Change is permanent. Change is around us. Change can be revolutionary. Change can be evolutionary. Today, it is not the strongest nor the most intelligent that survive. It is the one who is most adaptable to change. Hence, specialisation once superior is now flawed. A weakness. We need to diversify to cope with changes. Professor brought up an interesting concept: One can either adapt to the world, or have the world adapt to himself. The latter is one that garners progress in humanity, for he rejects what he sees in the world. However, I warn, that those who fail to have the world adapt to him should always remember to pick himself up, adapt to the world, before trying to change the world again. It is the resistance to accept failure, that hinders all human progress ultimately, but it is never smooth sailing.
Drivers of world change, to me is a catalyst of human progress. It accelerates the effect that affects our everyday life. Sometimes, it has passive impacts on individuals causing us to have divert our attention. Therefore, we need to equip ourselves with skills to better handle the future. As stated in the first reading, society must anticipate the future. We start off by looking at what is present, what is known, what is the unknown, predict the future and accept any possiblity. Society must work according to assumptions as we make judgements, trial and error over future issues. Nonethless, we are at the mercy of wildcard scenarios that may change the world. September 11 attack, the tsunami that took out Fukushima Daichi, SARS... The list is never ending... Never should we abandon our ability to adapt change.
If we take a step back and look at what we have, humanity is definitely more able to handle change. Technology facilitated the exchange of ideas, the spread of information, the ability to simulate and better handle impact. Solutions comes up at a shorter rate, as humanity attempts to seek the holy grail to provide us with the little answers in life.
Second part of the session involves change management and change leadership.
Professor categorised mankind into three categories of birds, base on how they view change:
1) The Eagle, one who sees the big picture and make things happen.
2) Ostrich, one who bury his head and be ignorant about change
3) Dodo bird, one who gets eliminated by change
I propose to have another category between the eagle and the ostrich:
The Crow: one who doesn't see the big picture but adapts to change to survive.
Makes me wonder, how can we influence those below the Eagle to become one? (Food for thought.)
It is true, change is not necessary for survival is not mandatory, how dull can your life be if you preach the following. Without a doubt, society needs a leader for change. The interesting concept brought up was the fact that a leader is a visionary, one who provides direction, lead the change and manage the change. However, a visionary is not necessarily a leader for he is one who has the idea, but not the guts to bring the dream to life.
I would not deny that, taking the first step to change the world is never easy. Along the way, it is human nature for us to have our exuberance for change in life to decrease over time. We can manage change in two approaches brought up by professor: 1) The traditional approach - Freeze, unfreeze and refreeze. 2) Modern Approach - Continous monitoring and renewal. I believe the latter, although proven effective via modern systems, require prudence over when to renew the changes. For example the need to assign a timeframe to judge the effectivness of any new changes adopted.
Managing change largely rely on managing human ourselves. Never easy. Like the first reading for session 4b: "Human Management: Herding Cats" the style of human management must change as today's information age rely on knowledge workers. They are different from industrial workers (people who do what they are told). Knowledge workers are thinkers, they have their own opinion they have their own principles that one must respect, to get the fullest out of them. Its like herding cats, each is independant of their own thoughts. Not accepting this fact will only attract destructive office politics, and a management can lose their most important asset: Humans.
Just like the presentation brought up in one of the presentation, generation X and generation Y people are totally different. To deal with the differences one can adopt management style brought up in the second reading of session 2, directing and managing world change. Instead of a top down approach that corporations usually have, they can be a side by side approach where managers and employees start to work hand in hand to evaluate and recommend changes. This is a more holistic approach, however we need to maintain the status quo of hierachy because we are not trying to seek common consensus. The manager can seek advice from senior employees, however, he should ultimately make the final decision and be accountable for the changes. If a company attempts to seek common consensus, we will end up with a inefficient management system that ends up in a stalemate.
Ultimately, to lead change and to manage change, commitment is the breaking point of all these. We can sum it up with one equation: Commitment = Aspiration + Determined Action + Accepting failures ( Fail fast, fail cheap, fail early)
Rating: 6/10
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