Group items tagged

Maria Popova's blog, brainpickings, on Carol Dweck's work on mindset. Even in children, open or growth mindset is a key factor in learning, while fixed mindset is too focused on being perfect or the best or knowing all the answers. Growth mindset leads to curiosity, learning, exploration, and creativity. Fixed mindsets lead to the status quo and adhering to what exists. Growth mindset sees problems and challenges as growth and learning opportunities, fixed mindset views challenges as failure and underperforming. Great graphic of the 2 mindsets from Dweck's book.

Full report by Mary Meeker from KPCB May 2014. Chock full of data, graphs, charts of internet use, trends, devices. According to the data, internet growth is slow, smartphones had strong growth but it is slowing, tablets had a 52% early stage rapid growth, and mobile data traffic is a +81% accelerating growth with video the strongest driver. The near future is in tablet and mobile technology, not internet and pc use.

wonderful growth mindset facilitator list of beliefs, Jackie Gerstein, good visual

Really wonderful article on nonprofit leadership development and how the lack of it leads to much external executive hiring and high turnover in these roles

Interesting look at associations' challenges in 2014 Following 2013, a year in which 42 percent of the respondents to the "DC Associations Salary Survey Report 2013-2014" reported a decrease in membership revenues, 74 percent of respondents reported that increasing membership is their number-one challenge for 2014. The survey also identified several of the ways associations plan to foster growth this year. "This pressing issue is confirmed by plans to find innovative ways to deliver programs and services-clear paths to increasing membership and revenues," according to the report. Increasing staff performance and productivity was also reported as a strategic priority to ensure growth in 2014. Fifty-eight percent of respondents reported that they plan to do so. Roughly 50 percent plan to increase staff in key areas and increase staff training and coaching.

great piktochart and motivational videos

Explores value of Pinterest for business, Donston-Miller, March 6, 2012. Pinterest users are heavily women and younger (ages 25-44) Assessment: "Companies are finding themselves challenged to effectively marshal their externally facing social networking efforts, and most are likely focusing on Facebook and Twitter. So, with resources at a premium, should your company be paying attention to upstart social network Pinterest right now? The short answer is yes." Pinterest experiencing huge growth and now drives more traffic to Real Simple website than Facebook does. Caveat: Pinterest user boards overwhelmingly focus on food, fashion, home decor, and hobbies, things that are visual and usually visually appealing. "Pinterest is best used to inspire or remind... looking at capitalizing on Pinterest as a gift registry ...even if your company doesn't make or promote something highly visual ...it probably has something that can be visualized and put into context... data ...house infographics--things like data sets, visualization of data.... even with something like a technology company, there are always ways to visualize information in an engaging way."

Interesting assessment of growth, # of users, and ROI in 2012 for Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn and where each is going in 2013. Impact for Studio--looks like Twitter is strong, and LinkedIn is up and coming?

Article by Pamela Mitchell for the New York Times Opinion Pages, 2.10.13 on creating employment and career growth opportunities for young and older workers. Excerpt below speaks to what older workers need to do to be more greatly valued. I do not think most middle to late career workers can afford to let go of the golden handcuffs (HI coverage) to take side trips into entrepreneurial ventures though. Nevertheless, the argument supports the need for WLStudio assisted learning online by women. Excerpt: "Conversely, older workers often need to develop the enhanced technology and communications skills necessary in today's marketplace. But the most important skill an older worker can learn from someone younger is that of continuous, conscious reinvention. Rather than fruitlessly searching for a "safe" job in a "safe" industry (neither of which exist), older workers must embrace the younger generation's flexible perspective. This means structuring their remaining working years as a latticework of skill-development opportunities with multiple employers, along with occasional side trips into entrepreneurship. "

Core process for individual growth, a blog by Nick Heap. How to find the unique talent that each of us has to "make a valuable contribution in the world and to lead more fulfilling lives."

