Some 130 international faculty in NUS Business School offer broad industry experience and seasoned business insights to prepare students for their careers. BIZBeat delves a little deeper with the help of Bryan Bews, MSc in Management student and The Masters Club President.
In the final instalment of a three-part series, Bryan spoke with Adjunct Associate Professor Andreas Raharso to find out more about his module People Strategy and the future of work in the pandemic era.
Q: Can you tell us more about People Strategy? You told us that this is one of the most important modules in terms of transferrable knowledge that we will acquire.
The human aspect will be much more relevant in the era of AI, smart technology and robotics. The current approach in the strategic management of human capital is not equipped to deal with the pandemic situation. This mindset has been developed way before the period that we are in now. That’s why I think it is essential to master this.
The key message behind the module is people should be the centre of a business strategy. You cannot consider people as something you can just buy with money. They should not be part of the HR director’s yearly targets, but the management of people should be directly under the focus of the CEO. That’s why I call it people and strategy as a call for action for business leaders.
People should be the centre of a business strategy. They should not be part of the HR director’s yearly targets, but the management of people should be directly under the focus of the CEO.
Q: Do we either have to drastically adapt and usher in new ways of collaborating and working, or are we able to steer through this crisis with the knowledge and capabilities from today?
We should not see the work-from-home movement as remote working because technology is involved. From the People Strategy point of view, we are entering in a new era that revolves around what I call a distributed workforce. If we compare, working from the office is considered a centralised workforce. Managers, business schools or textbooks have been entirely focusing on this centralised system. But when it comes to the distributed workforce, it is a blue ocean scenario and only a few companies understand this. This is also the object of the consulting project I had with my client, a bank with 60,000 employees. The client was looking at how to improve customer engagement when their workforce had to work remotely due to the lockdown.
We do not understand how to behave under this distributed workforce optimally because we are used to working from the office. An example would be that fairly few people are aware that you need a working space to work optimally. But do you have an office room for you to work in a remote setting? No, then that’s it. It will be impossible for teams to work optimally in this environment.
Q: What would you say to students graduating during COVID-19 – what kind of skills or mindset do they need to achieve “success”?
From my practice and research, one skill has shown to be the most valuable of all – the ability to experiment. It’s a skill that empowers people to solve problems. For example, the working from home scenario – it is not an optimal solution because we are not used to being part of this distributed workforce. For people with an experimental mindset, they can start in the living room, bedroom and try everywhere and for example figure out the best space is in the hallway. Habits bind us. It is not easy, but this is a skill I hope the students can learn.
This idea has to be pushed further in a corporate environment. I tell my clients they have to change the culture before engaging with an experimental mindset. Establish a culture that doesn’t punish this activity. If a company hires an MBA they expect that person to be an expert and not waste time on experiments. This has to change.
The original article first appeared in The Master’s Club LinkedIn page. The Master’s Club is the MSc programmes’ student leadership body.
