Asean-EC Management eyes ‘3-tier' concept
By Azaraimy HH

Director of Asean-EC Management Centre delivers his speech

P Palaniappan conducts the seminar

Some of the officers participating in yesterday's seminar

Quoting the great philosopher Aristotle, the Director of Asean-EC Management Centre, Abd Ghani bin Pg Hj Metussin during a seminar said, "change is natural - it happens through the natural course of things and is necessary in order for things to fulfill their potential."

The Asean-EC Management Centre is working to form the so-called "3 tiers of services" which has been developed through careful analysis of the previous year's ASEAN-EC International K-economy Conference, the director revealed yesterday.

Tier 1 serves to enhance the level of competence of the local SME manpower capabilities, whilst the Tier 2 line of services is oriented towards "harmonising and interfacing" between government services and the private sector to increase transparency.

The 3rd tier meanwhile will focus on the regional front, by organising regional cooperation through a series of international conferences and conventions for Asean countries and Dialogue partners.

"The highlight and major event for the year 2004 would be our Asean-EC International Convention on HRD (Human Resource Development) and an Exposition with the theme of 'Nurturing HRD in new economy'. That (event) is going to be held from the 7th to 9th of September this year at the ICC," Hj Ghani stated.

He was speaking at the first seminar organised by the Asean-EC Management Centre for this year, yesterday. The two-day seminar, which ends today, was entitled "Managing Organisational Change - Leveraging the E-Initiatives".

The seminar was designed with the realisation that "Change Management" is the key subject to consider in the implementation of any e-initiative strategy and also in response to the feedback given by participants of the Conference on K-Economy, which organised by the centre in October last year.

Change Management is a subject matter that is currently sweeping the public as well as private organisations. It is not new, but has been evolving as a discipline over the last few years.

The programme addresses the changes being faced by the modern public and private sectors. It is expected to leverage the current e-government initiatives as discussion points to facilitate applications to "real world" change initiatives.

Globalisation, free trade, the increased movement of people and goods on a scale never before known, changing social attitudes and new technologies have all contributed to the challenges now facing policy makers, executives and managers alike.

The programme will also help participants understand the process of change and why change is needed, so that they can appreciate what it takes to make change happen. The objectives of the programme are among others to understand the nature and theories of change, change management processes to an e-business implementation, obstacles to change as well as to learn how to communicate the change and deal with resistors to change.

The seminar was attended by Heads of Departments as well as senior executives and officials from both the public and private sectors. As for today, the Centre has received at least 25 confirmed participants for the seminar.

To conduct the programme, the Management Centre had invited Mr P Palaniappan, an experienced consultant with many years involvement in training, consulting project management, leadership, strategic management and change management for companies with regional operations in the Indonesian State Government as well as the Asia Pacific.

During the first day, the facilitator covered several topics including "Business Changes", "Nature of Change", "Planning Change Initiatives" and one case study.

Included in today's seminar are "Implementing Change Initiatives", "Enrolling Others in Change", "Making Change Last", "Action Planning" and a second case study.

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin