BUS 4405 UOPEOPLE Corporate Insights Learning Journal – Description
Introduction
Can we predict the future?
“No”, says the chaos theorist.
“yes”, responds the astrophysicist
“to an extent”, says the economist
“Usually, says the meteorologist”
–Pillkahn 2008
Think globally and act locally. How can you do that? Actually, we do just the opposite, often times not realizing that we take our own understandings, knowledge, and biases and apply them in an effort to understand future, bigger issues. Moreover, we use this system we sit in judgement and this closes off our ability to stay open and thinking creatively. The goal, particularly for leaders, is to think big and without judgement so that innovation is possible.
In this unit we will discuss how to learn from the past, recalling some of the things we’ve discussed in earlier units. Once you can take lessons learned into your professional future, it will not only improve your individual insight, but also contribute to building a larger insight that will benefit your future employers as well as your future positions. One of the most important things to learn as a leader is how to become insightful on individual and corporate levels because they are interwoven.
What if we are more cognizant of our own limitations, and learn strategies to enhance our self-awareness? Instead of seeing limitations as things we need to hide, we use them as a source of data for constant improvement. What if we used our private techniques to get to the point where global issues could be viewed from a collective point of view? This is corporate foresight in practice.
So how strategic thinking different from corporate foresight? Strategic thinking applies to individual patterns of thought and action while corporate foresight refers to collective ways.
What is corporate foresight and how can I develop it?
We have worked on developing strategic orientation in previous units. So you are becoming well-versed in thinking about the future while considering the present and learning from the past.
We will discuss a variety of tools that you will be able to customize to suit your strategic thinking and support this thinking into corporate insights. One of the tools you can use to develop corporate foresight is a Three-Step Action Plan, consisting of answering the following questions:
Am I familiar with formal or informal Standards of Work in my unit/corporation? Can I summarize them in three to five key words?
Am I aware of my personal barriers as well as the more systemic ones? What are they?
How do I ensure that my understanding is growing? Whom do I need to contact? What do I need to learn? How? Where am I going? What are the goals and plans of my corporation?
Other suggested tools and approaches that might become very useful for you, include:
GROW (Goal-Reality-Options-Will to Commit) approach and setting SMART (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound) goals. We will explore these as well as other tools, approaches, and strategies in this Unit.
Often times we expect that corporations and even governments follow our logic; we assume that our friends should do certain things, things that we would do if we were in their place. Then we realize, that this is not the reality. Moreover, neither corporations nor societies do what we might want them to do. At least not all the time.
This realization that if we would like to secure a viable future, we have to start now and we have to enlarge and change the way we think, seems to summarize what corporate insight is all about. If we keep learning from past experiences and bring forward these lessons into the future, then, we are on our way to developing a corporate foresight that leaders of our future corporations are supposed to achieve. So to answer the above question of how to learn to think locally and act globally the short answer is: start with the present, learn from the past, leverage future outcomes, and think big.
Reading Assignment
ARUP (2017). An Introduction to Corporate Foresight. Retrieved from driversofchange.com. Retrieved from https://www.arup.com/-/media/arup/files/publications/a/f101_brochure_2017_final.pdf
N.A. (2010) What is Organization Future Orientation? Future Orientation Blog. Retrieved from: http://futureorientation.net/2010/07/29/what-is-organizational-future-orientation/ Please read all five responses to “What is Organizational Future Orientation?” (Visit each and every response).
Revisit:
Paine, N. & Masie, N. (Eds.) (2010). Learning Perspectives. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Parts 1 and 2 – Re-visit your questions that followed reading part 1 and part 2 in Unit 3
DeCarlo, S (2010, April 21) The World’s leading companies. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/2010/04/20/global-2000-leading-world-business-global-2000-10-intro.html#1f18dbb1512bLearning Journal
How can you apply three chosen leadership strategies that you have researched in this unit to improve your personal growth? Provide specific examples and indicate how you could use the findings to help others deal with similar issues in the future.
If you are uncertain about where you are on the path of your professional development objectives, please re-visit Unit 1.
Learning Guide Unit 1
Learning Guide Unit 1
Reading Assignment
Karisscp. (2019, January 23). 4 Ways to define leadership. Honors Leaders Blog. https://sites.uci.edu/chpleaders/2019/01/23/4-ways-to-define-leadership/
Machiavelli, N., & Wootton, D. (1995). The Prince. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co. Available through the Gutenberg Project: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm; please read chapter 21 about the issues surrounding the reputation and public image of a leader
Stone, A.G. and Patterson, K. (2005) The History of Leadership Focus. Regent University, Servant Leadership Research Roundtable. Retrieved from: .
Reis, J. (n.d.). 5 lessons businesses can learn from Wikileaks. Learnthat. http://learnthat.com/5-lessons-every-manager-should-learn-from-wikileaks/
N.A. (N.D.) Leadership Theory and Models. University of Pretoria.
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