Group items tagged

blog post by Caroline Kim Oh, August 19, 2014, on reframing networking to build on your strengths, and not be overwhelmed by "networking" expectations at a so-called networking event. "Slow Networking " What I've found is that there is no one right way to build and cultivate your network. It turns out that my way of getting to know people, what I will begin calling "slow networking," is what works for me. I find that I am much better at getting to know people over time. I enjoy "collecting" relationships with people who are doing interesting work both within and outside of my field, keeping in touch with them, helping them whenever I can, informing them of what I am up to and, from time to time, calling on them when I need help. I love the process of uncovering a natural rapport with them as we work together on things we care about. How do you find your bright spot? When you feel you are excelling at a form of communicating with other people, and it comes naturally to you, that is your bright spot. And when you build your networking strategy around your one or two bright spots, you are leading with your strengths instead of trying to replicate some networking best practices book.

article on benefits, drawbacks for online learning--more time to reflect and respond in writing; live dialogue/discussion may be compressed into 3 hour time blocks making for a difficult session for introverts. Curtis Bonk is quoted several times.

Great slide share on managing time to get things done more effrectively and efficiently

article by Claire Cain Miller, New York Times, printed in Tampa Bay Times on 8.14.15

Review by Rob Jenkins on the Chronicle, 3.18.13, on why MOOCs are a massively bad idea for wait-listed community college students in California as proposed in new legislation there. Excerpt: "We know that succeeding in online classes requires an extraordinary degree of organization, self-discipline, motivation, and time-management skill. A simple Google search of "how to succeed in online classes" yields a plethora of Web sites-including many college and university sites-offering students such gems as "be organized," "manage your time wisely," and (my favorite) "stay motivated."" Excerpt: So to recap, California's plan (or to be fair, one senator's plan) is basically to dump hundreds of thousands of the state's least-prepared and least-motivated students into a learning environment that requires the greatest amount of preparation and motivation, where they will take courses that may or may not be effective in that format. Here's a prediction: Those students will fail and drop out at astronomical rates. Then the hand-wringing will begin anew, the system will pour millions more dollars into "retention" efforts, and the state will be in an even deeper fix than it is now. (Virtual cheating will probably run rampant, too, followed by expensive anticheating measures, but that's another blog post.) Look, I'm not a politician or an economist. I don't know the answer to California higher education's budget woes. But I'm pretty sure herding community-college students into MOOCs is not it.

A Slideshare by Etienne Garbugli on using time effectively that went viral to get 1 million views since being uploaded in March 2013. Very effective ideas; maybe we could use it as an experimental exercise--"find three ideas to test doing in the next week; come back and tell us how it went"

interesting method for analyzing how you spend your time ineffectually and what to do differently, linkedin Bruce Kasanoff, 4.15.13

Blog post by Chris Collison on 2.26.13, that discusses reciprocity in fostering a learning atmosphere and adoption of best practice in an organization. Excerpt: "Reciprocity is an important principle for knowledge management, and one which underpins the idea of Offers and Requests. Offers and Requests was a simple approach, introduced to make it easier for Operations Engineers at BP to ask for help, and to share good practice with their peers. The idea was for each business unit to self-assess their level of operational excellence using a maturity model, and identify their relative strengths and weaknesses. In order to overcome barriers like "tall poppy syndrome", or a reluctance to ask for help ("real men don't ask directions"), a process was put in place whereby every business unit would be asked to offer three areas which they felt proud of, and three areas which they wanted help with. The resulting marketplace for matching offers and requests was successful because: i) The principle of offering a strength at the same time as requesting help was non-threatening and reciprocal - it was implicitly fair. ii) The fact that every business unit was making their offers and requests at the same time meant that it felt like a balanced and safe process."

from Fast Company.com Explanation of Mightybell and interview with Gina Bianchini about why she created it. Again, the focus is on groups. "Today, the number of social networks available to us means there's a surfeit of places to come together online--we share aspirational photos on Pinterest, photos from our lives on Instagram, news on Google+, Internet happenings on Tumblr, and everything else on Facebook. But with so many channels to work with (waste time on?), the things we want to say are easily drowned out in noise, making it hard to establish genuine, intimate relationships with groups of people who aren't close friends and family. Sure, you can like a photo or retweet a clever one-liner as gestures of social solidarity, but they don't go far in making connections that count. Which is why Gina Bianchini, founder of new social network Mightybell, thinks it's time for an AOL chat room renaissance. Collaboration and action in intimate circles could be her competitive advantage."

More on Mightybell

Slideshare program by Reut Schwartz-Hebron, 15,426 views, on Time Management for Creative Thinkers.

Blog post by Miriam Persley, June 27, 2013 in Leadership Learning Community on The Individual in Collective Leadership. Look at excerpt on purpose below: "The quest for purpose is ageless and can happen once and/or multiple times in a lifetime. This timeless search is part of normal development and is testimony to the complexity of humanity. Depending on the timing, some may need a severe break away, others a more subtle revisioning, while others may land somewhere in between, but the need for purpose is behind it all."

MOOCs have hit TIme mag!

from Future Tense on June 11, 2016 by Teddy Wayne. he posits, with research to back him up, that we are losing the time, ability, and desire for reflection that leads to deeper thinking and learning. As smart phone, computer, and other digital uses increase, our focus on the immediate is replacing the practice and habit of reflection.

article by Joshua Rothman on leadership and how our views of leadership have changed through the centuries and how leadership virtues don't always agree with the actions taken by "leaders" whom we admire. 

