Group items tagged

blog post by Jennifer Gilhool, 6.4.2013 "You are connected to work 24/7. You don't need your lap top to be connected. You are connected via BlackBerry, iPhone and iPad to name just a few. These devices no longer provide flexibility. Instead, they tether you to the office. They enable you to work all the time and anywhere. And, now, many companies believe that is the definition of flexibility: "'What flexibility means today is not part time,' the head of work-life at one large organization told me recently. 'What people want is the ability to work anytime, anywhere.' That's true if your target labor pool is twenty-somethings and men married to homemakers. The head of HR at another large organization asked, when I described the hours problem, 'What do you mean, how can we get women to work more hours?'" - Why Men Work So Many Hours, Joan C. Williams, May 29, 2013 Harvard Business Review Why Your Manager Doesn't Want You To Innovate Ron Ashkenas Ron Ashkenas Contributor LinkedIn: Busting 8 Damaging Myths About What It Can Do For Your Career 85 Broads 85 Broads Contributor Someone has taken the "human" out of "Human Resources" departments across America. And, this behavior is not limited to operations in America. I work for a multi-national corporation that cannot seem to wean itself from the 24 hour work day. Colleagues in China often begin their day with a 6:00 a.m. meeting and end it with a meeting that begins at 10:00 p.m. or, worse, 11:00 p.m. To combat this problem, the company leadership agreed to a global meeting policy. The policy provides that global meetings should occur only between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. and that no meetings should occur on Friday nights in Asia Pacific. Further, the policy provides a 10 hour fatigue rule. In other words, there should be 10 hours between your last meeting of the day and your first meeting on the next day. First, if you need a global meeting policy, you are in

Austin Kleon's blog, January 27, 2014, via Mashable on Twitter. Wonderful attribution matrix--what it is, who made it, and when, why we should care, how you found it, where we can find more things like it. These are all good notes to put in our Diigo description of bookmarks, I believe.

Very good, practical article by Marco Albani and Kimberly Henderson, McKinsey & Company, July 2014 on companies and social groups joining forces to protect the environment. The seven tips to make such alliances successful work for all partnerships/odd couples IMO. 1. ID clear reasons to collaborate. "The effort needs to help each partner organization achieve something significant. Incentives such as 'we'll do this for good publicity' or 'we don't want to be left out' are not sufficient." -Nigel Twose, director of the Development Impact Department, International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group 2. Find a fairy godmother "It is important to have a core of totally committed, knowledgeable people who would die in a ditch for what the organization is trying to achieve." -Environmental NGO campaign head 3. Set simple, credible goals 4. Get professional help "It is very important to have an honest broker. The facilitator must be neutral and very structured and keep people moving along at a brutal pace. You need someone who can bring things to a close." -Darrel Webber, secretary general, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) 5. Dedicate good people to the cause "If a company like ours believes something is strategic, then we resource it like it is strategic." -Neil Hawkins, corporate vice president of sustainability, Dow Chemical LOVE #5--HAVE SEEN "COLLABORATIONS" FAIL IN STATE GOVT. BECAUSE GOOD PEOPLE AND SENIOR LEADERSHIP WERE NOT BEHIND IT. 6. Be flexible in defining success "Partners think that collaboration will change the world. Then it doesn't, and they think that it failed. But often the collaboration changed something-the way some part of the system works and delivers outcomes. It is a matter of understanding the nature of change itself." -Simon Zadek, visiting fellow, Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Beijing 7. Prepare to let go "I've been absent from the FSC since 1997.

Podcast and list of actions to take to overcome the resistance that most of us have when starting a new project or improving our lives, Michael Hyatt. Excerpt: In order to deal with the Resistance, you have to first understand what it is. It has four attributes. Attribute #1: It is invisible. Attribute #2: It is internal. Attribute #3: It is insidious. Attribute #4: It is infallible. But what can you do about it? You can only defeat the Resistance by understanding its three primary strategies and applying appropriate countermeasures. Strategy #1: Fear. The typical response to this strategy is procrastination. The countermeasure is to START. Strategy #2: Uncertainty. The typical response is distraction. The countermeasure is to FOCUS. Strategy #3: Doubt. This usually occurs at the end of a project, and the typical response is to quit and leave the work unfinished. The countermeasure is to FINISH.

