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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

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

interesting history of employee education at IBM including an early commitment to train college educated women in the 1920s

Blog post identified by Brenda Kaulback for CPsquare Inquiry 2013. Blog by Scott Jaschik, August 19, 2013, focuses on the DOCC, a MOOC feminized with different values and pedagogy. Excerpt "The DOCC aims to challenge MOOC thinking about the role of the instructor, about the role of money, about hierarchy, about the value of "massive," and many other things. The first DOCC will be offered for credit at 17 colleges this coming semester, as well in a more MOOC-style approach in which videos and materials are available online for anyone." Excerpt: "A DOCC is different from a MOOC in that it doesn't deliver a centralized singular syllabus to all the participants. Rather it organizes around a central topic," Balsamo said. "It recognizes that, based on deep feminist pedagogical commitments, expertise is distributed throughout all the participants in a learning activity," and does not just reside with one or two individuals. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/19/feminist-professors-create-alternative-moocs#ixzz2xY8xLHur Inside Higher Ed

Ron Ashkenas, April 20, 2015, HBR distinguishes between cooperation and collaboration, but not in the way we have come to understand it online. In this case, cooperation is what some managers do when a larger collaboration is underway, but they aren't really committing to true end-to-end product development.

Fascinating article on Baylor research on how internal social networking sites supported and managed within the workplace helps newcomers (younger people usually) to connect and learn from each other, interact directly with more senior people, and inadvertently cause problems for middle managers who did not want to mentor new hires and who did not necessarily have the social/technology proficiencies to participate in the SNS, Science Daily, 1/29/2013. Their conclusions showed that a "company can improve morale and reduce turnover." Researchers are Hope Koch, Baylor, Dorothy Leidner, Ph.D., Ferguson Professor of Information Systems at Baylor; and Ester Gonzalez from Washington State University. Excerpt: he study centered on a financial institution's efforts to reduce IT employee turnover by starting a social and work-related online networking site. Under the supervision of executives, the IT new hires developed and managed the site's content. Since most new hires had moved hundreds of miles to start their new jobs with the institution, they initially used the social pages as an introduction to the community. After a year or so with the organization, the more senior new hires began using the system to acclimate and mentor incoming new hires. All study respondents worked in the institution's IT department and included new hires, middle managers and executives. With less than three years of experience, most new hires and interns were men between 21 and 27 years old. The middle managers and executives were baby boomers or members of generation X. The internal social networking site helped the new hires build social capital in several ways, according to Koch. "It gave them access to people who could provide useful information and new perspectives and allowed them to meet more senior new hires and executives. These relationships set the new hires at ease during work meetings, helped them understand where to go for help and increased their commitment to the financial

virtual volunteer role description with About, Skills, Good Match for, Requirements & commitment on Volunteer Match

This is a wonderful blog that details different configurations of and commitments to online learning by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, April 2011, prompted by her frustration over someone dismissing all online learning opportunities. Read the whole thing!

Blog post by Ann Michaelsen, January 27, 2012 "Have you ever sat down in front of your computer, expecting a lot of work to be done in a certain amount of time, only to find that you have done nothing work-related at all? Or that you've done a lot - just not what you planned to do? Many people are thinking about the way we spend our time and what gets our attention in this digital age. Howard Rheingold calls it infotention and I've been learning a lot about it recently thanks to his challenging but rewarding online course, "Introduction to Mind Amplifiers." It's a five-week experience using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter. Participation requires a serious commitment of time and attention by every member of the learning group. Believe me, the skill of staying focused on what is important certainly proves to be helpful here! The world demands "infotention" Infotention is a word I came up with to describe the psycho-social-techno skill/tools we all need to find our way online today, a mind-machine combination of brain-powered attention skills with computer-powered information filters. ~ Howard Rheingold"

Great article on DOCC (distributed open collaborative course) by Scott Jaschik, August 19, 2013, that helps inform/substantiate in a small way the Studio Learning Labs model of learning? ""A DOCC is different from a MOOC in that it doesn't deliver a centralized singular syllabus to all the participants. Rather it organizes around a central topic," Balsamo said. "It recognizes that, based on deep feminist pedagogical commitments, expertise is distributed throughout all the participants in a learning activity," and does not just reside with one or two individuals."