How the Golden Years Disappeared by Marc Freedman, Salon, April 2, 2012. This is an excerpt from the Big Shift, a book written by Marc Freedman, the man who started Civic Ventures about 10 years ago. Perhaps the WLStudio takes on this social imperative and this is how we get funding? "The new migration is across time and the life course, as tens of millions (8,000 a day, one every ten seconds, are turning sixty) reach the spot where middle age used to end and old age once began, the new territory where a resurgent purpose gap, and gulf in identity, stands. Opportunity is there as well. The surge of people into this new stage of life is one of the most important social phenomena of the new century. Never before have so many people had so much experience and the time and the capacity to do something significant with it. That's the gift of longevity, the great potential payoff on all the progress we've made in extending lives. Realizing these possibilities will require the courage to break from old and familiar patterns that once were our friends but just don't work any longer. It means considering ideas like "gap years" for grown ups, new kinds of internships and fellowships for Americans moving beyond midlife, remodelling higher education to help retrain people who have been working for 40 or 50 years, even the creation of new kinds of investment accounts to help cover the costs of transitioning to new careers. What we're facing is not a solo matter; it's a social imperative, an urgent one that must be solved as the great midlife migration gathers scale and momentum."

Blog by Harold Jarche on Leadership is an emergent property of balanced networks, May 29, 2012 Like this assessment of leadership skills in networks: "As networked, distributed workplaces become the norm, trust will emerge from environments that are open, transparent and diverse. As a result of improved trust, leadership will be seen for what it is; an emergent property of a balanced network ["in-balance" may be a better term for this changing state] and not some special property available to only the select few. And this one: Networked contributors (full-time, part-time, contractors) need to work together in a networked environment that facilitates cooperation and collaboration. This is why the narration of work and PKM will become critical skills, as work teams ebb and flow according to need, but the network must remain connected and resilient

Blog by Matthew forti on Measuring Leadership Development, November 28, 2011 Neighborhood Builders by Bank of America builds high performing community-based nonprofits and gives them multiple three-day sessions of leadership training for the ED and emerging leader. Excerpts: "1. Develop a detailed theory of change. It isn't worth spending a dime on measurement until you've carefully defined which leaders you intend to target, what specific training and other programming they need, what they will gain, how those gains will be applied, and what should ultimately result." 2. Measure with mixed methods. 3. Continuously measure to improve impact. 4.Build rigor over time. Leadership programs don't need to build a full-scale measurement system right from the start. The best programs are intentional about whether and how to improve the rigor of their measurement over time, based partly on what they want to do with the results.

blog post by Kurt Mackey at MongoHQ, a distributed company, on working remotely and how hard it is to come up with an effective system for engaging workers. It is a work in progress. Need firewalls between personal life and work life--sound has to be managed for one thing. Mentions the blending of in-office staff and remote staff and a 'standard' for everyone to use the same collaboration tools, be available via the same channels, and produce documentation of interactions that are important to share. Has a whole section on the practical (and the tools they use to communicate) prefer async communications! Have a central work tool (Compose to record what is being produced each day); day to day communication in Hipchat, use pre-reads to meetings on a Wiki that get updated on Hackpad during the meeting, open mailing lists, Sqwiggle for face time, and Google Hangouts, too. Final recommendation is to "keep iterating" to build a remote friendly culture.

Blog post by David Truss, Pair-A_Dimes, January 4, 2011, on learning at work by professionals, i.e., teachers. Has much more good stuff to say than this excerpt but I find this useful for Information Overload. Another term I ran across lately--practical obscurity--in relation to why we are now part of NSA's scope--because costs have fallen so low to monitor so much behavior online--voice and text--that what was once unavailable without a lot of costs is now quite feasible for someone to monitor, such as NSA, Google, Facebook, etc. Excerpt: "I read a post recently by Jeff Utecht, whom you have worked with, that said this: "Today at school I answered personal e-mail, updated my Facebook status, Tweeted, looked up flights for winter break, and even read articles that didn't pertain to school. And they say we're becoming less productive at work. What really is happening is the line between our work life and our social life is becoming blurred more and more every day." and he continues: "Sure I use some of my work time to do social things, yet I get home from work after 3pm and answer work e-mails, text faculty members about a computer problem, and work on lessons and things that need to be done. So it's an even swap. I'll use some of your time, you can use some of mine.""

Blog post by Arianna Huffington, 4/16/12 on GPS for the Soul "The Internet and the rise of social media have, of course, given us amazing tools to connect, and to effect change in ways large and small. At the same time, there's a snake lurking in this cyber Garden of Eden. Our 24/7 connection to the digital world often disconnects us from the real world around us -- from our physical surroundings, from our loved ones, and especially from ourselves. We see the effects of this in every aspect of our lives. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Ndubuisi Ekekwe, founder of the non-profit African Institution of Technology, notes how over-connectedness is actually bad for the bottom line. "We're also jeopardizing long-term productivity by eliminating predictable time off that ensures balance in our lives," he writes. Ekekwe also points to Professor Leslie Perlow, author of the forthcoming Sleeping with Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work. Perlow presents research showing how deliberately disconnecting from their digital devices led to people feeling more satisfied in their jobs and their lives."