TWC Thoughts, Week 4

We started off the lesson with a sobering quote from THE ENERGY REPORT that if everyone consumed as much energy as the average Singaporean and US resident, then the world’s oil reserves would be depleted in 9 years. This implies that small countries like Singapore should also contribute to reduction of consumption and not claim that just because we are small we cannot do anything much, thus the others should do it. On the contrary, we should be a leader of renewable energy as we are the leaders in technology. In short, every country has the responsibility to maintain Earth’s environment.

Drivers of World Change

The lesson then started proper as we went into some of the drivers of world change. Prof then shared some quotes with us and for me, the most memorable one would be from George Bernard Shaw. “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.” This simply means that if we want to survive in a changing environment, we must change our circumstances like how an unreasonable man asserts change and makes change happen. Thereafter we were introduced to the idea of Evolutionary vs Revolutionary, as well as the idea of disruptive change.

Change Management and Change Leadership

Similarly for the next half of the lesson, some quotes were shared and this one by W. Edwards Deming struck me the most. “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” This means that if we don’t change we just die. We then went to differentiate between a manager and a leader. A manager works well according to a paradigm(model), while a leader creates a paradigm for the organisation to follow. A leader must also be proactive to lead change and not reactive. An example would be a company which is implementing renewable sources of energy compared to a company that waits for the regulation to kick in and then react to it.

Key Take Away Points 

A key take away point for me was recognising the difference and workings behind the Evolutionary and Revolutionary change. For Evolutionary change, we improve through the Action, Plan, Change, Development(APCD) and it’s a slow and gradual process. However for Revolutionary change, it’s a radical process represented by a quantum leap in progress. We also found out that disruptive change is irreversible change in our expected future.

I also found the two different change models introduced to us to be especially interesting as I did not know of this before. They are namely the Traditional freeze-unfreeze-refreeze model (5 year plan) and the Modern continuous monitoring and renewal model. The traditional model used to work when change is happening slowly but in today’s world things are developing fast. Hence the modern model where methods and processes are continuously renewed would be more effective in countries/companies/nations.

Personal Views on Presentations 

In Eric's presentation, he posed a question on how social media can influence public policy making in Singapore. I feel that it can provide an avenue for many to have their voices heard. Policy makers can also take these views into account in their policy development. However, the fact that these views can be easily put together without much thought means that these views may be made at the heat of the moment and lack analysis. In addition, the anonymity may also enable various groups to make politically motivated comments to mislead others. That said, I feel that government should not impose restrictions on social media as there will always be ways around it. Instead, they should think of how to use it to their advantage as the use of social media will only get more widespread when the take up rate increases.

For Hui Qi’s presentation on WikiCells, I feel that the major obstacles to it happening is cost, the taste of the edible packaging and the psychological barrier that we(consumers) need to overcome when we eat food packaging such as subway wrappers. If these challenges are overcome, then it might well be a success as food packaging waste takes up a really substantial portion of our consumption.

Personal Ratings for Session

I would rate the lesson 9/10. The presentations are informative and I’ve gained a lot from this session.