Today marks the last day of Trimester 2 of my Masters programme in management. I guess it is timely to mark my learning and reflect what I had gained in this short 3 1/2 months.
First, finance. I guess that it is part of corporate world that a senior executive would at least need to be aware of the various finance tools used in the industry. Such as the various capital structure, their modus operandi and the various type of finance leverage such as debts (loans and bonds) to increase the value of the firm. Well, this is probably not the most interesting module. There are too many financial tools, coupled with the complexity of managing risks at both the firm risk appetite and market risk. Although said, I am glad to be wiser in finance and hopefully it will come handy when the day I call quits in the force.
Second, marketing. Before this, my perception of marketing is just about the four Ps – Product, price, promotion and place. There is more to it here. This module gave a broader impression from understanding the business landscape to “marketing” the product and finally using a scorecard to check the progress and possibly re-evaluate the options. Furthermore, dissecting marketing to examine the consumers sentiments, culture and competitions made it very applicable to practical every stage of life too. Given that we are a conscript military, I find their model so applicable to the force. That is to understand the change in social-cultural landscape and match it to our organisational capabilities, so that we can more effectively match the needs and wants of the the clients (Citizen soldiers). It just need a little bit more time to examine with survey, studies and analysis.
Third, strategy implementation: organisational design. This focuses on the idea of holistic planning of the processes in implementing strategy. Strategy is about moving the force ahead in the most practical way so that we maintain relevance and keep our lead. The more pressing issue that I had experienced in the force is the friction during implementation. What this module had shown what we had lacked during transformation is the communication. There are various levels of “managers” such as higher management of the HQ to the PCs on the ground. To reduce the level of friction is communication and this is emphasised by the theories. The communication must be a deliberately planned to reach out to every “parts” that is affected by the change. Next is the planning for the people. People is the key to success or failure of implementation. Other than create “buy-in’, setting the condition right for them to succeed is also very important. To smoothen the challenge, they must be properly or sufficiently equipped to do their job. This can be done through training courses and seminar for cross-sharing. Through these, the force must focus to change the behaviour of the people. This will in turn shape the culture that the strategy set out to achieve in the long run.
Fourth is about crisis management. I guess the corporate world is not as in tune as us. Crisis management module is more of a replica of what I had been doing in the force, organising large scale events such as Army Half-Marathon (AHM) and National Day Parade (NDP). We would start by planning possible scenarios that could happen and running through table top exercise (rehearsal in theories) to ensure that every key stakeholders knows what to do during crisis and contingency planning if things happened. And well, this is one module I breeze through with ease.
Lastly, time. Studies gave me more personal and family time than work. It also gave me more time to reflect what I really want in life. Maybe it is not exactly a good offer by the force as it gave us more time to reflect and reconsider our options. In fact, most of us are tinkering with ideas of leaving at the end of the bond. Well, three years is a reasonably long time to reshape our thinking and priorities in life.
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