"Women process information and make purchasing decisions differently than men: 59% of women feel misunderstood by food marketers; 66% feel misunderstood by health care marketers; 74% feel misunderstood by automotive marketers; 84% feel misunderstood by investment marketers 91% of women in one survey said that advertisers don't understand them 70% of new businesses are started by women The average black woman spends 3 times as much on beauty products compared with the average woman Women influence $90 billion dollars worth of consumer electronic purchases in 2007 61% of women influence household consumer electronic buying decisions Nearly 50% of women say they want more green choices 37% are more likely to pay attention to brands that are committed to environmental causes. 25% of all products in a woman's shopping cart nowadays are environmentally friendly.When women are aware you support women owned businesses 79% would try your product or service 80% would solidify their brand loyalty"

Blog post by Bill Taylor, September 5, 2014, HBR Blog Network Cites John Gardner "It was on what he called "Personal Renewal," the urgent need for leaders who wish to make a difference and stay effective to commit themselves to continue learning and growing" He then offered a simple maxim to guide the accomplished leaders in the room. "Be interested," he urged them. "Everyone wants to be interesting, but the vitalizing thing is to be interested…As the proverb says, 'It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.'" What did Spence learn from Collins? "You're only as young as the new things you do," he writes, "the number of 'firsts' in your days and weeks." Ask any educator and they'll agree: We learn the most when we encounter people who are the least like us.

Article in Fortune about Google and innovation Story of Sheryl Sandberg "Take the case of Sheryl Sandberg, a 37-year-old vice president whose fiefdom includes the company's automated advertising system. Sandberg recently committed an error that cost Google several million dollars -- "Bad decision, moved too quickly, no controls in place, wasted some money," is all she'll say about it -- and when she realized the magnitude of her mistake, she walked across the street to inform Larry Page, Google's co-founder and unofficial thought leader. "God, I feel really bad about this," Sandberg told Page, who accepted her apology. But as she turned to leave, Page said something that surprised her. "I'm so glad you made this mistake," he said. "Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don't have any of these mistakes, we're just not taking enough risk." When a million-dollar mistake earns a pat on the back, it's obvious this isn't your normal corporation."

Love this post by Alli Polin, July 29, 2014. She/he? asks three questions about our personal leadership: 1. How am I showing up? 2. How am I engaging (through human connections?)? 3. How am I changing? (You can choose to stand still or bravely and boldly meet your future. It's coming either way. Leaders that not only accept change, but invite it, have vision, courage, and a commitment to growth.)

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.

A series of slideshares that explores issues in leadership on both a national and international stage. According to the report, most leadership development programs are stagnant, and leadership development both on the organizational and academic levels are not keeping up with needs to develop competent, confident, and committed workers.

Interesting approach to conveying information that we should think about for our work. Great use of Slideshare to disseminate report findings.

A network of regional leaders committed to serving the common good in Silicon Valley. They have created a Fellows program that brings together demonstrated leaders to explore process of collaborative leadership that can strengthen their capacity to address difficult issues. Graduates of the program are called Senior Fellows and they act as networked servant leaders

This blog post may be a before/after moment for me 5/2018. The question: "Which feeling/experience/state do you look back on fondly? Which one engages you, challenges you, makes you the best version of yourself?"

taking responsibility for your own learning

This month marks the nine-month anniversary of the most natural and obvious, most joyful and energizing decision of my life: to fully commit 100% to my life's work.I've spent every day falling more madly in love with how I live my life and spend my time, the contributions I'm making to society, and the discomfort and growth that I feel each day.My journey getting here was both arduous and enthralling.