Lesson 4 - Leadership and management

4a

Drivers of world change

We started off by discussing the various drivers of world change. Some examples of drivers are environmental, innovation, scientific, social demographic. I thought it was fascinating how all these drivers are intertwined to give us the world as it is today.

Charles Darwin said, ‘it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is more adaptable to change’, which brings me to my next point. Because the only thing constant is change, the more specialized you are to a certain way of doing things, the less likely you are able to adapt when there is a drastic change in circumstances which forces you to take a step out from your comfort zone. That being said, all entrepreneurs I have read and modeled after are examples of people who have adapted and changed their way of doing things accordingly. As Oliver Holmes said, ‘If you live with the world, there would not be any change because you accept how things are.’ And entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have made use of this principal to create products that are the creators of change instead of living with change.

I learnt that there are 2 different kinds of change. Evolutionary vs revolutionary. The former is a slow and incremental type of change while the latter is a ‘disruptive’ kind of change. The one that I’m interested in is the revolutionary type of change. (the other is slow and boring). Revolutionary refers to new ways of doing things. It is radical in the sense that we have to adjust our lives, actions, thoughts and behavior. For instance email vs snail mail. Successful businesses and people are the creators and pioneers of revolutionary change which brings me to the second part of the lesson.

4b

 Leaders are usually the creator of change while managers are the ones facilitating the change and implementing new strategies. A leader will usually be a good manager. However, in my opinion, a good manager may not necessarily be a good leader. I feel that managing a change and creating a change is an entirely different ball game. People who get things going (leader) are the ones with foresight and courage to step out of their comfort zone while managers are just great executors of event. Nevertheless, both parties have equally important roles to play for progress to be made and for a successful revolution to occur.

One reading that caught my attention for this lesson was the one on herding cats. I believe the high rates of failure in trying to expand and grow a company in the face of change are attributed to a lack of vision and goals by the management of the company. Management is merely following the ‘herd instinct’ (hence the article’s title, herding cats, not sure if it can be interpreted this way though), without having a clear view of what the goals of the company in the long run are. In the process, the company may step out of their circle of competence subconsciously and hence, accounting for the high rates of failure in trying to achieve change. A statement from the article further backs this when it states that more than half of the company’s employees have no clue what direction the company is moving towards. In a nutshell, for effective change, one must first make the case for change and then create a vision of what will be different.

I enjoyed this lesson the most. Because it really relates to my views on adapting to change, especially for a young budding entrepreneur like me.  I would rate this lesson a 9/10.