Lesson 4: Drivers of world change and change management and leadership

Our focus for this week is actually drivers of world change and change in both management and leadership. This week's discussions were both interesting and engaging especially this week's presentation. We had a series of impressive classmates presenting and touch on issues that I do not realize it till this week. Actually the first thing that i had notice is when i stepped into the class is what prof had wrote on the board:  The 3 essential ways to cope with change

1) Make it happen

2) Respond when it happens

3) Be "surprise" when it happens

I feel that this concept is useful in evaluating how things happen this way and this brings us to this week's topic for discussions.

I felt that the most interesting issue that caught my attention is actually how germs has been the drivers of world change and how it played an import role in the western civilization. Prof explanation was further elaborated by Chang-e. She shared about how globalization has brought about transmission of diseases and how the historical time line of how some plagues evolved. Next, Eunice shared with us some interesting perspective of how consumers expectation are the drivers of world change. I agree to her point as nowadays,  the world is changing base on the market expectation. For instance, if consumers decided to stop drinking coffee due to the side effects of caffeine, the demand for coffee will drop and this will actually lead to producers looking for alternatives to satisfy consumers' wants. This actually shows that how the world has shaped is actually related to the expectation of consumers.  Next is actually the interesting concept Daniel has brought up which is the model of change and how those changes have to be reported to the government. The graph below is actually what prof had shown as and related to what Eunice has presented.

Some key takeaways that i have for this lesson is that actually to ensure that all of us are involved in this drivers of world change, we need to expose ourselves with more knowledge as it enables us to have different perception towards certain issues since the world has changed according to consumers expectation. If we just sit back and content with the current knowledge that we have, when changes come, we will most likely be surprise when it happens and this is when some people that feel that "pain" that prof had mentioned have to go through. Next would be the 2 essential model that prof shared with us once a decision is made to change. I personally feels that the modern model is much more practical compared to the past. The reason is now countries are moving towards a knowledge based economy. Now the question that one will start to ask is how society can react to those who do not have the knowledge to assimilate into the knowledge based economy. To make sure our skills do not obsolete as time goes by, the modern model seems to be a better choice compared to the traditional model and this boils down to change in management and leadership.

As a whole, i will rate this week's lesson 9.5/10 as this week's lesson really expand my knowledge TWC and the issue that really caught my attention is the dark age and how germs played a part in the fall of the roman empire. What I feel that we can have more time to discuss on is actually about the consumer's expectation. The reason is simply because that drivers of world change is linked with change in management and leadership. Change in management and leadership for a better management will actually lead to a change in the factors that drive this change. This actually comes down to expectation by consumer.
I shall end this week's reflection by sharing with you this quote

"Vision without action is merely a dream,
Action without vision just passes time,
Vision with action can change the world."


-Joel Barker