Today we talked about world change and change management and leadership. Drivers of world change included environmental factors, competition, and scientific discovery. In part 2 of the lesson we talked about change management and change leadership. During that session we explored Today we talked about world change and change management and leadership
There are three ways to cope with change: Make it happen, responds when it happens and be surprised when it happens. We all know the drill: Change is constant. To remain relevant in today’s ever changing society one has to constantly seek to adapt to the surrounding. Companies who stick to old business models remain uncompetitive and forgotten over time. Governments who remain governing their country with decade-old methods remain stagnant and excluded from the growing economy. A fine example would be china who has effectively opened up its society to cultural and economic exchange. This has allowed them to be one of the world’s biggest power house at present. Even in Singapore, who long regarded Chinese as secondary and English as the preferred one has jumped onto the bandwagon of learning Chinese so as to assimilate into China’s growing economy. As Darwin puts it, It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. In today’s context change is the only constant and it is only the ones who are the most adaptive that will remain relevant and non-obsolete.
In the article Herding Cats, I learned that Change is the only constant and that to align the trinity of people, processes and technology to strategy is the key to success But everyone also knows human behavior is complex. Organizations don’t adapt to changes; their people do. Very often, management invest resources to stream line their modus operandi or to come out with new procedures for the company. They tend to overlook the human aspects involved. And as what prof said technology is easy, people are hard, it is only through targeting the human factor that will produce effective results. Basically this article explores the ways to effectively bring about change given the vagaries of the human behavior.
What is leadership and change management? To me these are the basic ingredients for any business, organization or country to attain wealth and progress in today’s exponential times. Yet having these ingredients might not be the answer to sustainability. To me sustainable wealth and progress boils down to having effective leadership and management. However in today’s society where integration and globalization is key, the line separation these two are getting blurred. How do you differentiate a leader from a manager? I read this somewhere when I was serving the army and would like to share it with everyone. Lets say that there is a group of soldiers who got lost in the forest, the leader will be the one who climbs up the highest tree, survey the surrounding and points out the right direction to the team. A manager is someone who will be focusing on how to ration the food, the water and the duty rooster for sentries. Basically, he is the one who take charge of the day-to-day operation and figures out the most effective way to accomplish what the leader wants.
This applies for technology as well. Without effective change management and leadership, technology will be headed in the wrong direction. Effective management comes in the form of education. This will allow for more people to assimilate and contribute to our technology-based society. Knowledge however has to go hand in hand with ethics. Knowledge without ethics coupled with the destructive nature humans is a potential pitfall for societies and human kind. It is hence important for educators to inculcate the right ethical values to the next generation of technology users. Leadership to me comes in the form of efficient and sound minded governments, who are dedicated to improving technology in a constructive way. Governments possess the assets and political power to spearhead technology in the direction. It is only through effective leadership and effective management that will allow us to see technology develop into a driver of beneficial world change.
We also talked about the technology adoption lifecycle which is made up of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. There are cracks between each phase of the cycle, representing a disassociation between any two groups. The largest crack, the ‘chasm’, is between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority I find it very useful as it is applicable to almost any new technology. For example for facebook, I would rank it at the peak as it is between the early majority Pragmatists and late majority conservatives. Facebook has definitely crossed the chasm, which in this case is global attention.
I rate today’s session as 7.5 out of 10. Topics were quite interesting, as well as the individual presentations! Im quite intrigued by the technology adoption lifecycle and Im wondering if I can change my individual tropical paper to one that is regarding it.
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