Blog post by Jeff Cobb, February 2010, Tagoras site, on pricing elearning. Explains price, cost, margin, value relationship. Excerpt: "What then are typical price points for e-learning in the association market? I am tempted not to cite any because the only other price points that should matter to an organization are potentially those of competitors. (And as Apple, for example, has demonstrated so well, even competitor pricing should be given only so much weight.) Additionally, our research suggests that only 20 percent of associations have any sort of formal process for setting price - which makes me wonder how much thought is being put into value, margins, and volume. Still, it can be helpful to have some sort of benchmark, however, general, against which to gauge your organization's pricing. We go into much more detail about pricing in our Association E-learning: State of the Sector report, but the average price per e-learning content hour in the association sector - based on our survey of nearly 500 organizations - is $56.79. Per credit hour the average is $73.97. So, for example, based on these figures, the average fee for a 90-minute Webinar that offers CE credit would be around $110. Conclusion I began this discussion by focusing on value, and it seems important to note as I conclude it that the price point is not only dependent upon perceived value, it helps drive perceived value. Part of what gives a Mercedes or a Louis Vuitton handbag its sheen of value is the high price point associated with each. To a certain extent, of course, the price is driven by underlying cost. But it is also true that these companies simply have the audacity - the organizational self-esteem, you might argue - to set a premium price. And people gladly pay it. Few associations, I find, are willing to take such an approach with pricing their e-learning, and perhaps few would succeed if they did. But my suspicion is that most organizations are pricing at a lower l

Commencement speeches at different colleges, June 15, 2014 Harvey Mudd College Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist "Your unique education has prepared you for careers at the cutting edge of innovation. This is both good news and bad news. It's good news because you're probably going to find a job, it will pay well, and it will be intellectually fulfilling. It's bad news because whatever you thought you were training for when you started this exercise might not actually exist anymore. Five years ago, when you guys were deciding where to go to college, there were very few mobile-app developers or big-data architects, and there certainly weren't any chief listening officers for social media outlets. It's hard to imagine where the next five years will go, but it's kind of fun to do so. ... Who knows, but you guys are going to be among the people that are actually making it happen. And it'll be awesome, as long as you're willing to take some risks and step outside of your comfort zone. When an opportunity arises, take it." UNC at Chapel Hill Atul Gawande, doctor and writer "Ultimately, it turns out we all have an intrinsic need to pursue purposes larger than ourselves, purposes worth making sacrifices for. People often say, 'Find your passion.' But there's more to it than that. Not all passions are enough. Just existing for your desires feels empty and insufficient, because our desires are fleeting and insatiable. You need a loyalty. The only way life is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society. ... the search for purpose is really a search for a place, not an idea. It is a search for a location in the world where you want to be part of making things better for others in your own small way. It could be a classroom where you teach, a business where you work, a neighborhood where you live. The key is, if you find yourself in a place where you stop caring - where your greatest conce

blog by Eli Dourado on March 6, 2013 on binge learning. Excerpt: A combination of technology (DVRs) and market service providers (Netflix, Hulu, On Demand) have transformed how and when and where we watch "television." I suspect that students want the same things. Technology and market forces appear to be reshaping how and when and where we learn. Perhaps we education providers should pay attention. But the kind of bingeing that people might like to do with online courses is entirely different. Most people who sign up for an online class at Udacity or Marginal Revolution University want to take the class for its own sake, not as a requirement for some broader credential. The point is not to learn and forget-it is to indulge an interest. This seems like a more natural way to learn than traditional educational structures can offer: develop an interest and mercilessly indulge it until another interest supersedes it. It is a method that conserves the mental energy associated with willpower, leaving more of the brain's resources to focus on the material itself. Since it relies on the student actually being interested in the class, it is hard to fit into a physical schooling environment, where classes have to begin on a schedule, go slow enough for everyone to keep up, and run in parallel with other classes. Online education also saves the resources associated with context switching. Humans are notoriously bad multitaskers. Each time a high school student has to change classes, she has to quickly stifle the thoughts and questions raised in previous classes to focus on the current class. She has to expend mental resources remembering where the previous session of the current class left off. And when she returns to the class that stimulated the thoughts that had to be stifled, she may not recall them. Far better to focus on-or even to binge on-one subject until she is at a good stopping point.

