The first half of the lesson was about drivers of world change. To start out, we discussed about some drivers of world change. There were some that caught my eye, such as Germs as well as competition. Next to them were certain quotes by famous people of the past, where the class debated on what they truly meant.
We moved on to the readings for 4a after that, reading 1 talked about the various drivers of change to 2060, some of which were similar to those already mentioned in the powerpoint slides, but there were others as well like food security and demographics. Demographics is becoming particularly important, as Prof Shahi mentioned in class, in 2007 almost 50% of the global population were living in urban areas. The demands of people living in urban areas are certainly different from those in rural areas and this will definitely drive a change in the world, possibly to reduce wastage of resources for sustainability.
The individual oral presentations were next, Maneeha gave a presentation about how carbon dioxide may actually not be the cause of global warming, which many of us had extreme reactions towards, but it was a very interesting perspective to bring in nonetheless.
The second half of the lesson was about change management and change leadership. A leader is the one who has a vision, a leader does not have to be detail oriented, but a manager does. For responding to change, Prof Shahi talked about 3 options for change, we can be spontaneous and make it happen, or simply react when it happen, or wonder what happen only when it strikes us. We also discussed briefly about how to lead a change and how to manage one, in which a pessimism time curve was shown.
We were supposed to talk about the readings next, but many of us did not have the chance to read the articles in detail so a very brief summary about every reading was given instead. The last oral presentation followed about leadership and change management. In my opinion, I felt that if change management was being promoted, the entire context of it is meant to be surrounded by innovation and to be receptive to ideas. If a leader or manager chooses to be closed minded, they are simply contradicting the entire concept of what they are trying to do thus they are bound to fail. As 4b reading 1 showed, 75% of all organizational change programs fail, largely due to the fact of employees feeling left out and lacking the motivation as a result. If such the ideas of such employees are well received rather than being thrown out of the window, they will feel a sense of belonging as they are contributing something.
Interesting Observations and Ideas
One issue got me thinking deeply, it was about Germs and how it was a major driver of change, namely the black plague, responsible for both the dark ages and renaissance of Europe. However, it got me thinking about how different societies tend to undergo major changes whenever something disastrous happens. For example, the great depression of the 1930s, led to the rise of the keynesian theory, which gave governments a solution for economic downturns, though it has been proven in the 1970s that it does not always work for all instances. It also gave a reason for the United States to join World War 2, beginning the process of turning them into the superpower of the world. When darkness engulfs you, it is only the beginning and not the end, the light(or in this case change) will come eventually, I inadvertently thought about this phrase.
I thought about China as well, how it is now booming after spending most of last century as a communism driven and closed off country. It appeared very similar to the case of the dark ages and renaissance of Europe. The both of them were cases of falling stars, closed perspective, not interested in learning from others, or investing in new ideas. After opening up, they profited immensely, Europe became a dominant power and China is now a threat to the throne held by United States. Does this mean that in order to have changes shift hugely in our favour, we have to become falling stars first for a prolonged period of time? I would think that such cases no longer apply to our modern society, where it is increasingly competitive and it will be very difficult to catch up once you have fallen behind.
Another interesting observation was that in 4a, reading 4, our common perception of Africa would be that the countries there are largely undeveloped, and even if they are, they are lagging behind the rest of the developed countries. However, what I found out was that Zambia was developing very fast, ideas and changes happening there were occuring over a span of about 10 years, whereas it took Singapore about 40 years to do so. This could be because Zambia had many models of countries which successfully developed to follow, or because it had many endowments such as land as its main resource which Singapore lacked. Some of the drivers of changes affecting Zambia were also affecting other developed nations, such as sustainable construction, skills training and development for staff, as well as making the supply chain management more efficient.
Key Takeaways
The phrase by George Bernard Shaw "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." was one that really stuck onto me. I finally understood why there were times in the past during projects, when my group decided to ignore my idea for another person's proposition, simply because he was being unreasonable and did not want to give in. When you become unreasonable, you can force people to think about things in a different way. There will be times when using such approach will be more effective than being reasonable instead, such as when the group is going round in circles during discussion and it is imperative to reach a conclusion fast. However, drawing a line on when to use or not to use such an approach is difficult and requires practice as well as experience.
Knowing about the pessimism time curve in 4b can really help in the process of doing projects. During the uninformed optimism, it is important that we still keep our feet on the ground. When the informed pessimism arrives, possibly due to the realization of how much work actually has to be put into the project, we have to strive on as it will only get better. As informed realism arrives and our pessimism is reduced, we will know that the finishing point is near.
Issues for Discussion
I was really intrigued by Maneeha’s presentation on global warming as it offered another perspective from a different school of thought. Although some time was already was already devoted among the class to discuss the topic, perhaps we could go more in depth into the topic and find out about the other school of thoughts on global warming.
Personal ratings for session
I rate this lesson a 9, I was able to grasp all the concepts being mentioned in class and there were many interesting issues brought up. The presentations also provoked plenty of discussion among the class and I got to hear to opinions of many others.
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