MER_Managing through change and uncertainty by Mercon Group

DEVELOPMENT HANDBOOK

ยก YOUR DEVELOPMENT MATTERS TO US! You can use the self-development guides to focus on the competency that you would like to work on this year. This is an excellent opportunity to develop your potential! There are countless actions you can carry out to strengthen your competencies. In the following pages you will find guidance and materials that will be useful for your development plan. This tool will allow you to focus on your actions to develop the competency you have selected. HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE Many of the activities we carry out in our daily basis can be an opportunity to develop competencies. You will find options for reading, films and extracurricular activities in this guide that will help you develop behaviors linked to the competency you decide to work on. The activities or reading materials mentioned here, do not need to be the same as those you do or plan to do, but rather useful suggestions. You can either choose some of them or opt for similar activities that you prefer. We also suggest that you bear in mind that developing a competency implies changing behaviors and this takes time, so intent and perseverance are key elements in ensuring successful selfdevelopment. We encourage you to explore this guide and track the activities you choose in your self-development plan. ยกYour success is up to you!

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6 MANAGING THROUGH CHANGE AND UNCERTAINTY CONTENT

Activities

Films

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Reading materials

Rol model

ACTIVITIES Many activities we develop in our daily basis can be opportunities to develop Managing through change and uncertainty. Many of our daily activities are an opportunity to develop our competencies. The following are 7 ideas you can adapt to your own preferences and interests:

RAFTTING

Practicing rafting in a team implies synchronizing efforts and energies with a view to overcoming the different challenges and obstacles that emerge along the way. In this respect it is not only necessary for each team member to have knowledge and experience of the techniques to be used; they must also be willing to adapt and work according to the conditions around them, anticipating and overcoming any changes that take place.

The secret to a good performance lies in the ability and speed with which each person, and the group, can respond to the changing demands of the terrain. In this respect, it is essential to develop new ideas and techniques before starting so they can be put into practice to achieve new nuances in the way things are run. Monopoly is possibly one of the most popular table games in the world. The game is designed in such a way that sooner or later, a leader emerges who holds more assets than the other players. After that point there starts a slow and deadly process of capturing all the other players’ money, a process that continues until, as they say, “Only one player is left standing.” MONOPOLY It may seem that this is a game of chance: everyone starts in the same condition, and the course of the game is determined by the throw of the dice. However, this is not actually the case: there are an enormous number of different strategies, above all based on the theory of possibilities, that can increase a player’s chance of winning significantly. Being a high-risk sport, mountaineering requires an attitude that is both careful and strategic. Based on an infinity of circumstances that the climber will come up against during a climb, he or she must adopt the best response (behavior and movements) for each situation. In order to MOUNTAINEERING do this appropriately, the climber must be able to very quickly and effectively understand and interpret both the surroundings and his or her own body. The opportunities and threats presented by both and that emerge along the way will be the elements that the person will have to use to take the right decisions.

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ESTRATEGY GAMES

TRAVEL

EXCURSIONS

CHESS

Regardless of whether chance plays a greater or lesser role in the playrelated situation of a strategy game, participants are required to apply their own capacity to think up and implement tactics and moves that will allow them to attain determined objectives. While remaining alert to the opportunities and threats presented by both the game and your opponents, if you want to win you need to be able to come up with the best possible strategic responses in accordance with the rules and the resources you have. Planning your moves and strategies in time will help achieve the objective. When people visit different countries or communities in the world, they face the constant challenge of “the unknown.” The diversity of races, customs, codes, languages, myths and stories they come across on their journey will make them question—based on day-to-day experience— their own knowledge and even their own way of thinking, viewing the world and acting in it. The greater the traveler’s capacity to assimilate "new" elements, the easier it will be to incorporate alternative ways of interpreting reality and he or she will return from the journey more enriched. People with enough ability will be able to strengthen their own practices by effectively implementing the new information they have internalized from their experiences.

With a great variety of types of excursions and places to go and do them, it is up to us if we prefer mountains, volcanoes or something more relax such as going trailing to a park. Whatever we choose to do, this activity will allow us to develop survival, strategic and planning skills. Since we set ourselves to do the activity in a specific place and time. The unexpected situations that we might have to overcome such as climate change, difficult trails, force us to manage the change in the best way possible and understand where we need to improve in such unexpected situations. Have you heard of the benefits of playing chess? This game offers benefits to people of all ages. It brings together aspects that encourage the development of mental skills, since players are continuously required to put hypotheses to the test and then confirm or discard them. It helps develop problem-solving skills, by analyzing how we can solve moves that become increasingly difficult over time. It also helps improve reading skills, enhances concentration, teaching planning and prediction-making. Because in games of strategy like chess the player is responsible for planning and anticipating what will happen, they must learn to analyze the situation and make decisions quickly.

