Session 3 Neo (Hao Qiang)

Requirement: Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organization of your choice.

In M. Fullan’s book Leading in a Culture of Change (2001) five core mind-action sets of leadership were described as the collective determinants of an organization’s successful change. The following content will try to apply Fullan’s five variables to analyze my previous workplace-New Oriental Technology & Education Group (NOG).

1. Background knowledge of NOG

As for the detailed background knowledge of NOG can be found in the first part of the following two essays, the introduction of NOG will be omitted:

Assignment of Session1

Assignment ofSession 2

2. Leadership Analysis of NOG

2.1 Moral Purpose

According to M. Fullan, moral purpose, which is about setting primitive intention to improve all people’s living condition, is the critical factor determining an organization’s long-term success. The people here are refer to employees, customers and the whole society.

NOG was established in 1993 to supplement the mainland China’s lagging public education system. Before it went public in 2006, the employee and customers’ satisfaction degree was higher. Comparatively, the complaints from employees and customers increased gradually. Among many reasons, two of them are very noticeable: employees’ complaints about income shrink and customers’ dissatisfaction with teaching quality.

Though going public helped NOG win more investment for further development, the basic moral purpose for the benefit of all people was often neglected since then; because the management staffs’ management strategy was greatly influenced by the profits of the stake holders, and some decisions are made at the cost of employees’ benefits or customers’ satisfaction, like recruiting ill-paid unqualified teachers to minimize the costs. In the long run, such decisions and management methods will bring very negative effects on the whole organization.

2.2 Understanding the change process

M. Fullan believes leaders should understand the organization, the staff, and expected changes to have a clearer picture of how a change would like to happen in that organization. An analogy can be used to illustrate the importance of understanding of change process. That is, the change is like a ship going through a narrow canal, and the understanding of change process is just like the sailor’s operation of the ship. Haste or carelessness can easily lead to the ship’s being stuck in the canal.

On this point, leaders of NOG also have their own problems. Recently the management staffs realized one important thing, that is, merely teaching could hardly ensure students’ satisfaction. What they need is an all-around service, including classroom teaching, Q&A, online learning material, and many other services. However, when they were trying to lead the change within NOG, their inadequate understanding of the change was reflected in the suddenly changed policy. Teachers were suddenly required to do more extra work besides classroom teaching without payment. It was not until complaints rose to its peak overtime payment was specified. Of course, the incidents also revealed the moral purpose of leaders of NOG. As Fullan described, misunderstanding of change process plus a lack of moral purpose can deeply disturb working staff.

2.3 Relationships

Fullan argued that “leaders must be consummate relationship builders with diverse people and groups”, and he also pointed out the five factors are interrelated. When I worked in NOG, I can tell my department leader is very good at dealing with personal relationship.

However, the positive effects of leaders’ personal skills are counter-balanced by their lack of moral purpose and inadequate understanding of change process. The frequent interaction among leaders and general staff, including teachers, are carried out as Fullan recommends, few of them can really solve staffs’ concerned problems.

2.4 Knowledge building

According to Fullan, leaders’ ability of generating and disseminating knowledge in and out of an organization is another crucial factor to organization development.

NOG’s leaders do care about knowledge, but only the knowledge of how to enrich the attractiveness of “education service” and students’ satisfaction. However, these two factors can hardly guarantee the actual education quality. Most people know little about study rules and are easily attracted by some ads that claim helping you master anything in very short time, but that type of ads is what NOG is running. As for students’ satisfaction, half of NOG’s students are younger than 18, and most of them lack critical thinking ability. Sometimes kids will be satisfied by something merely interesting but can help them learn nothing.

NOG’s leaders did a very good job on generating and disseminating knowledge of how to attract more customers and how to satisfy students unconditionally. As for the knowledge relevant to effective learning, they rarely care about. Therefore, the current management strategy, though efficient in making profits, is driving NOG to a business purely caring about profits but not an education organization. It may be believed a kind of business shrewdness, but I believe it is still embarrassing to an education organization.

2.5 Coherence making

Fullan argues that we are in a time that is featured by complexity and information overload, which can easily cause fragmentation, uncertainty and confusion. Effective leaders can tolerate differences, and create over-all coherence to ensure the change process.

NOG’s top down structure leads to its authority-based management. Differences that go against leaders’ decision and desire are absolutely discouraged. That is to say, changes happened in NOG are imposed on staffs, which can hardly ensure its success.


Reference:

Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.