Drivers of World Change, Change Management and Change Leadership

“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.”

This quote by George Bernard Shaw is true in the sense that the leaders of change are usually the ones who try to change the mindsets of the people to think like them. Those who adapt themselves to the world offer little to change and progress and may even cause stagnation.

We began session 4 with the drivers of world change, namely environmental, scientific discovery and globalization. Without these factors, humans may not be as motivated to develop quickly. Take the article on the Zambian construction industry for example, whereby the Zambians have been happily managing the industry using their own traditional methods. Without globalization and the influx of foreign investors, the Zambians would not have been motivated to adapt to changes, such as improvements in communications technology, and the Zambian construction industry would have stagnated, with the people satisfied with how things were going along.

We also talked about the types of changes - evolutionary and revolutionary. Evolutionary change is basically a gradual change or improvement, where for example a horsecart is gradually improved until it becomes the fastest around. A revolutionary change on the other hand goes through a huge leap in improvement, for example the car being invented at the time the fastest horsecart is made. The invention of the car totally eclipses the horsecart, and phases it out immediately. Most businesses these days are hoping to create revolutionary changes in their respective industries.

The 4 readings for this week were pretty interesting, with 2 forecasting the possible futures in various categories. What caught my attention was the prediction that the number of terrorists would decrease due to the increase of job availability in the Middle East. However, their impact would be greater, due to the improvements in science and technology, giving the terrorists the technology to create a much larger impact on the communities. As today is the 10th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks, we are able to see and remember the impacts and changes a single act of terrorism can affect the world. Airport security is now heightened to levels that are many times higher than 10 years before. However, I do not agree that terrorism would decrease simply due to the increase in the number of jobs in the Middle East. First of all terrorism not only occur in the Middle East, but parts of Europe and Asia as well. Therefore, it is pretty frightening to imagine what terrorists can do in 15 years time, especially with the improvements in scientific technology. It is important that terrorist groups do not get their hands on such technologies, otherwise the impacts will be devastating.

The second half of the lesson was on change management and change leadership. Leaders are the ones who identify the problems that we face, and they are the ones who come up with the solutions to these problems. Managers are the ones who enforce these solutions, making sure that things work out perfectly. In some cases, some leaders can also manage well. An example would probably be Steve Jobs, who is involved at almost every level in the company.

http://www.metronetiq.com/archives/7_regional_collaboration/d_champions_change_agents/

This image would sum up the characteristics of a leader of change, with those of the leaders on the right, and that of the followers on the left.

I would rate this lesson a 9/10 as I've learnt how to view change from different perspectives. It is also important to constantly change ourselves, not only to adapt to other people, but also to adapt people to us.