Fascinating interview with Vivek Wadhwa on "Innovating Women", August 20, 2014, published by Wharton School of Business. He has written a book. Believe this could be a Lean-In topic or book that we read and discuss? Also a great example of crowd sourcing to get the support he needed to do the research from women--research and $. "I decided to do more research and interview hundreds of women, and I have a research paper, which will be released soon, on women and innovation. At the same time, I wanted to express opinion, and in academic papers, you can't do that. What I decided to do was to write a book. The first thing that occurred to me was, who is a guy to tell women how to solve their problems? So, that was the dilemma. Also, I had to spend a lot of money on research. I wanted to fund it, and I spoke to my wife about it. She said, "Vivek, get women to help you." It was such an obvious answer. So, I decided to crowd-fund the book and then crowd-create it; I essentially did an Indiegogo campaign in which I raised money. Instead of the $40,000 I needed, I raised $96,000. All the money from this is going to a fund to educate and empower women, so it was great to get that kind of support. I wanted 30 or 40 women to help me with the research and writing. I ended up getting more than 500 women. It was an outpouring of support from women who were thrilled that I was stepping into this debate and that I would be researching and writing more about it."

Blog by John Hagel reviewing new book, Design in Nature, by Adrian Bejan and J. Peder Zane, looks like it was published in January 2012. As a systems person, this review resonates with me and speaks to what the WLStudio can do to help women redesign their learning systems as well as the currents that flow through their systems. They must avoid others who wish to dictate where and what and how learning opportunities are available to them. Reworded more constructively, women need to design and nuture their own learning opportunities. Excerpts from review: The book introduces us to constructal law: "For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve in such a way that provides easier access to the currents that flow through it." The authors caution "that nothing operates in isolation; every flow system is part of a bigger flow system, shaped by and in service to the world around it." "As the title of the book suggests, the constructal law is ultimately a law about design. It determines which designs will survive and thrive over time. The constant interplay between flow and design drives the evolution of flow systems. The design of flow systems must evolve to enhance the flows within the system or they will die." Final excerpt from book review: The bottom line So, what does this mean for all of us? The message is simple and compelling. If we are not enhancing flow, we will be marginalized, both in our personal and professional life. If we want to remain successful and reap the enormous rewards that can be generated from flows, we must continually seek to refine the designs of the systems that we spend time in to ensure that they are ever more effective in sustaining and amplifying flows. As the authors observe, "it is not love or money that makes the world go round but flow and design"

part of the interview with Sonia Simone and Jerod Morris at Copyblogger following their decision several weeks ago to close down comments on the Copyblogger blog site. Excerpt: "I don't put my business assets on a platform that I don't control. So I don't put my content on a platform I don't control unless I have it somewhere I can keep it and benefit from it. I wouldn't post original content to Facebook. I would just never - it doesn't make a lot of sense, other than just a post, a simple throw-away kind of a post. So our content lives on our domain, in our e-mail lists. These are assets we can control. " I'm not sure exactly what she means by "content lives on our domain, in our e-mail lists." Maybe it's as simple as it's Copyblogger's stuff, they own it, it's only used to achieve their business purposes and it isn't original stuff that is published elsewhere or stored there on someone else's platform for digestion and use? Blog post also introduces "digital sharecropping" to me. Interesting note about Google-Plus, too. "The nice thing about Google-Plus is I'm notified when someone actually mentions my name, or if I'm following that discussion then I'm notified within Gmail or Google-Plus, any one of the Google products. So it's nice in that way. There's a lot more ease of use. "

by Seth Kahan, April 12, 2013, Fast company 1. fundamental model of membership is in question ...What is membership turning into? Too early to tell. Engaged action is one candidate. This is the anticipated, intentional, collective behavior of a group. 2. Adoption of private sector business practices ...Pursuing the bottomline in tough market conditions seems like a no-brainer, but the overall impact is not necessarily what is desired for a mission driven organization, shifting priorities away from impact and member value. 3. Talent ...continuous, aggressive professional development is an organizational asset only in some associations. This is changing. It means less certainty for employees while it opens up new territory for innovation and expansion of the organization. 4. Competitive intelligence ...many associations are doing negligible work on behalf of their mission. Prices for gathering intelligence are plummeting. Often it is only the CEO who actively searches for new information and connects the dots for organizational strategy. Expect this to change 5. Disruption of members' business Savvy associations leaders are looking around the curve, putting the puzzle together for members. This means going beyond providing information and ata. Instead it means compiling, analyzing, distilling and communicating useful knowledge that impacts members' lives. ???It is not uncommon to see associations beefing up their subject matter experts these days because members need it in a disruptive economy. 6. Driving uptake in a competitive world ...each association owned a small monopoly, providing the single best resource to everyone in their field. No more. With the advent of 24/7 interconnectivity, anyone can set up shop and begin serving your members.

