Blogger Notes

After 3 weeks of lessons on the evolution in technology and its impact, we delved into a broader topic of the drivers of world change, and how it could/should be led and managed.

Drivers or World Change

We first discussed on the various drivers of world change, such as environmental, scientific discoveries, ideological changes, globalization, etc.

We then learnt about the difference between evolutionary and revolutionary changes, where the performance gap is one of the key factors in accessing the impact of the changes. Disruptive change was also brought up by the prof, and discussed about it briefly.

Our first presenter then brought in the topic of competition as one of the main drivers of change. This is mainly due to the rapid innovations brought about by many around the world. A great debate then erupted within the class, on whether collaboration was still a better way to spur on world change.

The second presenter brought out an interesting concept of food being a driver of change. Due to the rapid urbanization of societies, lesser resources (human or land) are available for agricultural industry. With population explosions happening in many places, this will overthrow the supply and demand of food, resulting in huge inflation of food prices. This may have an adverse effect on the poor, and probably the middle class folks as well should prices inflate way above their spending capabilities. GM food was discussed briefly on how it could potentially solve the problem.

Change Management and Change Leadership

The next topic was on understanding the difference between managing and leading, where both areas need great leadership. The major difference between them would be that leaders are the “visionaries” but might not be good at managing, which a manager would be great at but not necessarily about to have that foresight. We were then introduced to the Pessimism-Time Curve as a tool for managing change.

The third presenter took President Obama and his “Change” campaign as an example of change leadership. He narrowed upon the forthcomings of his leadership, where he failed to win over the Republicans with his ideology. Questions were raised about this lack of inclusion of all Americans, and whether that equated to bad leadership of change despite winning the President title.

The last presenter highlighted the personality differences of the Gen X and Gen Y, and the problems that are surfacing in the working society due to different way of thinking. Managing this change isn’t an easy feat, and discussions were based upon possible solutions as a Gen Y manager to better integrate these people together for a greater cause.

Interesting Observations

I really loved the quote (as mentioned in the beginning of this blog post) about how the winners are the ones that are able to adapt to change. This re-iterates my point in Week 1 about how rapidly the world is changing (especially in the IT industry) and how we will lose our competitive advantage in an INSTANT if we were not able to keep up with the times. It may sound exhausting to do it throughout your life (sadly), but that is just the way the world works now and we have to get used to it.

I was particularly interested in the 2^nd presentation on the possible usage of GM food to curb demand problems. Many in class agreed that it would be beneficial to many, especially to the poor as they are the hardest hit. My opinion, however, is that the middle class population would be the ones that are suffering the most, as they would not be able to benefit from any social help from the government, and yet they have to bear the full costs of inflation with average salaries.

I used to remember reading the news about fake eggs on the loose (click here to read it). Though it was proven to be false, this could really happen when the technology is cheap enough for scammers to employ. Think of the dangers of food that’s modified unethically for the sake of money!!! The middle class population would be the ones that are most likely to be exposed to such supply due to their desperation.

Key Takeaways

Further Discussion

We have always talked about adapting to change. However, most discussion was based upon adapting to futuristic changes, where technologies/ideologies make our life easier. What if the changes were negative, where it brings us back in time?

Conclusion

On top of that, we need to have the foresight to “see the future”, and managing such changes that are happening AND going to happen. Daunting task in my opinion! But nevertheless an important skill that we need to learn to pick up.