"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change." - Charles Robert Darwin
" 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." - George Bernard Shaw
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory" - W. Edwards Deming
According to Prof's slides, there are quite a handful of drivers of world change, namely, Environmental drivers, Scientific Discovery and Technology Innovation, Social, Demographic, Cultural, Ideological Change, Commercial/Business Innovation, Competition, "Globalization", Changing Expectations and "Tastes" with Changing Times. To me, the most prominent driver of world change, is ourselves, the people. We are constantly demanding more and more from technology, pushing for innovation and change and increasing our expectations of the world. Hence, to me, all the factors mentioned above are more of ways that people use to drive for change and not the drivers of change itself.
The first guest speaker, James Lee, spoke about climate change and renewable energy. Some drivers of world change that he mentioned were globalization, pollution, dumping in the sea, global warming, and ultimately humans (which is what i strongly agree on!). Overall I felt that his article and presentation itself tilted a little towards the idea of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) vs being profit-driven. The first issue to take note of was - Should firms and businesses place greater emphasis on the environment than making profits? Some thoughts were that the ultimate aim of a company is always to make profit, some others thought that it is possible to practice CSR and at the same time be profitable, such as The Body Shop and Starbucks. Another issue raised was - how can 3rd world countries participate in the global initiative of saving the environment? We discussed that there was the Indonesia - Norway collaboration, and also that 1st world should lead 3rd world countries in initiatives to save the environment instead of exploiting them and further. What i feel is that it is highly difficult for 3rd world countries to participate in any global initiative as they are facing too much poverty and resource scarcity. In return for money, they would do anything. Hence, it is possible too tempting for 1st world countries not to exploit this unfortunate situation and hence even more unlikely that they will lead them in such a global initiative unless led or instructed by UN.
The second part of the lecture was about Change Management and Change Leadership. Prof shared with us a diagram that looks like this:
It is called the pessimism-time curve. He shared that in any process, it will follow this flow and I found it very true. You start with uninformed optimism be cause you're unaware of what is coming, then you slowly realise the difficulties and hence you have informed pessimism, soon after you find out what are the realistic factors and you get informed realism and then finally, completion.
The second speaker, Lin Liye, shared about Change Management and Change Leadership by using Steve Jobs as an example.The presentation was mainly about Steve Jobs' leadership and how it led Apple to its huge success. On an unrelated note, it felt like a Steve Jobs' keynote presentation. I have always admired Steve Jobs for his leadership at Apple and his ability to envision what was feasible and what people wanted, and make it a huge success. However, Steve Jobs is more of a one-man-show leader, people at Apple were compelled to follow his proposals. This leadership style may not work at every company especially SMEs. As SMEs have a small employee size, there is more interaction and the company should capitalize on this to generate a pool of ideas that could benefit the company.
Personally, I will rate this lesson an 8/10 as it was a subject that is relatable to me and the 2 articles shared were interesting to discuss.
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