Session 4: Drivers of World Change // Change Management and Change Leadership

Brief Overview/Summary:

Session 4 was something that made me feel very perplex as 'Change Management and Change Leadership' did not seem like a topic that would be covered in a TWC class. However, I was greatly intrigued by how this is actually an area that we have already been covering all along except that in today's session it was in greater detail.

As usual, here are some highlights through the lesson:

• Management VS Leadership VS Visionary

• "If everyone consumed as much energy as the average Singaporean and US resident, the world's oil reserves would be depleted in 9 years" - http://assets.panda.org/downloads/101223_energy_report_final_print_2.pdf  This quote was talked about during the lecture and I thought this was a interesting fun fact although it does not paint a very nice picture on Singapore's part 
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson who is the first author to wrote a book to create awareness on the detriments that mankind is creating in the time we spend on Earth.
• The concept of singularity
• Coping with Drivers of Change --> Changing expectations and tastes with changing times
• Incremental/Evolutionary (slow) Change VS Revolutionary (fast) Change VS Disruptive Change (a new way of thinking that makes whatever before REDUNDANT)
• Therefore, disruptive can both be evolutionary or revolutionary (this deals with speed only)
  - “Disruptive change is an irreversible change in your expected future” - Doug Berger (eg. digital photography & horse drawn carriages and cars & digital media vs print)
• Presentation on the Rise of China & India by Junhao and The Rise of Offshoring by Nicolas
• "Who Moved my Cheese?" by Yun Feng, Top Companies and The Leadership Factors by Valerie and Coca Cola by Alvin

Interesting Observations & Ideas/ Key Take away points:

• The quote that states how Singapore was also involved in polluting the environment in a large scale. This is quite a shock since Singapore is so very small in relative to the USA so why is it that both these two countries who differ so greatly in size are lumped together? I decided to take a further look at WWF report and this is what I have found. The WWF report mainly emphasizes on the goal of having 100% renewable energy by the year 2050 which is about 36 years from now. In 2050, I will be 56 years old! The report thus analyses and questions that while it is an ambitious goals, can it be a reality in this short span of time. From what I understand, renewable energy is where the energy source is naturally replenished and hence can be considered to be infinite, unlike burning of fossil fuels which are finite. In Singapore where the Energy Market Authority (EMA) is responsible for this aspect, it has stated that renewable energy in Singapore is capable of sustaining 10% of our electircal usage by 2025. This definitely does not coincide with WWF's plan of being 100% renewable energy efficient by 2050 as much more time is needed for this to happen.
• Under the category of environement as a driver of world change, "germs" was one of the factors that was brought up and prof mentioned that water and sanitation are the most important aspects in improving life expectancy, etc. I have not done any research to see how true this is but I would feel that besides water and sanitation, I would think access to food should also be included in the list. This is because as we all know, human beings will not be able to survive without water for 3 days and food for 7 days. Therefore I included food as another factor for the life expectancy to increase as people do die from malnutrition as well.
• Prof also mentioned in the slides about how all these drivers of change eventually would lead to a change in our expectations and "taste". I felt that this was more of a social problem as I am reminded of how my friends & I would discuss about what is an ethical time to send my boss/prof/colleagues/ an email or text? In response, is the recipient obliged to reply instantly? What about on weekends/during holidays? I feel that in this era where we have to cope with the many changes around us, we have to be mindful of how these changes might be "overtaking" our logical minds in that sense we expect instantaneous response 24/7 with the invention of emails and texts without considering the fact that people are human beings who require rest as well. I think besides coping with technological change, we have to properly examine our expectations and manage them well too.
• “Man's mind, once stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.”  - Oliver Wendell Holmes
  This quote stood out most to me as I think it is most applicable towards my attitude in TWC. I have never been one who pays much attention to technology in detail as we do in TWC but I think over the course of the past 3 lectures, I begin to see technology in a whole new dimension because of the great exposure by Prof as well as some insightful additional comments made by my classmates who share their knowledge about this field in class.
•  The video on Steve Jobs (Life's Changing Agent) is beautiful summarised by this quote:
  "Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forward". It was a really inspiring video for me especially when week 5 draws near and all of us start feeling the crunch of the workload from school.  
• Last but not least, I feel that I liked reading 2 (Drivers of Change: Globalization, Technology and Competition. Asian Development Outlook 2003) of session 4A the most. It mentions the 14 different drivers of world change and as I was reading, I could identify a particular event that relates to the given factor. This particular reading consolidated the current affairs in the world into something that I could see as a big picture which can therefore be classified as drivers of world change.

Further Issues for Discussion:

• I feel that the issue of singularity should have been further discussed in this session. Singularity is defined as the hypothetical moment where humans will no longer be able to keep up with the exponential increase of information available. As today's lecture was on change management, I thought it was a missed opportunity for Prof to further explain to us how do we actually really cope with this in detail. This "hypothetical" moment may not be very far from us now and as we can see elderly having problems coping with smart phones, etc how are we as the elders of the future going to cope with the issue of singularity. I would have loved to hear Prof give us a real life story of himself facing situations like this whether is it not knowing how to operate a new washing machine or figuring out the works of the newest kindle :) It would have been interesting!
• Additionally, I think that more can be discussed on Who Moved My Cheese. I think it is a simple analogy that can be applied in many different aspects. Our TA Sylvester has sent this to us and I look forward to inputting some of my comments with regards to the text upon completion of it. 

Personal Ratings for the Session: 

I would rate this session a 7/10 as it gets really taxing after 4 weeks of squeezing 2 chapters into one. Hopefully session 5 where we can concentrate on a single topic will be better and less tiring for all of us :)