Channy Nop recently attended the Global Leadership Courses by the Kerusso Institute for Global Leaders in Cambodia. He was part of the first cohort in Cambodia to complete this program. The following is his testimony and experience with the course.
Let me briefly share my testimony related to the Global Leadership Courses. It was my pleasure and a blessing to have had the chance to be a part of the course.
I have received a Masters of Business Management and a Bachelors of Economics in the past. I have taken many management and leadership courses through these programs. However, most of these classes were too broad and general in their subject matter for me to implement them in real life work.
However, in the Kerusso Institute Program, I found that most of the topics are more relevant to my life and work. The information is more practical than what I learned from universities. The classes are taught to a small group of leaders from similar backgrounds, this small setting is a good fit for us. The leaders can learn from the theories, and from each other’s real experiences. We reflected together how we can apply these theories to our work.
During the courses, I already started to implement what I was learning in my organization (I also combined other theories that I learned from other courses or universities when applicable).
Specifically, my organization is in the process of preparing a new strategic plan for upcoming 3 years. I feel that our organization was going to die in the near future if we did not change something in being more creative and flexible to the real context. I found that we had become too mature in the model we were in. The staff were comfortable working the way that they were and did not want to change.
The Servant, Strategic and Adoptive Leadership courses taught me some new tools and theories that I found to be useful to my situation. I started to think how I could use these in my organization. I started to plan workshops with all of my staff, using the tools I learned from this program. My goal is to get everyone who is involved with organization (staff, board, donors, and beneficiaries) on the same level with a new strategic plan. Particularly, the staff and the board need to think more creatively and be adoptive of the changes. I do not want them to just be happy with where they are comfortable.
Below are the stages of change in the organization:
Stage 1
I started with the staff. As a servant-leader, I want to make sure that the staff feels empowered, valued, and important in the team. The leader is not the only “hero” in the organization. We have reflected from a Biblical perspective about different functions of the body of Christ, and how everyone’s role is to build up His Church. We wanted them to know more about themselves, and what their gifts and the callings are. We want them to know how these fit and contribute to the strategic plan of Sunshine Cambodia.
Stage 2
We want everyone to step out of their comfort zone, and visualize the stage of the organizational cycle we are now in. We want to create the atmosphere of change and adoption. I used a tool called the Boston Matrix on Organizational Lifecycle Transitions to do this. After using this matrix, most of the staff at Sunshine Cambodia realized that we are usually in the stages of harvesting and low production. This tool has helped everyone to realize the truth about our organizational, project, and program life cycles. We were able to create some urgency amongst the staff and show them the importance of completing each stage.
Stage 3
We used the following tools for internal and external analyses at our organization:
- SWOT Analysis: Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat
- 7 S’s Analysis: Strategy, Structure, System, Shared Values, Style, Staff, and Skill
- PESTLE Analysis: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Regulations, and Environmental
- TOWS Analysis/ Strategies: SO, WO, ST, and WT.
We used these analysis tools to get some ideas for the strategic planning stage, which will be held in the near future.
I taught our staff these tools the same way that I was taught during the Global Leadership Course training. I showed them the theories and the tools first. Once they understood these, we started to apply them to the real work process. We did training and planning at the same time. I made sure that the training was simple so that the staff could use the same training with the children and parents. This allows us to get their input on the plan, as well.
Finally, I want to say thank you Tim and Jay, and everyone for your hard work to conduct this useful course for us. It helped me a lot to build more confidence in my leadership roles. I can help our staff and board members of Sunshine, and other organizations that I am a part of, with the training, as well.
May God bless you all.
