Part 1: Drivers of World Change
Today, when I walked into class, I surveyed the whiteboards at the back to look out for quotes. And true enough, there was one that wrote:
"There are essentially 3 ways to cope with change:
a) Make it happen
b) Respond when it happens
c) Be surprised when it happens"
Prof then explained how different people cope differently with change such as, (a) a leader who is proactive and make changes, (b) either a leader or manager who is reactive to change and act on it, or (c) a dud who is blur and apathetic to his surroundings and changes. I asked myself which category I fall into now, and sadly but honestly, I feel I fall into category (b). For whoever who are in this predicament, this will not be for long! I believe that through the moulding of SMU and the environment we are in right now, we will emerge leaders in time to come! But yes, in order to be successful, we have to be the change, and not be a victim of change.
As mentioned in reading 1"Global Drivers Of Change to 2060", it gave us insights to many different change drivers. One I felt unusual to be included in the list was about how our values was one of the drivers. Usually we will think of major changes such as technology, energy, environment, or diseases. After reading the article, I realized how it is through the values of humans that brought about changes to technology and the economy, which in turn drove the world to change. I was enlightened by this insight in the reading. Due to globalization and the rise of information technology, information is widely available and everyone is so well connected to each other. Through the internet, we learn new things and are open to different view points from people, which helps to mould the way we think, the way we understand circumstances and finally the way we act. Every generation's mindset is different from the one before, hence, this driver of change is constantly happening. As more information is being made available, we all expect more and more and hence innovations and changes are happening at a faster pace as we progress.
This then links us to the next quote given in class by Oliver Wendell that was about how once we are educated, we will never go back to the small mindedness we once had. Just think about it, who would ever want to go back to the past where there were no machines to help us with the labour intensive work?
Another interesting point I got from George Bernard Shaw's quote in class was we have to be unreasonable to drive world change. This is because people who are reasonable tend to accept valid explanations, however the unreasonable one will not accept and try to make the necessary changes to the problem/situation. Another eureka moment. Come to think of it, it is true. People try to cover up for their mistakes or situations they are in by giving all sorts of persuasive explanations. If valid, we just let it go and let the problem persist. For example, it may be due to financial difficulties that a certain idea or policy could not be put into action. A reasonable person may accept that. However, an unreasonable person will say this is invalid as we should raise the funds instead of letting the idea go down the drain due to insufficient funds! This is how we as humans can push ourselves and start a new innovation and drive the change!
Reading 2 discussed on how globalization and technological innovations were the main 2 drivers of world change. It then went on to describe how these 2 drivers were actually creating competitiveness in the industries. And in order to stay on top, the firms must remain competitive and continue to innovate. Due to the availability of information these days, an innovation will not remain for long. Soon, other firms will take the new knowledge and innovation to produce a more innovative product. Hence, the only way to stay on the top is to keep going and not stop. This was mentioned as one of the competitive strategies as mentioned in the article. The other was to learn and adapt to the changing society and infrastructure.
This links to the presentation made by Kang Sheng which talked about how competitiveness drives world change. He gave the 12 pillars of competitiveness and gave us the question of whether competitiveness will be the ideal environment for future generations to grow up in. Well, it definitely is! Whether we want it or not, the world is ever changing and it is only going to get more and more competitive! In order to survive, we have to be moulded to be competitive! Hence, to be put in a competitive environment is only how we learn and how we let ourselves be moulded.
Part 2: Change Leadership and Change Management
During the second part of class, Prof gave us another 2 quotes. The first was by Robert F. Kennedy who mentioned: "only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly". This reminded me of last week's lesson, where we talked about how people are uncreative due to the high price of failure. It again reiterate the fact that we have to be daring and be receptive to failure in order to achieve greatness and be successful.
The second quote was by W. Edwards Deming who said that "It is not necessary to change, Survival is not mandatory". Basically it meant that we can refuse to change, but we will not survive. Hence, in order to survive, we have to adapt to changes! We cannot be stuck in our old fashioned conservative ways of doing things. I mean, we can, but we will not be able to go far with it! For example, in the past, top management who wanted to make changes to the firms will just pass down the instructions and make everyone follow them, making employees boycott the firm and rebel.
This can be seen in reading 1 which talked about how it is important to change the way of leading in any organization. Also, it mentioned about now JUST saying that the employees are the most valued assets, but to SHOW it. As people are more educated in the modern day, employees tend to have their own point of views and it must be heard by the top management. Hence, the article gave us figures to show that the most successful companies involved the whole company, from top management to workers on the group when making changes and made sure everyone understood the need to change before regulating the changes. It is only via understanding that employees will change their way in doing a particular job willingly and put in their best effort. Take a very simple example of teaching a child not to touch a hot kettle. If we were to just tell them strictly that they are not to touch the kettle, they will be curious as to why we are prohibiting them and still touch the kettle! However, if we were to educate them and make them understand that it is because they will get scalded, they will listen and not touch it. Same thing goes for employees and top management! Basically, it is to let everyone take ownership of the change and have a say in it.
This was then expounded on when Prof gave us 2 models of how people managed change both the traditional way and the modern way. The traditional way was basically to freeze, unfreeze and then refreeze. Which was basically to have a game plan, and then work on it through the years, refusing to change it. This has pros and cons. The pros being that everyone has a common goal and there is less confusion whereas the con is that the goal was applicable only to the point of time! As the world progresses, so do we and goals must change! This is when the modern model comes in, where there is continuous monitoring and renewal. Though this may lead to more confusion amongst the corporation, it is a necessity to do so in order to keep up to date and to meet changing demands. The confusions can easily be eliminated by managing the change well as mentioned in reading 1.
Reading 4 talked about how the world economy now emphasizes so much on knowledge, where knowledge is the most valuable asset. It is only through knowledge that can help one kick start the process of developing one's ideas and innovate new things. Without the know how, we can only think of the idea, and let it remain only as an idea as we will not have the know how to go about implementing the idea or creating a new innovation. Hence, in order to keep up with the world and not be "just an amusement park and a holiday land for the citizens of more developed countries", we must be able to know how to exploit and make use of the widely available information now through the rise of IT.
I would rate this lesson a 9/10 as the presentations were all very well explained and key topics were touched and expanded on. See you guys next week!
-Thong Yong Sen (Matthew)-
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