Week 4, Drivers of World change & Change Management and Change leadership

TWC, Week 4, Drivers of World change & Change Management and Change leadership


There are in fact many drivers that can lead to world changes.

Environmental Drivers has been a huge problem in today’s society. Society has been precautious in minimizing pollutions and global warming. However, precautionary actions taken are just treating the problem and not solving the root of the problem. Considering the issue of Global warming; does a reduction in CO2 emissions helps in reduction of such driver? Definitely more applications to the diagnosis of global warming issue have been introduced. Until today, global warming is still a major problem. I feel that society should predict what would be the outcome of the effects of global warming and draft precaution plans to be prepared for the worst since this driver is unstoppable.

Looking at the driver of “Germs”, I find it as an unpredictable driver of world change because it happens just so sudden which catches all of us off guard. Say for example the SAR case where countries all over the world were badly infected and deaths were inevitable.

Dark Ages and plague epidemics

Depicts a story of Roman Empire in the 2nd century A.D. where they were the beacon of learning, trade, power and prosperity in the western world. However, their success was not sustainable. Their Empire came to an end by the 5th century where barbarian warriors came in waves of invasion slaughtering, stealing, and settlement. Because of a changed in culture, Europe had been hit by famine, plague, persecutions, and war constantly resulting no peace.

Ultimately, the Western Europe would rise from the Dark Ages to a level of cultural and political power unseen for a thousand years.

Video of Dark Ages on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcJpalbFxo

Global Drivers of Change: Their implications for the Zambian Construction Industry.

It shows how Zambian construction industries took a change from the old construction corporation to a brand new construction landscape. Such driver of change has lead to a creation of new market place which provided liberalisation and privatisation programmes and the rise of free market. As such, it created new businesses as well as attracting international financial investment leading to a globalization of its economy.

It can be seen that the key driver was its technological changed. Transformation of Zambian construction industry had created global telephony, satellite communications and video links widely available providing information easily accessible. Thus, it had become a platform for opportunities and challenges for international marketers.

However, to maintain such an industry, it is always crucial to keep implementing and seeking new changes. The continuous of business transformations is therefore inevitable.



Change management and change leadership.

We often discuss how to differentiate managers and leaders.

Managers are the brains of a business – concerned about the business, establish systems, create rules and operating procedures.

Managers – react when it happens.

Leaders are the heart of a business - settle a direction, communicating it to everyone and keeping people motivated when times get tough.

Leadership – leader takes initiative - make it happen, react when it happens.

The article “Directing and Managing Change. Manfred Davidman” shows:

For directing and managing change, it all boiled down to the importance of this 3 rules,

1) Adapting to chance and deciding what needs to be done.

2) Planning ahead, getting results and evaluating progress.

3) Appraisal interviews and target- setting meetings.

Basically it tells us that we have to predict what the likely possible issues (By adapting to Changes) and plan ahead (where we need to forecast and do planning) and then act accordingly (this is where our decision policies and implementing policies have to be certain). Besides all of these, we have to consider the importance of style of management in achieving results too. It plays a role in the effects of relationship between management and workers in producing effective and efficient results to meet the targets.

Ultimately, I feel that all of us have to be proactive in managing change. And yy doing so, the chances of us achieving something great would be higher.