Group items tagged

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.

Blog post by Sylvia Browder at the Story Exchange--where women mean business. "Challenge 2: Undefined Niche To Niche or Not to Niche…that is the question. What is a niche? A niche business is one that targets a very specific group of people with specific shared interest. A business with an undefined niche is like a ship sailing in shallow water. By creating a niche business allows you to market to your ideal clients. For example, if you were a behavioral psychologist targeting teens, you would market your services in places where parents are likely to find out about you; such as advertising in parent magazines, providing resources to local middle and high schools or joining organizations geared towards parents. Solution: By understanding who and where your ideal customers are; it is easy to craft a marketing plan to target them. Here are three easy ways to target your potential clients: * Improve your website's SEO with specific key words * Generate exposure locally and virtually with professional speaking, seminars or publishing a book or articles. * Craft a clear message that speak at the heart of your customer " Challenge 4: No Social Media Plan Random tweets and meandering Facebook posts will result in a lot of time devoted to zero results. Before making another useless post, sit down with pen and paper and make a list of what you want to achieve from social media. To which social media do you belong? What are some social media marketing strategies that you have noticed from other companies? What do you have that will offer value? You may find that your company is spread a little too thin across the social media spectrum. Quality truly is superior to quantity in this respect. Solution: Create a social media marketing plan and stay the long haul. Establishing a strong presence can be a very time consuming process. It is unwise to expect your list of fans, followers or subscribers to grow overnight.

Interesting article by Megan Hughes, March 23, 2015 on how inventers are racing to meet the needs of baby boomers with personal behavior tracking/assessment devices (Fitbit and others) to help boomers enjoy good health for as long as possible. Boomers are afraid of losing their independence according to market assessments that drive new tech development for this age group.

Mary Meeker's annual report on trends. Slides 109-112 on millennials work behavior and expectations and what they value are very interesting--training and development, flexible work hours, cash bonuses. Buy personal technology and use it in the workplace. Millennials much more likely to be on demand workers (4$%) than gen x, baby boomers, or mature workers. Slide 126 is on freelancer categories. Slide 127 is on how quickly freelancers can get work from internet. Slide 128 shows internet enabling commerce such as ebay Etsy, airbnb, upwork, uber, thumbtack, soundcloud, and stripe.

Interview with Vera Michalchik published by DML Research Hub, funded by the McArthur Foundation. Michalchick heads up research on Informal Learning Environments in SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning. "I'm paraphrasing Richard Feynman who said that the more that we have a monoculture of learning, the less chance we have of producing creative, innovative, capable thinkers. We really want diverse learning environments, and assessment is always the tail that wags the dog. People are beholden to systems of accountability, and what knowledge is valued and how that knowledge is valued really shows up in an assessment system. Besides reducing the diversity of learning environments by having common metrics, we short-change a natural process. This is what we mention in the Naturalizing Assessment article. " Offers pros and cons on badging system (is disinclined but open-minded about their usage) and suggests various kinds of informal learning assessments that do not following the standardized testing model such as: continual monitoring of where kids are in the program, for when kids are "getting it", "minimally invasive studies of behavior and performance" to support documentation of participation and capacity building, ethnology, video documentation, data mining methods of video archives, embedded assessment in learning games, etc.

book by Robert Gellman and Pam Dixon on privacy issues. When data are used to construct "behaviorally based advertising," does that not violate our ability to participate online w/o interference and with freedom of movement?

nice blog post by Jane Hart on working with organizations and individuals to build learning mindset and behavior

article by Amanda Hess, XXfactor, July 23, 2014 ""Minority and women leaders' engagement in diversity-valuing behavior may be viewed as selfishly advancing the social standing of their own low-status demographic groups."" So the trade-off is to get promoted yourself, but not help other women or people of color get promoted. In order to enter the executive suite, women have to backseat their desire to bring in more women or other diversity, and the stereotype of women not helping others advance is reinforced.

An open Google Document set up by Leadership Learning Community with categories--network culture, network mindset, network behaviors, processes, skills, network structure, and personal mastery--with attributes for each, and a column for voting,

4 minute interview with Harold Jarche by Nigel Paine, May 2014, on what personal knowledge mastery really is--the adoption of disciplines, changes in behavior, interacting with others, be transparent about insights with others in public. "We have used each other's ideas, we can not only learn for ourselves but learn with each other." Great example of short, effective single topic podcast on audio boo. Effimova, Pollard, and Jarche use personal knowledge management terminology--Jarche changed it to mastery--practice, outlook, way of improving ourselves. If you are working in any kind of knowledge work, this is a component for everyone to use.

Article by Robert Whipple, on how to overcome distance in building trust. "How can a leader effectively use technology to build trust and cohesion in a decentralized team environment? * Clarify a strategy for how communication should be optimized for their particular team dynamic. * Ensure all team members are trained to use all the different communication methods properly and have the proper equipment to use it easily. * Have a well understood policy for when to use each type of communication. What sorts of communications need a permanent record? When is it important to be able to see a person, face to face? Some decisions are not clear cut, but it is important for the leader to teach the team what to consider when making the choice of how to communicate. * Model the behavior you wish to see."

from InstructionalDesign.org, their page on Double Loop Learning and the theory of action outlined by Argyris and Schon. Double loop learning assumptions underlying current views are questioned and hypotheses about behavior publically tested.

From Science Daily on how we may form new habits, 8/8/2014, Society for Personality and Social Psychology

on overcoming negative behaviors

From the NYT March 19, 2016 Behaviors of millennials in the workplace: social sharing of everything is the norm, they have to be inspired to work, they text people sitting next to them rather than talk directly, and have no boundaries between work and personal life.

by Eric Barker on building good habits based on research by Dr. Sean Young at UCLA, a behavior change specialist

Interesting working paper by Annie Feighery, on Participatory Epidemiology website, asserting primary value of Facebook and Twitter. Note this example of virtual penetration for mobile phones below. Does this threshold hold true for social media use? "Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, now has a majority of countries with populations whose mobile phone market is at the level of virtual total penetration. Virtual total penetration is reached when more than half of potential mobile phone owners have a mobile phone. "

good article on how more work is shifting to an always-on demand model in order to succeed or at least stay employed. Mathew Ingram, August 20, 2015

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

#7 in a series on big data by Martin Muller, Marcel Rosenback and Thomas Schulz