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26 July 2023 | Story Kekeletso Takang | Photo Charl Devenish
Prof Phillipe Burger, Prof Peter Rosseel and Prof Liezel Massyn
Prof Philippe Burger, Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, together with Prof Peter Rosseel and Prof Liezel Massyn, Head of the Business School, at the recent guest lecture hosted by the UFS Business School.

The business world today is confronted with continuous disruptions and uncertainty. Organisations are challenged to think about digitalisation, innovation, and transformation to remain competitive. Leaders must be able to take everyone with them on a journey of continuous change.

This is according to Prof Peter Rosseel, Director of MCR Consulting (a spin-off of the University of Leuven in Belgium) and Affiliated Professor at the University of the Free State (UFS), who gave the lecture in the UFS Business School. The title of the lecture was The Golden Triangle of Vision-Leadership-Culture: why changing behaviour is so difficult and what you can do about it? and it was aimed at challenging leaders to deal with disruptions and uncertainty, the lecture equipped attendees with the skills to do so. 

Prof Rosseel challenged attendees to stretch their thinking. “Change management is not a human resource function, it is a leadership concern. Leaders who want to see a change in behaviour should create conceptual conflict.”

Conceptual conflict

Laughter was coupled with moments of silence as Prof Rosseel, a visiting professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium, took attendees on a roller-coaster ride. He alluded to five examples of conceptual conflict, statements that shook the room. 

  • Team building doesn’t work, it is a waste of money.
  • Stop giving presentations, people only remember 4% of what was presented.
  • Take the word ‘consensus’ out of your vocabulary.
  • You can measure all you want; it won’t change behaviour.
  • Training as a strategy to change an organisation is a very bad idea.

He believes that conceptual conflict is important for the development of the culture of an organisation.

In addition to creating conceptual conflict, leaders should negotiate with their teams. “There are three ways to go about this; inform, engage/empower, and observe the change in behaviour. People want to be informed on time, people want control, and people want to know why. Meet these terms and you are well on your way to observing the change in behaviour. People can agree to change even if they don’t support it, as long as they believe it is fair.”

An attendee posed a question to Prof Rosseel: “In South Africa, we have trade unions, and this leads to a consensus approach to decision-making. How do we do away with consensus in decision-making?” Prof Rosseel responded by saing: “That’s the context within which you operate. You can’t change the context. Play the politics but never compromise the strategy implementation.”

The golden triangle of ‘vision – leadership – culture’ provides a framework within which organisations can operate. Vision is the content, while leadership facilitates the change in behaviour, and culture is created through strategy implementation and cognitive dissonance.

About the speaker 

Prof Rosseel’s field of expertise covers strategy implementation, change management, cultural and digital transformation, leadership, and learning. He travels the world to help leadership teams and their organisations to change (80% of his time). 

He also teaches change management, and digital and organisational culture transformation to first- and second-year students in the Master of Biomedical Sciences, third-year Bachelor of Criminology students, and third-year Bachelor of Psychological and Educational Sciences students. In 2024, he will also teach a postgraduate course to engineers on the same subject matter. In South Africa, he teaches in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (20% of his time).

Read up on more programmes offered by the UFS Business School here.

News Archive

#Women'sMonth: Long hours in wind and cold weather help to reconstruct Marion Island’s glacial history
2017-08-10

 Description: Liezel Rudolph  Tags: Liezel Rudolph, Process Geomorphology, Marion Island, periglacial geomorphology, Department of Geography  

Liezel Rudolph, lecturer for second-year students in Process
Geomorphology at the University of the Free State (UFS).
Photo: RA Dwight

Liezel Rudolph, a lecturer for second-year students in Process Geomorphology, aims to reconstruct the glacial history of Marion Island through cosmogenic nuclide dating techniques. She is interested in periglacial geomorphology, a study of how the earth’s surface could be formed by ice actions (freezing and thawing of ice).

Liezel is a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the university and is researching landscape development specifically in cold environments such as Antarctica, the Sub-Antarctic islands, and high mountain areas. “My involvement with periglacial geomorphology is largely due to academic giants who have carved a pathway for South Africans,” says Liezel.

Liezel visited Marion Island for the first time during her honours year in 2011, when she investigated the impact of seals on soil conditions and vegetation. Three years later, she visited Antarctica to study rock glaciers.

The challenge of the job
A workday in Antarctica is challenging. “Our time in the field is very limited, so you have to work every possible hour when the weather is not life-threatening: from collecting soil samples, to measuring soil temperature and downloading data, we measure polygons and test the hardness of rocks. The only way to get the amount of work done, is to work long hours in wind and rain with a positive and competent team! We take turns with chores: the person carrying the notebook is usually the coldest, while the rest of us are stretching acrobatically over rocks to get every nook and cranny measured and documented.”

A typical workday
Liezel describes a typical workday: “Your day starts with a stiff breakfast (bacon and eggs and a bowl of oats) and great coffee! After that comes the twenty-minute dressing session: first a tight-fitting under-layer, a middle layer – sweater and T-shirt, and then the outer windbreaker (or a quilt jacket on an extra cold day). Then you start applying sunscreen to every bit of open face area. Beanie on, sunglasses, two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves. The few kilograms of equipment, one vacuum flask containing an energy drink, one vacuum flask containing drinking water (it would freeze in a regular bottle), and a chocolate bar and piece of biltong for lunch. After this, we drive (on snowmobiles) or fly (in helicopter) to our study area for about eight hours of digging, measuring, downloading, testing and chopping. Back at the base and after a long and tiresome undressing session, we move to the lab with all our data to make sure that it is downloaded safely and captured onto a database. Afterwards, depending on the day of the week, we enjoy a good meal. If you are lucky, such a typical day will coincide with your shower day. We can only shower every second day due to the energy-intensive water production (we have to melt snow) and the sewage system (all the water has to be purified before it could be returned to the environment). Then you grab your eye shield (since the sun is not sinking during summer) and take a nap before the sun continues to shine into the next day.”

Theoretical knowledge broadened 
“Going into the field (whether island or mountains) provides me with an opportunity to test geomorphic theories. Without experience in the field, my knowledge will only be limited to book knowledge. With practical experience, I hope to broaden my knowledge so that I could train my students from experience rather than from a textbook,” says Liezel.

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