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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

nGAP lecturers welcomed by the UFS academic community
2016-06-30

Description: nGAP lecturers group photo Tags: nGAP lecturers group photo

University of the Free State’s newly-appointed nGAP
lecturers. From the left, Neo Mathinya,
Phumudzo Tharaga, and Kelebogile Boleu.

The University of the Free State (UFS) was allocated six positions as part of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) New Generation of Academics Programme (nGAP). Four candidates have filled positions in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of the Humanities and the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences – with two positions still vacant.

According to Minister of Higher Education and Training, Dr Blade Nzimande, nGAP is part of the Staffing South Africa's Universities Framework, which focuses on the expansion of the size and compilation of academic staff at South African universities, especially with regard to transformation. The focus of the programme is the appointment of black and coloured candidates as well as women.

The Department of Soil, Crop, and Climate Sciences in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences welcomed two nGAP lecturers, Phumudzo Tharaga and Neo Mathinya. The Faculty was allocated four positions. Two positions are filled, while two positions in the Department of Animal and Wildlife Sciences are almost ready to be filled with exceptional candidates.

Agrometeorologist with his feet on the ground
Phumudzo Tharaga holds an MSc from the UFS, and is currently pursuing a PhD. Tharaga’s research focuses on quantifying the water use efficiency of sweet cherry orchards under different climate conditions in the Eastern Free State. Tharaga will offer his students a wealth of practical experience, which he began accumulating while working at ABSA as an agro-meteorologist, before moving on to become a senior scientist at the South African Weather Service. In 2015, Tharaga became a research technologist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and then returned to the UFS as an nGAP candidate at the beginning of 2016.  

Description: Beynon Abrahams, nGap lecturer  Tags: Beynon Abrahams, nGap lecturer

Beynon Abrahams, nGap lecturer
at the Faculty of Heath Sciences
Department of Basic medicine

Motivated scholar turned academic
Neo Mathinya, who hails from Taung in the North West, has made the UFS her home. She received both her undergraduate and honours degrees from the university. Apart from joining the department as a lecturer under the nGAP initiative, she is currently studying for her MSc in Soil Physics. She will continue with this research when she comes to her PhD. Mathinya’s research focuses on soil salinity - the process of increasing salt content - which affects the ability of plants to take up water, a process, known as osmotic stress. She will investigate the effects of irrigation water salinity on the grain yield and quality of malt barley.

Researcher with a passion for crime prevention
Kelebogile Boleu joined the Department of Criminology in the Faculty of Humanities, with a fresh take on diversion and crime prevention. Boleu holds a BA Criminology (Hons) and is now pursuing her Master’s degree. She worked for NICRO a non-profit organisation specialising in social crime prevention and offender reintegration, with programmes that prevent young and first-time offenders from re-offending, thus reducing crime. Boleu said that her practical experience makes her lectures to third-year criminology students exciting. Boleu’s research focuses on analysing the value of pre-sentencing reports in assisting adjudicators to make well-balanced judgments in cases.   

Research with a winning plan for fight against breast cancer
Beynon Abrahams joined the Department of Basic Medical Sciences in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Abrahams holds a BSc, BSc (Hons), and MSc in Medical Biosciences from the University of the Western Cape. Abrahams’ Master’s research focused on breast cancer, research on which he is building in his PhD. This doctoral research involves the exploration of P-glycoprotein, a protein expressed on cancer cell and responsible for multi-drug resistance in cancer treatment. The aim of this research is to develop a therapeutic drug treatment strategy that will improve breast cancer patient survival outcomes. Abrahams’s greater vision is to look at conventional cancer therapeutic regimens, to find ways in which they can be improved.

The nGAP initiative offers these young lecturers an opportunity for growth and development as academics, while providing them with opportunities they would have not have been exposed to otherwise.

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