Every change, especially for large and old organizations, encounters friction.
“When we broke up the big ship into speedboats, many people in the big ship were dissatisfied, couldn’t see why we had to do it and didn’t realize that if we kept tethering the speedboats to us (the big ship, Chula), new jobs wouldn’t be created. Some workers often claimed to be restricted by the rules and regulations. Those were just “scapegoats”. People who don’t want to change often find excuses for not changing, thinking ‘it’s okay. I’ll get paid anyway.’ This is a challenge for public university management.” thailand universities
“Chula has a large pool of talented people who can be divided into two main categories: good at form, and good at creating results. I give weight to the latter — those who are good at creating results. This group of people will find a way out when they encounter problems. For this group, I will give them freedom, and guidance, but not directions. I’ll give them support and opportunities to work easily and produce good results. Although I may not agree with them 100 percent, if no damage is done, I’ll give them a chance to try. It’s okay for them to try and fail because they will find solutions and solve problems to gain good results.”
For the Chula President, the art and science of management are to use “compassion” and “wisdom” suitable for the type of people and timing.
“When we have a big workload, we use a lot of wisdom. Whenever we depend on a lot of wisdom, our compassion may dwindle, and we may even insult others. But if we use compassion together with wisdom, we’ll develop an understanding – the understanding of the existing system, the responsibilities of our people, the external context of the university that is connected to internal factors. This will make us understand why they didn’t understand what we tried to do, and why they couldn’t do it. We’ll go and help them look for the reasons. If it can be solved, we’ll help them fix it right away.”
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