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Nifeli Stewart started her career in the airline industry in 1986, moving into strategic
roles both in marketing and strategic planning. Her 11 years in the industry was
marked by significant market changes, exciting competitive challenges, successful
strategic results and positive deep learning. She left the industry however reflecting
on the following:
- How can you help people (collectively) think through the implications of strategies
beyond their own territory?
- How can you retain and pass on knowledge from ‘organisational’ experience to avoid
its loss when people move on or into other roles?
In 1997 she moved into the manufacturing industry as a Research and Strategic Planning
Manager. This role was involved with significant changes such as mergers, acquisitions,
year 2000 compliance and cultural development programs. Her time here taught her
that skills were transferable, the content varied but the principles were the same.
In this role she was confronted with the questions of:
- Being Congruent: How do you get ‘busy’ management teams to understand the importance
of committed effort in redesigning and creating infrastructures that create congruency
between words and actions and hence build a climate of trust?
- The Relevance of Organisational Values: What role do they play in organisations?
How do you help people to connect to their own values before they can participate
and accept organisational values?
Her questions led her to her post graduate studies in the ISM program of the school
of Applied Science. Her research focus was on understanding the role that organisational
values play in an individual’s work life and on an organisation’s culture. It was
here that she was introduced to the concept of Organisational Learning and the disciplines
this entailed.
In 2002 she resigned from full time employment to start a family and faced the biggest
challenge of all, ‘Identity’. Who are we when our sense of pride and accomplishment
is wrapped up in your ‘professional identity’? This period led her to explore the
role of values in her own life, and hence the AVI tool. It has been a tool of immense
value not only in her own life but with others that she has worked with. In 2003
she returned to complete her Masters in Applied Science (Innovation & Service
Management) with her research focused on understanding the conditions that foster
learning and change for individuals and organisations, something that she is very
passionate about. Her research insights form the basis of her approach and philosophy
for success.
In 2006, still in a state of ‘transition’, between full time ‘career’ and part time
‘contracting’ she is applying her research insights to the design of a ‘change communication
and management’ course at RMIT which she will be teaching in second semester. An
experience I am sure will lead to further questions and explorations in the name
of learning and living your own values congruently.
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