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Readings Certain readings offer an excellent opportunity to reflect on management skills during changing and uncertain times. Below you will find 3 suggestions.

The book leaves us with the adage that life moves forward, and there is nothing we can do to prevent this: we can only adapt to changes with a positive attitude.

TIME BETWEEN THE SEAMS Author: MARÍA DUEÑAS Publisher: Planeta 640 pages

SWITCH Author: CHIP HEATH AND DAN HEATH Publisher: GESTIÓN 2000 314 pages

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“As hard as those times were, she never lost the optimism that buttressed her against all of life’s blows, and which she embraced to help her always see things from the sunny side of life.”

This book helps us to enhance our management of changes by analyzing how we view changes and the mechanisms we implement to deal with them. Throughout our lives we face many changes; some are easy and others difficult. In all of them our desires come into conflict with our reason. The side we encourage is the side that will win out in the end. The authors portray this as like an elephant (desire) and a trainer who seeks to tame it (reason); the first seeks that which is immediate, while the second seeks that which is appropriate. The authors explain the reality of this dualism to us step-by-step, as well as how to get the trainer and the elephant on the same page so that we can achieve the changes we want to see.

LEAN CHANGE MANAGEMENT Author: JASON LITTLE Publisher: HMEXPRESS 157 pages

This book will help you to implement changes successfully and avoid resistance to change by creating an environment where change is jointly created. It does so through examples of how innovative practices and increase the success of programs for change. These practices combine ideas from several schools of thought: Agile, Lean Startup, change management, organizational development, and psychology. This book will change how you view change. *Why do people put up resistance to change, and what do you need to NOT DO with respect to this? And, of course, how to capitalize on the reactions of those involved to benefit the change process. *Step-by-step descriptions of how we can combine ideas from several methods and frameworks regarding change in order to develop a change management process that is customized and appropriate for the Committee. *How you can customize your own change program in the same way as we did with the Committee. *How you can involve the people impacted by changes in designing the change itself, contributing directly to the success of the change program.

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Films THIRTEEN DAYS In October 1962, there is an intense exchange among the different actors in the US top leadership concerning the USA’s delicate situation in relation to Cuba. The army, air force and executive branch move into action to formulate a joint strategy in response to the circumstances. In different scenes, the three main characters demonstrate that they have the personality traits to facilitate the appropriate resolution of both external and internal conflicts. These abilities include the capacity to understand and interpret interests and power relations; the ability to grasp the reasons behind determined behaviors in the different power groups and identify the key people involved in the problem; and being able to predict how new events or situations will affect the different groups and people.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS The main character in this film, Chris Gardner, shows us how to deal with changes during times of adversity. After running out of money, he gets a job opportunity at a stock trading form, where he develops an entire series of ways to make phone sales more efficiently, as well as to win valuable potential clients, although this challenges the company’s protocols. More than anything, the lesson of this film is one of persistence and determination. Successful people know where to set their sights, and they have a very clear idea of what they want to achieve. It’s not a matter of sitting around waiting for opportunity to fall in your lap; rather, it’s critical to go out and look for them, to be prepared for rejection, and above all, to persist and never give up.

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APOLLO XIII Faced with a situation as extreme as the one that forms the plot of this film, the ability to act in a way that is flexible, effective, and innovative becomes a central skill. Apollo 13 is a film that puts its characters up against continuous challenges and situations of over-the-top conflict and stress. In this context, the ability to think up novel and different solutions to resolve the variety of situations faced is a skill that must be put into practice by both the crew members in space and the teams of specialists who offer them support and knowledge from back on earth. In this sense, this question plays out explicitly at several moments. However, two of them are truly memorable: the scene where the team of specialists need to sit down and design solutions under extreme pressure, and when Ken buckles down to the task of finding how the Apollo spaceship can reduce its energy consumption in order to be able to penetrate the atmosphere and get back to earth.

Alive Surviving, never giving up, trying to keep moving forward—that’s what some of us almost always find ourselves doing in crisis situations. An Uruguayan flight with 45 passengers—most of them players on a rugby team—crashed in the Andes mountains. Miraculously, many of its passengers survived and got themselves organized while waiting to be rescued. However, the days passed by and the young men realized that no one was coming to search for them. The film’s lesson for leaders is that when confronted with an extreme situation, critical decisions are made that could mean the difference between life and death. And that extreme leadership allows people to develop their leadership qualities, something that is difficult to force under normal circumstances.

