TWC Group 22 Session 4 Blogpost
Brief Overview:
First half: Drivers of World Change
The prof began the class with a statement that if everyone
in the world consumed energy like the average Singaporean and American, the
world’s energy reserves would be depleted in 9 years. The point was proven that
the finger-pointing blame game when it comes to cleaning up our acts has to
end. We then moved into the various drivers of world change including
globalization, technology, innovations, environmental drivers, changing tastes
and competition. Drivers of change exist if the conditions in which we carry out
our activities are changed. We also spoke revolutionary and evolutionary
change, one being radical while the other one gradual.
Second half: Change Management and Change Leadership
Now that we know that these types of changes exist, how do
manage it? Can we lead change? These two concepts were discussed in the second
half of class. We first defined what the difference between management and
leadership is. Leaders lead the people, managers organize and execute. How
would people respond to changing realities? Prof introduced us to the
traditional freeze-unfreeze-refreeze model of change and its modern
counterpart, the continuous monitoring and renewal model. The old model worked
better before changes took place at the pace we are so used to today. Now that
change has accelerated, everyone’s got to be ready to change at the drop of a
hat, thus the continuous change model.
Interesting Observations/ Key Takeaway points:
What I’ve noticed when reviewing our materials for this
session is that drivers for world change rarely ever work alone. Just as with
everything else, the drivers are all simply different factors that affect the
direction we are going to take with change. When we were discussing the various
types of drivers in class such as competition and technological advancements,
it is safe to say that these two function in a vicious cycle. Companies and
countries all need to stay ahead of the competition. One of the ways is through
technological advancement. As one entity blazes ahead in the tech race, the
other companies strive to keep up. The drivers of world change are practically
interlinked in this example.
Managing change and leading change. The key to understanding
these separate concepts is first to understand what management and leadership
means. To put in analogical terms, the leader is the commander of the army. He
oversees the long terms strategies involved to ultimately win the war. He is
the man in charge of making all the big decisions and shapes the direction his
army will follow. Managers are quite like the platoon and squad leaders found
within the army. They will receive orders from higher up and would take steps
to organize the troops, train them and carry out the objectives laid down by
the generals to ensure that the commander’s strategy ultimately succeeds. To
lead is to determine the direction and choices the organization is going to
take. To manage is to take steps to achieve the goals set out by the leaders.
From what I gained through the readings and the videos that
the professor showed in class, the key to leadership in any matter is to
inspire people to join you. How do we inspire people to work? If the people are
expected to simply follow orders, they end up feeling like cogs in a machine,
unappreciated. Once you make them feel part of the decision making process,
they feel a sense of responsibility to get the work done (once incentives are
thrown in along with the responsibility, trust me on this one) and they work
with the management to get the work done. Communication between the leaders or
managers and the staff is also vital when it comes to getting anything,
including change, done. In the Lone Nut Dancing video, it is safe to conclude
that the first follower of the (formerly) lone dancer would not have stayed had
the dancer not appreciated him and treated him as an equal. That’s a lesson
right there. Look down on others and others won’t look at you again. As for the
video about the little Indian boy leading the push to get the tree off the
road, he led by example. Through his actions, he gave out the message along the
lines of “I’m going to make the change.” He didn’t really bother whether he
received help or not, his sheer determination to make a change made others in
the video realize that while they were all just sitting around complaining all
of them who were in a better position to help refused to do anything. I call
this leadership by shame.
Discussion topics:
This response that I am posting here will be posted on
Facebook as well.
In Eric Sim’s presentation, he posed the question: “How have
the values of people changed from one generation to another with advent of
greater connectivity? (ie, our parents and us.)
My response to this would be that the values of people in
our generation have changed greatly from the values practiced during our parent’s
generation. Please let me know if I missed anything out as most of my examples
would be from personal observation.
The lives of our generation can be considered a lot less
personal compared to our parents’ generation. If we find anything, no matter
how minute such as “look what I am having for lunch” we would not hesitate to
take a picture of it, edit it on Instagram if need be, and post it on social
networking sites such as Facebook. Our
parents’ generation can be considered more reserved in that aspect that they
don’t go about telling their entire circle of friends about most of the things
we post of Facebook.
Trolls are people who like to stir up trouble by using shock
value in their comments. I’m quite certain that some of these black sheep exist
during our parent’s generation but back then there was no social media. Now
that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter exist, these people can hide behind
pseudonyms and safety of anonymity and carry out the hatemongering on even
greater scales. One example in this link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kFNYuteAjA)
posts comments such as “rot in piss” on people’s memorial pages on Facebook.
When he’s confronted during the video, he justifies his comments by saying that
he’s within his rights and that Facebook is an open platform for people to
voice their opinions. The availability of anonymity sometimes brings out the
worst in some of us. The same applies to the rest of us. As we sit behind the
safety of our computers, we don’t receive the body language and tone cues from
the people we converse with online. With this we become more vocal and say
things we tend not to say in real life.
Finally, our generation is far more reactive to scandals. We
human beings tend to react with emotion to certain events and won’t hesitate to
comment and share things we deem should be public knowledge. Social media gives
its users access to sources of information that people deem important and can
spread viral information like wildfire. http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/05/yet-another-food-safety-scandal-in-china-now-rat-meat-masquerades-as-lamb/
This link is regarding fox, mink and rat meat being sold as lamb meat in
Shanghai. Most users reacted in disgust and outrage while others have posted
methods they believe can help them identify the real meat. During our parents’
generation when no social media existed, these events could only travel via the
news or by word of mouth/ telephone. Clearly there is a marked difference in
the reaction time of the 2 generations.
Our generation shows a little less restraint in comments,
share a lot more personal infor than our parents will ever do and receive and
react to scandalous news a lot faster than our parents’ generation.
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