Miriam Pabón understands communication is vital to maintain strategic perspective between work teams
SANTO DOMINGO. -In times of great uncertainty it is difficult to formulate strategies. Leaders must learn the past and try to engineer the future, because they cannot draw on past experiences to address events that no one has seen before.
This is how he understood it Miriam Pabón, Dean of the Graduate School of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (UPPR), who highlighted that en the current scenario, it is vital that engineering leaders maintain good communication with their team work because that's when a strategic perspective is most needed.
"The fundamental elements that engineers must have to face the challenges in this new concept of resilient leadership are communication, time and space planning," said Pabón.
He said that the latest edition of the Harvard Business Review magazine was dedicated to how to get out of this crisis as leaders and engineers, in which it was highlighted that a solution used by leaders is strategic perspectives, which consists of build ideas about the future to anticipate and better prepare for possible changes.
"The purpose is to help your organization imagine multiple futures in a way that allows them to feel and adapt to change, using different management tools," said Pabón during a discussion with those interested in the master's degree in Management Engineering, a program that is carried out in agreement between Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC) and UPPR.
Among the resources used in the strategic perspective, the dean of the UPR highlighted that there is backcasting, that is, identifying a path towards a preferred future to avoid steps towards a negative future and contingency planning, which prepares to the participants for a specific event.
During the talk "Leadership for change: role of engineers in times of pandemic", Pabón mentioned crisis simulations, which help to prepare possible real critical situations through studying a specific future, analyzing responses to the scenario presented and documenting actions.
Other essential tools, according to the dean of the UPPR, are the horizon scan, where the participants look for weak signs of changes in the present with an eye to monitoring their development and evaluating their potential impact; scenario planning, prediction, trend analysis and games of rules, where participants work on a simulated conflict.
The meeting was preceded by Alba Henríquez, coordinator of Management Engineering from INTEC, who moderated a dialogue with those associated with the master's degree.
About the master's degree in Management Engineering
The Master in Management Engineering seeks to prepare engineers and other professionals in managerial and responsible positions in technological and scientific organizations, in industry, commerce and public administration.
It helps the professional to develop the knowledge, skills and criteria that allow them to become an effective manager committed to the productivity, competitiveness and success of the companies and projects in which they participate.