4th TWC LESSON!

Our 4th TWC lesson! Time passes really fast.. we're already in week 4!

Okay, our lesson this week is about Driver of world change and Change management and change leadership.

Drivers for world change. The underlying question is: What causes change to happen? There are many factors that cause a change to happen.

·     - Environmental drivers

·     - Scientific Discovery and Technology Innovation

·     - Social, Demographic Cultural, Ideological Change

·     - Commercial/Business Innovation

·     - Competition

·     - Globalization

·     - Changing expectations and “tastes” with changing time

For example for Environmental drivers, there are plague epidemics or global warming. For competition, it means that there is a need to come up with new ideas in order to survive hence a change will occur.

Although there are so many drivers for world change, I believe Globalization is the most significant and a key driver of world change. Because of globalization, countries open up to inflow and outflow of ideas which increases the competitiveness of our world. Globalization also leads to more pollution which is an environmental driver. Hence, there are necessary more important drivers which leads to more and more drivers for world change.

We went on to talk about a key issue: Evolutionary change VS Revolutionary Change.

Evolutionary change is an improvement to ideas and processes whereas revolutionary change is creating a whole new concept on how things are being done. The conclusion? Revolutionary change if you want to survive in this era. 

We also talked about disruptive change, whether it is the same as revolutionary change. In general they have the same meaning where both changes the game. The key characteristic about disruptive change is that it is an irreversible change.

An interesting thing we talked about this lesson is that there are 3 groups of people. One group is people who make things happen, another is people who wait for things to happen and lastly the group who wonder what happened. Ultimately, it all boils down to the need to be flexible. When the game changes, there must be a willingness to change.

Next part of our lesson is on Change management and Change leadership. 

Uninformed optimism -> Informed pessimism -> Informed realism -> Completion

This is the time curve that can be applied to all types of management. This is the usual flow of events for a situation and hence how we can manage situations when it arises. 

We also had a discussion on ways to manage changes. For example, should we look back or look forward when making a decision. Or should we make people do things by coercion or collaboration. This shows the difference between someone who is willing to adapt to changes or not. 

We continued to talked about how a change is being carried out. Effectively, there are 2 models or ways on how a change is carried out. 

1) Traditional model: freeze - unfreeze - refreeze

2) Modern model: continuous monitoring and renewal

An example of how the traditional model works is China's policy where the development plans and decisions are being made every 5 years. Modern model is to keep track and improve continuously.

No doubt the traditional model works but there is no model that can last forever. It may be effective in the past but new times require new skills and new models.

Overall, change management and change leadership is vital for survival in this current era.

I rate this lesson 8.5/10 because I have learnt pretty much today and had some interesting pointers as well. :)