The Twenty first century is marked by increasing complexity,
uncertainty and rapid change. Individuals and organizations need to
enlarge their thinking models to embrace both complexity and chaos
which is becoming more prevalent. This was stated by Dr. Ali Jaafari,
President Asia Pacific International College while delivering a talk on
"The Making of Professional Managers and Leaders: How to succeed on the
Face of a Fast Changing World", at the Asian Institute of Technology
(AIT).
In the age of uncertainty and rapid change, there is an urgent need to
adopt transformative models since normative thinking does not always
work in contemporary settings. The focus is on creativity, competence
and the intrinsic motivation of actors rather than normative and best
practice approaches, Dr Jaafari said.
Dr. Jaafari, who was a visiting faculty at AIT in 1988, remarked that
with changing times, job insecurities would increase further.
Individuals will have to exhibit greater versatility and multiple
competencies and skills to tackle emergent situations. Continuous
learning, diverse assignments and virtual team setting is becoming
critical, Dr. Jaafari added. He identified emergence of network
economies as a major driving factor withpartnerships and sharing
expertise being key elements.
“From placid environments, the scene has now reached one of turbulent
environments, where the environment is shifting and goals are
continuously changing. Thinking is no longer restricted to linear
patterns since rendering past experience is ineffective for forecasting
the future”, Dr. Jaafari said. He stressed the concept of
self-organization based on distributed leadership, agility, synergy,
flexibility and teamwork. He added that pure normative and best
practice applications do not exist in the real world which is prone to
complexity, uncertainty and indeterminacy.
Later, responding to questions on transformative organizations, Dr.
Jaafari identified universities as a good example of transformative
organizations, since the university head lays down the broad
overarching goals while the decentralized leadership seeks to implement
these goals. He complimented AIT for being a unique institute and
congratulated it on its golden jubilee celebrations.
Dr. Bonaventura H.W. Hadikusumo, Coordinator Construction, Engineering
and Infrastructure Management (CEIM) at School of Engineering and
Technology introduced the speaker and moderated the question and answer
session. Earlier Dr. Jaafari was welcomed by Dr. Pritam Krishna
Shrestha, Head, External Relations and Communications Office (ERCO),
and Kyaw Soe Hlaing, Coordinator, Promotions and Alumni Relations.