"The growth of women's entrepreneurship in the last few decades has been extraordinary. According to the Small Business Administration, women-owned businesses accounted for a mere 4.5 percent of all businesses in 1977. In 2008, more than 40 percent of all businesses are 51 percent women-owned. However, only 3 percent of these companies gross more than a million in annual revenue. The Center for Women's Business Research studied this elite group (those businesses grossing over a million in annual revenue) and determined some key characteristics that were common in all of the companies. These characteristics are as follows: "

An interesting blog post by Ian Cleary, April 2014, Razor Social, to improve websites for conversions (among other related topics) Tools for driving traffic and converting viewers 1. Landing Page Tools--Lead Pages is a software 2. Analytics software 3. Marketing automation software 4. Competitor research tools 5. Content sharing tools

A number of great quotes offered by Tom Peters on leading in the 21st century, September 2014. Tom Peters: Today's technology tools give you great opportunities to do 73 things at a time or to at least delude yourself that you are. I see managers who look like 12-year-olds with attention deficit disorder, running around from one thing to the next, constantly barraged with information, constantly chasing the next shiny thing. The only thing on earth that never lies to you is your calendar. That's why I'm a fanatic on the topic of time management. But when you use that term, people think, "Here's an adult with a brain. And he's teaching time management. Find something more important, please." But something more important doesn't exist. Tom Peters: Unless you were born with a very, very silver spoon, you're going to spend the majority of adult life at work. Why shouldn't this be a joyful experience or an energetic experience or a vivid experience? If you're a leader, your whole reason for living is to help human beings develop-to really develop people and make work a place that's energetic and exciting and a growth opportunity, whether you're running a Housekeeping Department or Google. I mean, this is not rocket science. It's not even a shadow of rocket science. You're in the people-development business. If you take a leadership job, you do people. Period. It's what you do. It's what you're paid to do. People, period. Should you have a great strategy? Yes, you should. How do you get a great strategy? By finding the world's greatest strategist, not by being the world's greatest strategist. You do people. Not my fault. You chose it. And if you don't get off on it, do the world a favor and get the hell out before dawn, preferably without a gilded parachute. But if you want the gilded parachute, it's worth it to get rid of you.

article by Martin Dewhurst and Paul Willmott, September 2014 on new leadership skills required in age of new information technologies Machines force executives and senior leaders to: 1. open up their companies through crowdsourcing and social platforms within and across organizational boundaries 2. create data sets worthy of the most intelligent machines 3. "let go" in ways that run counter to a century of OD 4. executives...able to make the biggest difference through the human touch. ...questions they frame, their vigor in attaching exceptional circumstances highlighted by increasingly intelligent algorithms ... tolerating ambiguity and focusing on the "softer" side of management to engage the organization and build its capacity for self-renewal. 5. turbocharged data-analytics strategy, a new top-team mind-set, fresh talent approaches, and a concerted effort to break down information silos...transcend number crunching..."weak signals" from social media and other sources also contain powerful insights and should be part of the data-creation process. 6. ...early movers will probably gain insights of unstructured data, such as email discussions between representatives or discussion threads in social media. 7. ...dashboards don't create themselves. Senior executives must find and set the software parameters needed to determine, for instance, which data gets prioritized and which gets flagged for escalation. 8. ...odds of sinking under the weight of even quite valuable insights grow as well. Answer: democratizing it: encouraging and expecting the organization to manage itself without bringing decisions upward. ...business units and functions will be able to make more and better decisions on their own. 9. 8 will happen even as the CEO begins to morph into a "chief experimentation officer," who draws from acute observance of early signals to bolster a company's ability to experiment at scale. 10. need to "let go" will be more significant and the discomfort of s

interesting blog post, lots of food for thought about PD for compliance reasons and how to support growth long-term, Peter DeWitt, August 18, 2015

nice article by Monique Valcour, HBR, 8.11.2015

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.

AssociationsNow blog, July 30, 2014 "Toronto-based software company Wild Apricot, identified the same top three priorities reported in last year's survey: Small-membership organizations are most concerned about increasing membership, increasing member engagement, and demonstrating member value. Among the challenges that respondents said they face were attracting and engaging millennials and getting their boards and members to adopt new technologies. The survey gathered input from 487 organizations that represent fewer than 500 members and have operating budgets of less than $500,000. The findings provide a glimpse into the many facets of running a small-membership organization, including information about membership growth, recruitment and retention, membership models, and finances."

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 article by Glenn Llopis in Forbes, 6/13/2011, on importance of authenticity in diversity management. Not a numbers or compliance game but a real effort to get the most from everyone in an organization in order to serve/sell/reach out effectively to markets, communities, customers, and clients.