article by Tim Wu in NYT weekly magazine, June 3, 2014 in Culture. Maintaining your brand The euphemism is "sharing," but Klein would probably just call it selling a personal brand, whether you consider yourself the pretty young thing with literary tastes and a traditional side, the family man who brews his own beer or the tough lawyer with a sense of humor. It can be nice to share, but brand maintenance takes constant work and demands consistency. A serious self-brand should have some presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare, Google+ and Tumblr; keeping it all up can feel like working as an unpaid intern for a Z-list celebrity known as Oneself. excerpt Any old-timer will tell you that anonymity online is nothing new, but how things originally were. There has, of course, always been an anonymous culture, usually tied to deviancy or dissidents. In the '80s and '90s, anonymity was indelibly linked to online culture, concurrent with getting at stuff that was otherwise hard to find or illegal. It was kind of the point really, to go where, as one early adopter wrote, "no one knows you're a dog." It allowed users to escape to a place with few restrictions, where you could say things, and maybe do things wholly without social consequence. In the early days, there was no need for any consistency with the rest of your life, and that's what was so great about it.

Blog by Susan Freeman, StepUpLeader, June 2014 Talks about leaders and learning and honesty. "Upon deeper reflection, there is something they absolutely must possess in order for us to work well together; That is being a LEARNER. By this I mean the willingness to admit that they don't know what they don't know. They will approach the learning process with an attitude of curiosity, appreciating each new discovery with gusto. They don't resist it; they EMBRACE it. I call it leadership resilience. Leadership resilience is crucial for leaders. When a leader can't be honest about what he doesn't know, it shuts down the ability for others to learn and innovate within the organization. In order to move from where we are now to a future desired result, we must let go of our need to know. When a leader can embrace curiosity, wonder and being comfortable with uncertainty, it makes it acceptable for others to do so."

Essay written by Heather Kenyon for the Tampa Bay Times, 2.13.13, on the shortage of people with the desired IT skills. Found this via the Encore LinkedIn group. What I find particularly interesting is the employers' desire for critical thinking, communication skills, and "professional curiosity" mentioned below. Nowhere here does it mention the middle aged or older worker; I guess they might have the critical thinking, communication, and curiosity, but not be able to master the IT skills through PD and DIY learning? Excerpt "Topping IT employers' wish lists were candidates who have at least 3-5 years of relevant work experience, bachelor's degrees and capabilities that go beyond the latest technical competencies to show an aptitude for continuous learning and multiple skill acquisition. These include critical thinking and communication skills as well as professional curiosity, which employers seem to find in short supply in the available talent pool. "

This 'manifesto' was offered in response by Paolo Bruttini to Jarche's adherence to networks for organizations operating today with different type of leadership. October 2014 Jarche concluded in his post: Networked leaders foster deeper connections, developed through ongoing and meaningful conversations. They understand the importance of tacit knowledge in solving complex problems. Networked leaders know they are just nodes in the knowledge network and not a special position in a hierarchy. What does a post-hierarchical organization look like? It will be one that provides a sense of belonging like a tribe, but with more diversity and room for personal growth. It will have the institutional structure to manage the basic systems so people can focus on customers and community, not merely running the organization. It will have market type competition, but without a winner-take-all approach. Finally, it will promote cooperative actions that add to the long-term value of the ecosystem and community, not just short-term collaboration to get the next project done or achieve some arbitrary quarterly results. Making the networked organization more resilient will help everyone in it, not just a few central nodes. The networked organization takes the long view.

blog by Clay Johnson on Lifehacker, 2.23.12, on starting every day as a producer of information, not as a consumer. Excerpt: "The production of information is critical to a healthy information diet. It's the thing that makes it so that your information consumption has purpose. I cannot think of more important advice to give anyone: start your day with a producer mindset, not a consumer mindset. If you begin your day checking the news, checking your email, and checking your notifications, you've launched yourself into a day of grazing a mindless consumption. Starting your day as a producer means that your information consumption has meaning: the rest of the day means consuming information that is relevant to what it is that you're producing. Waking up as a producer frames the rest of your habits. You're not mindlessly grazing on everyone's facebook's statuses. You're out getting what it is you need to get in order to produce. Waking up as a producer is procrastination insurance. But there's something else that being a producer does: it gives you more clarity about what it is that you think."

Blog post by Euan Semple, December 30, 2013, curated by Harold Jarche. Excerpt: "It's not about marketing, or SEO, or "going viral". It is not about internal "enterprise social" or external "social media" It is not even about the platforms or tools on which you choose to write. It is much simpler and much more powerful. It is about developing our awareness, our communication skills, and our collective intelligence. It is about thinking harder and writing better. Blogging is a means by which to rediscover your voice, to learn to share your thoughts with others, and by doing so to help us all get smarter faster. "

"A comment on Joho's (Dave Weinberger) blog post--a memoir of blogging--bySuw Charman-Anderson, January 9, 2014. Excerpt: " I wonder too if my lack of blog writing is related to a lack of blog reading. My RSS reader became so clogged that I feared it, wouldn't open it, and ultimately, abandoned it. And then Twitter and now Zite arrived to provide me with random rewards for clicking and swiping, showing me stuff that I had no idea I wanted to read. Instead of following the writings of a small cadre of smart, lovely people whom I am proud to call my friends, I read random crap off the internet that some algorithm thinks I might be interested in, or that is recommended by the people I follow on Twitter. That may or may not be a good thing. We were all aware of the problems of homophily, and the random clickage does help combat that. But the problem with not following people's blogs closely is that there's no conversation anymore. My blogs used to host great conversations, and I would happily engage in fascinating discussions on other people's sites. You can't do that so easily with Twitter, and Facebook. Indeed, most of my interactions on Facebook, which are scarce as I loathe it, end up being pointless arguments with friends-of-friends who turn out to be idiots. I'd love to see a resurgence in blogging. I think, personally, I need to delete Zite from my ipad and find a good RSS reader so I can follow the blogs of those people that I really care about. Not the worthy blogs I ought to read, but the works of people who matter to me. And then I need to get back to commenting, like this, because there's nothing more encouraging than finding out that people care about what you write, that people appreciate it. And David, I really do appreciate your writing - you're as inspiring and fascinating now as you were back in 2001! "

This article provides some wonderful tips to women in the business world who find it necessary to approach others to sell products, ideas or services. "I've always had a pretty good relationship with the idea of being a salesperson.  For some reason, even from an early age, I had it in my head that sales was simply about finding people who wanted what I had to offer. So, for instance, selling Camp Fire Girls candy in grade school held no terrors for me: I'd go around and ask people if they wanted to buy it, and if not, I'd ask the next person.  I figured there was no harm in asking, even if they didn't want it - and them not wanting it didn't have anything to do with me; maybe they didn't like candy, or were on a diet, or had already bought some from somebody else."

Great short post by Oprah on getting unstuck. The quote by Turecki is so true: "Nothing happens until you decide." Excerpt: When our expert, Dr. Stanley Turecki, finished watching, he said something that made the hairs on my arm stand up: "Nothing happens until you decide." The reason her 3-year-old didn't sleep in his own bed was that the mother had not decided it would happen. When she did, the child would go to his bed. He might cry and scream and rant until he fell asleep, but he would eventually realize that his mother had made up her mind. Well, I knew he was speaking about a 3-year-old, but I also knew for sure that this brilliant piece of advice applied to many other aspects of life: Relationships. Career moves. Weight issues. Everything depends on your decisions. For years I was stuck in a weight trap, yo-yoing up and down the scale. I made a decision two years ago to stop wishing, praying, and wanting, wanting, wanting to be better. Instead I figured out what it would really take to improve my life. Then I decided to do it. When you don't know what to do, my best advice is to do nothing until clarity comes. Getting still, being able to hear your own voice and not the voices of the world, quickens clarity. Once you decide what you want, you make a commitment to that decision. One of my favorite quotes is from mountaineer W.H. Murray: "Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep res