some things he could do to
move this project forward. I made two points…

Leadership:
get people on board who get your teachable point of view, if they
understand it you have found the right person and they will follow
you

Emotion:
Emotional commitment is key, be emotionally committed to your idea,
get your followers to be emotionally committed to it, get your
customers emotionally committed

I agreed
to draft up a bit of the stuff we had talked about in the
mind/cognitive map of some kind and send it on to him. He emailed me
a couple of days ago to let me know he had gone out and found some
followers who had come on bard and were going to work on the project
with him. Good on him!

Reflections on the journey

It felt
pretty good to know that I had learned something useful in my MBA
after all. It also felt good that I had been able to share it and
someone had not only listened but had acted on it.

I was in a
state of despondency with the MBA process. I was unhappy with my
career which was why I did the MBA in the first place. As the
process drew to a close I began to look about for new things to do
and thought that being a business advisor was something I would be
good at. After the initial failure I became very frustrated and
started to fall back onto my old habits and to look for jobs that
were really no different that what I had done before. I became quite
depressed about the idea that I had spent all this time and effort on
learning all this stuff, only to be back in the same dead end I was
in before.

After
completing this journey and getting through to the other side I can
now rationalise that depression and angst as just part of the
process. It’s not very pleasant being in the middle of it and
I imagine that as life goes on there will always be periods like
this. Reflecting on the cycle of change and stepping up to
leadership this is part of the process, the test as it were. You
take the step out of your comfort zone, you slide down that slope
where you don’t know what’s going to happen and the
uncertainty almost kills you. Then you see something catch alight
and the idea begins to burn. If you keep at it you start back up the
slope, different, changed but alive and knowing it was worth the
effort of going there. No matter what the size of your movement, if
you change one life you have changed the life of everyone that person
knows, all the people they know and on into infinity.

Were too now?

I still
don’t like the test bit of the process, it can be pretty
shitty. That being said this is just part of making or leading
change. I think the world doesn’t really like change, it
resists it. Whether it is people not doing what they promise, the
little voices in your head giving you shit about it, the temptation
of the easy path, the relentless battle between internalising and
externalising blame, in short the world just doesn’t like
things that are different. If you want to make a difference then you
have to understand that the process is painful, the rewards are
uncertain and but the opportunities to change are infinite. Some
opportunities will not work out. Some will work out beyond your
wildest imaginings. Nothing is written and only a fool would believe
that they had planed everything from the beginning when things do
work out. Change and leadership are processes that you manage the
best you can. Win or lose you need to accept that change is tough
and that you need to keep changing, keep fighting the world in order
to make a difference. It’s not a conspiracy against you as a
person, although I often feel it is! The world is like a comfortable
child in front of a television and you have to push it outside once
in a while. It will resist but eventually it will thank you for it.

Leading Change Handbook

This is the final copy of the Leading Change hadbook as handed in to the lecturer. I managed to bash out over 8000 words of analysis and self reflection regarding leadership and change management. Hopefully this is A+ material!

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9bf7w7_199fkv284c8

Leading Change: Handbook Entry, Week 10

Journal Entry – Week 10,
06/10/08

Here we
are at the penultimate week, praise the gods. This group assignment
has been tough because of the personalities involved however I have
been staunch in the face of folly and brought things back on track
through some tough negotiating. I’m amazed how some people can
actually keep talking until they physically run out of oxygen. I
wouldn’t want to be in an argument with them.

So what
struck me this week? This quote is a good one…

“How
dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to
shine to use”

I’ve
made a few attempts to actually use some of the things I have learned
in that last 2 years in this MBA journey and I finally managed to
achieve something. Oddly enough it was for the leadership paper, not
this paper but the timing with the lectures on leadership seemed to
fit quite nicely. I’ve been working on a leadership challenge
project for creative leadership MMBA 545 under Dr MacDonald. The
idea was to put myself outside of my comfort zone and find leadership
so I advertised my free services as an MBA guru of everything on the
Cable Car Challenge website and waited for the emails to roll in.
And waited, and waited and finally got pissed off and tried to think
of something else to do. Then I got an email from a young chap who
didn’t make the shortlist but wanted to keep working on his
idea anyway. That kind of enthusiasm I can respect so we met up and
chatted about his idea which is actually quite good. Anywho, I gave
him a whole lot of suggestions and some ways of taking it forward by
gathering people around him who understand the vision and sent him
off down the path of leadership. I got another email from him the
other day and the advice is working too! Good on him I thought.

The reason
I prattle on about this in the final handbook entry is because most
of the previous entries have been about how much I learned that week
and how I intend to use it in the future. Last week I actually put
something into practice. Job done.

Unfortunately
I’m not actually that good at taking my own advice. During the
Teachable Point of View exercise I realised that no one was really
all that interested and those who were listening didn’t get it.
I haven’t figured out how to sell the idea that I’m not
the innovator who had the big idea. I’m the guy who is the
right hand man of the innovator who keeps things on track and makes
the big things happen. The problem seems to be that no one in New
Zealand seems to be able to understand that these are often different
people. I think it might go back to the recurring theme through the
paper regarding control and equity. New Zealanders don’t seem
to be able to let go of their idea or admit they need help to make it
a big deal. They like to think that if you have an idea you have to
do everything yourself otherwise you might have to share the rewards
with someone else. I find this a bit silly when the whole modern
world is geared towards specialisation but there you go. The lesson
I have learned from this is that I don’t think that the
opportunities for me to really make something of myself are here in
New Zealand, they are in the United States or other countries where
they understand that making ideas in something big is a team sport
and you need to share the reward around. It reinforces a belief I
have come to that New Zealand is a great place to retire after you
have made you money overseas. Being rich here is really good fun.

My last
thought for this journal is related to the Rosenzweig article about
the halo effect. I like the way he sums up strategic leadership as:

• Gather
  information

  
  

• Evaluate
  it thoughtfully

  
  

• Choose
  actions with high probability of success

  
  

• Don’t
  let uncertainty get you down

  
  

I’m
really good at this sort of stuff. The trick is that I have to move
to an environment where people respect this kind of thinking. Again,
the lesson learned is that I need to get out of New Zealand.

To sum up,
the strategic options before me are many but they fall into a few
basic categories.

Firstly, I
could continue with a meaningless career in the Information
technology industry, take my $200,000 per annum and try to buy
meaning in the rest of my life. Nothing wrong with that, good supply
of cash, the industry isn’t going away and I could afford a lot
of fun hobbies. Time frame is short, reward adequate.

Secondly,
I could try a more high risk approach in the same sort of industry by
working for a product company that is prepared to deal me in some
shares. Rewards high, medium time frame, opportunity to prove myself
in some way. Sounds good.

Thirdly, I
could bail out of the Information technology industry and move into a
career where the rewards are true power. Law appeals because I could
specialise in Intellectual Property issues which would expose me to
lots of ideas driven people because they would have something to
protect and I would be able to offer that protection. It would also
leverage the skills I already have but in a more business like way.
Finally, it’s a real profession with a quasi-monopoly
structure, reasonably high barriers to entry and a real professional
body that you have to be a member of in order to play the game.
Quite different from Information technology where any dingbat with an
IQ of over 70 can get a piece of the action.

And on
that note Sam left the room to make a cup of tea while the options
spiralled through the air…

Systems Thinking Assignment #1: Gen-i Change Management System

This report uses the Viable Systems Model to analyse the Change Management System at Gen-i. The scope of this project was to cover the system as it pertains to the Accident Compensataion Corporation account. This systems analysis project has provided some useful insight into how the change management function at Gen-i is working. The system description presented a worldview that was very mechanistic and orderly and this is typical of Information Technology organisation culture. The viable systems model revealed that the system is functioning in a world where one group is carrying the majority of the weight of system management. The leadership that should be present is not engaged in the meta system functions. The solutions that were drawn specifically targeted the active management and leadership for the system, the issue of metrics and accountability and the management of the communications between the actors and other stakeholders in the system. Taking a broader view of the situation, this is a recipe for dissatisfaction among the technical resources as there is no way of recording their successes and celebrating them. Finally, the lack of transparency and management in the system is leading to a situation where the external customer has no visibility of where the system is breaking down and this is leading to false conclusions as to whom is to blame. As a systemic problem this quite complicated and is worthy of further analysis using a soft systems methodology approach (Jackson, M. 2004).

The main word document can be accessed here:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9bf7w7_182nmr7d5rx

Diagrams from the document can be accessed at thise links: