Week Four--Drivers Of Change and The Human Factor

Focusing on this week issue on what factors drove technology and how we actually manage all these changes. Just like any other week, we were being directed to those words being written by prof Shahi, " There are essentially 3 options for changes: 1) make it happen 2) react when it happens 3) wonder what happen" All these three points do lead us to the different people in position in a company like the leaders to managers and employee who just follow instruction and not knowing what is the end product of what they are doing. After that we move on to discuss on factors that allow world changes such as in term of environment drivers, scientific and technological advancement, society and ideological changes and a few other points. Having mentioned of those points, the thought of human evolution was mentioned and prof actually gave us a short history of how germs changed the world with the starting of dark ages when the roman empire broke apart to the European Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries.

We went on to discuss quotes by Charles Robert Darwin and George Bernard Shaw just to name a few but it is these two that make me think through. Charles stated that human must be responsive and adaptable to changes and the one who is able to do that will survive which i feel is logical. We are living in the world of survival of the fittest thus it is like people who are street smart and those who only excel well in schools. The former tends to survive better though they might not do so well in class because they know what to expect in the modern world and with their vast social networking, they can seek help and advise easily. On the other hand, for the latter, they tend to follow the thesis and facts presented to them and indeed they have high IQ but due to the lack of exposure to the real world,somethings will seem foreign to them. The quote by George Bernard Shaw states that those people who are unreasonable and keep questioning about the present and moving away from status quo will lead a change. I feel that this is quite interesting as it presents the fact that we should not always accept what is present to us and must constantly critic on it. Through this way, new ideas could be discovered or a new way of looking at things can be observed.

Next, i shall discuss on two readings " The Drivers Of Global Change To 2060- Natural England" and " 2050 Global Trend Final Report".Both articles in general discuss about the foresight of how the world will evolve to in the next few decades. Ranging from food securities, technological advancement to detrimental effects on the marine life or environment, lifestyle and culture and demographics and many others. As we know that no one in the world is able to accurately forecast what the future will be liked but this does not mean that we cannot draft out a some sort similar structure to that through research and trends.Mother nature is constantly changing and terrains are being changed every year by natural disasters such as typhoon, Hurricane Katrina, Earthquakes and volcanic activities. Year after year, we will hear in news reporting that this region is being hit by the worst Hurricane or earthquakes ever experience in the many years. Hence, we realize that due to weather condition changes and might possibly due to moving towards the ice age by some report, we are experience ferocious natural disaster heading towards our direction. The worst of all we can only take precautions to reduce the amount of damages that is done to us and not stopping them. Hence, this plays a important role in the forecasting of the near future and not mainly seeing the side of human factors. We must not forget that humans survive by the supplies provided by mother nature thus it is only logical that mother nature can destroy us too.

From modern world, we can see that the world population is increasing because the life expectancy of individuals are increasing too. More and more people are living longer thus it is obvious that ageing population is occurring all over the world. From the article "The human race is increasing and is rapidly migrating to urban centres. The global population (currently 6.8 billion) is expected to peak at around 10 billion before the end of this century. Pressure on resources must increase, and ecosystems and the services they provide are under threat. Most growth will come from lifespan; by 2060 the population will everywhere be much older than it is now" which substantiate my points mentioned above and also the articles also question on whether " will supply rise to meet global demand." and comparing with the stats presented in this link, http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats where millions of people actually starve to death every year with 1.02 billions of people not having enough food. This is an alarming numerical value as it is more than many developed countries. With the advancement in technology, there are many articles suggest that the world supply now is able to sustain the global demand in the future but if that is so why are there still so many people starving? Shouldn't that be an issue to talk about rather than discussing or squeezing out brain juices on whether future supply is sufficient?

The possible answers to that is either the statistic provided about the ample food supply is fraud or it lies in the distribution of food to the people. I highly doubt the former is true as they are many other sources stating the same points thus it is only left with the other point. Due to the natural disaster such as prolonged drought, it constitutes to losses of livestocks and crops failure. In addition to that, due to poverty trap, the people have no income to purchase seeds to grow crops and also build infrastructure to develop the land such as irrigation plants, thus making them weaker and can only starve to live on.Furthermore, globalization also led to many foreign companies entering their areas to obtain timber plus the natives poor farming leading to over exploitation of the environment. This resulted in many land being not arable. Hence, distribution of food supplies to these areas from all around the world must be emphasize to help them. With rapid improvement in transportation, there is definitely no excuse that the places are inaccessible. The governments of this countries should focus more on these people and not only on economical growth and major power like The United States should send troops into this regions to send food supplies to them rather than sending their soldier to battle and destroying so many lives and households.

We also touch on the change management and change leadership where we did a comparison between a leader and a manager. It came to an agreement that leader is the one that gives the vision and inspires everyone to look forward to while the managers are the one that implement ways to obtain the goals.

The picture above depicts how businesses progress from the initiation stage of brainstorming interesting ideas to and taking in interesting thoughts to implementing them with lots of administration work and the peak is the part where it will determine whether one will make it or not. Overcoming that will lead us to the completion zone.Furthermore, the topic on how the world is responding to changes is shown by the traditional model  where ideas is  unfreeze and freeze back again while modern model is focusing on constantly changing which i feel is better. This is due to the fast pacing society we are facing where things are changing very fast thus we cannot afford to wait till decades later before choosing to change the ideas. It will be too late.

Points to takeaway are the ways things are moving and progressing now. If we cannot keep pace with it and be ahead of it, we will definitely lose out in many ways. I feel that being an open minded person who is receptive to ideas is definitely encouraging but we should also have our own stand of views and not blindly following what other people suggest. Using those suggestion to improve, our current idea would be the best solution out of it as this gives us a wider exposure and perspectives to seeing things.

I would rate this lesson 9/10 because i get to learn alot of new innovation and also new ways to approach ideas and critic on them. The insights provided are also informative to enhance my knowledge in this field.