04-014 Ch01 pp5

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the case study method or on experiential exercises

to teach students about effective management and
leadership has been shown to be less effective than
having learning activities that represent each of
these four steps (see Kolb & Kolb, 1999). The best
management skills curriculum has opportunities for
action learning and student experimentation (CE
and AE) as well as class discussion, readings, and
examinations (RO and AC).

ATTITUDES TOWARD CHANGE

In order to capitalize fully on the strengths of your
own learning style, you also should be aware of your
orientation toward change. As the environment in
which managers operate continues to become more
chaotic, more temporary, more complex, and more
overloaded with information, your ability to process
information is at least partly constrained by your fundamental attitude about change.
Almost no one disagrees with the prediction that
change will increase in the future, in both pace and
scope. The challenge of students and managers at the
beginning of the twenty-first century is to prepare for a
world that cannot be predicted by the experiences of the
past. This condition, according to Peter Drucker (father
of modern management), occurs no more frequently
than every 200 to 300 years. The last times such conditions were encountered were at the dawn of the
Renaissance and the outset of the industrial revolution.
The world changed dramatically, unpredictably. The patterns of the past could not be used to predict the trends
of the future. Dramatic, transformational change
occurred. Similarly, graduates of management schools
will face an environment in the decades ahead unlike
one that any person has ever experienced before.
Both the half-life of knowledge and the amount of
knowledge available to people are changing at incredible speeds. Even the half-life of most information technologies is now less than one year. (Consider how upto-date your current computer is, regardless of how
recently you purchased it.) It is estimated that in a
decade, for example, personal computers will become
anachronistic as etching on molecules replaces etching
on silicone. It is predicted that computers as small as a
pencil head will be implanted in the body to govern
heart rate or in eyeglasses to display the name of every
person you pass by on the street.
People who read the Wall Street Journal, New
York Times, or Herald Tribune are now exposed to
more information in one day than a person was
exposed to in a lifetime in the eighteenth century.

Much of the worlds population has never known a

world without a computer, remote control, unlimited
TV channels, and satellite transmission, yet the population group that is growing the fastest and that controls most of societys wealth is over 60 years old and
has just encountered the information revolution in
the last half of their lives. Alarmingly, a large majority
of the worlds population can only dream of having
access to current information technology, and even a
majority of the U.S. population cannot afford a computer. Hence, we face a real danger of perpetuating
technological apartheid both in the United States and
throughout the world.
In business organizations, no manager at the beginning of the twenty-first century would boast of being stable, constant, or maintaining the status quo. Even now,
stability is interpreted more as stagnation than steadiness, and organizations not in the business of major
transformation and revolution are generally viewed as
recalcitrant. The frightening uncertainty that has always
accompanied major change is now superseded by a fear
of staying the same.
All this is to say that the environment of the
twenty-first century will be characterized by turbulence, gigantic change, rapid-fire decisions, and chaos.
No one will have time to read and analyze a case
study. E-business has changed the rules of the game. It
is now possible for competitors in almost any business
to emerge on the Internet within 24 hours. No one
can predict the competitive environment anymore.
Customers are no longer geographically constrained,
and the standards for servicing them have changed
completely. Speed to market and competing against
time have begun to dominate the traditional competitive advantages learned in business schools. Rapid
decision making, mostly without the benefit of adequate information and careful analysis, is becoming
the norm.
In the midst of this chaotic pace of changewhat
some refer to as permanent white waterbeing aware
of your own orientation toward change is an important
prerequisite for successfully coping with it. Two
dimensions of change orientation particularly relevant
for managers are discussed on the following pages.

Tolerance of Ambiguity
The first important dimension is tolerance of ambiguity, which refers to the extent to which individuals
are threatened by or have difficulty coping with situations that are ambiguous, where change occurs rapidly
or unpredictably, where information is inadequate or
DEVELOPING SELF-AWARENESS CHAPTER 1

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