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THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE The film The Zookeeper’s Wife tells use the surprising true story of a woman who managed to provide shelter and an escape route to hundreds of Jews who arrived in Warsaw fleeing the barbarities of the Nazis. Its Spanish-language title, “The house of hope” derives from the fact that the central character, Antonina Zabinska, used the basement of her house to save hundreds of lives—many of them destined to spend their final hours in an extermination camp. Antonina and Jan resist using everything at their disposal, and they start to collaborate covertly with the Resistance when they realize that the zoo’s abandoned cages and tunnels—originally designed to protect animals’ lives—could now be used secretly to protect human lives. When the couple puts their plans into action in order to save lives from what had been converted into the Warsaw Ghetto, Antonina exposes not only herself but her own children to enormous risks.

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Role model A role model is a person who has stood out in some ways throughout the course of their lives, and whom we can look to in search of a model and a source of inspiration in our own lives. Below we present some information on the exemplary career of a true role model in the topic of change management in times of uncertainty.

JACK MARUDOLPH GIULIANI (1964 - present) Ma Yun, whose nickname is Jack Ma, was born on September 10, 1964, in Hangzhou, the capital of the Chinese province of Zhejiang. He is known as the richest entrepreneur in China, according to Forbes magazine. He is the chairman of the consortium Alibaba, an Internet site that sells and distributes products on an international level. He has been interested in the English language since he was a child. He studied English every day, practicing conversation with foreigners at a hotel in Hangzhou. Every day he journeyed an hour by bicycle to get there. For 9 long years he worked as a tourist guide in exchange for the opportunity to practice American English. It was this circumstance that lead a pen pal to give him his nickname. He used Jack as his first name, as it was easier for his foreign friends than his real name. One would think that, as the wealthiest person in his country, his intellectual trajectory would have been easy and firm. But Jack’s story is just the opposite: it took him four years to pass the university entrance exam, in part because of the time of year when the tests were offered. He started at Hangzhou Normal University to study English, graduating in 1988 with a B.A. in that language. In 1980 he was married to Zhang Ying. He, together with his wife, worked as a teacher at Hangzhou Dianzi university; at the same time, he started to study business at Cheung Kong. Ma graduated in Beijing in 2006. In 1995, he created the online site “Yellowpages.” That portal is considered to be China’s first Internet business. The Alibaba group was first launched in 1999 as a project to bring together users and product vendors directly. The idea was born in the United Sates. One day Ma wanted to buy a beer, but the Qingdao brand was not available at that location. He thought there should be a way for him to connect it to that product, and he decided to create a page to provide that service. The name comes from the story of Alibaba and the 40 thieves. Jack thought that Alibaba was not a thief; rather, he was a man who used his intelligence to help the people of his village. Another reason he chose that name was because of its universality in different languages. The name is easy to pronounce and relate to for both Chinese and foreigners.

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The first sector where Alibaba operated was in B2B—business to business. The company grew after the implementation of a platform to connect Chinese companies with other companies overseas. The platform sped up the process of searching for products and offered security and a means of communication. Over time, different groups were created and joined with Alibab, using an option similar to Paypal known as Alipay. The growth of the consortium grew to have more than seven hundred subscribers. The usage record is 105 million payments in less than 24 hours. The new payment system opened room for a new project called Taobao, a portal dedicated primarily to B2B and C2C connections between companies, like Alibaba initially had. Currently, 80% of commerce in China moves thanks to Alibaba. Its clientele includes everything from major international brands to small Latin American companies. In its storefronts you can find clothing, technology devices, food and handicrafts. The only company that can compare to it in terms of volume of merchandise is Walmart. Jack Ma found, with Alibaba, the solution to the needs of Chinese entrepreneurs. He understood their inability to connect on an international level and created a way to link them that would become a driving force for his country’s economy. Thoughts ”... Never give up. Today is difficult, tomorrow will be worse, but then the sun will come out...” ”... Instead of learning from the successes of others, learn from your own mistakes. Most people who fail share the same motives, but success can be attributed to many different factors...” ” ... Forget about the money and how you’re going to earn it. Instead of thinking about small tactics and short-term tricks, focus on long-term plans. Your attitude will determine how far you will go...”

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