Group items tagged

Melinda Gates wrote this for International Women's Day - when you invest in women, you invest in the people who invest in everybody else. Empowering women makes good economic sense because the GDP rises when women do. Since they are the ones who are encouraging and caring for their children, their investment in their children's education impacts the future generation as well.

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.)

Blog post by Chris Collison, , on why organizations don't value implementing in a more systematic way the documented learning. "In my experience, many organisations sometimes treat lessons learned like they are an end in themselves - as though the value has to remain in the document - rather than where possible leading to actions which embody the learning. These actions might include updating a process, policy, standard or system has been updated to incorporate the learning, which removes the need to promote the lessons or recommendations to future teams. So why do some organisations settle for a pile of lessons rather than a set of improvements? Some possibilities: It's much easier to write a document than see a change through to completion. It's too difficult to find the owner of the process which needs changing. I'm measured on how many lessons our project captures. We have invested in customizing SharePoint to capture lessons learned documents, and need to show that we're using it. Although I wrote the recommendation, I'm not 100% confident that we should change the process for everyone."

Excellent video on why 20s are critical adult forming period--brain is fully formed for adulthood; "Plan and not quite enough time to do great things"--Leonard Bernstein Musical chair relationships and fear of not being able to sit down at age 30 with partner for life can cause bad decision making Post millennial crisis is not having the career that you want, or family that you want Story of Emma--at age 25--"having an identity crisis". Thought she might want to work in art or entertainment. Lived with boyfriend who displayed temper more than ambition. Head in lap, and sobbed for hour. In case of emergency, please call. who will be there for me? Told her three things that all 20 somethings need to hear: 1. Get identity capital--investment in who you might want to be next. Identity capital begets identity capital. Discounting exploration is not supposed to count when it is procrastination. 2. New piece of capital or person to date comes from weak ties--half of 20 somethings are underemployed, and half of them are not--reaching out to weak ties is how you connect; 3. You can't pick your family but you can pick your friends. You can pick your family and the time is now. The best time to work on your marriage is before you are married. Consciously choosing what you want. Found an old roommate's cousin who helped her get a job; married and has plenty of emergency contacts. One good conversation, one good Ted Talk can have an enormous impact. "Thirty is not the new 20, claim your adulthood, get your identity capital, reach out to weak ties to make your family.

Great article on capacity building for nonprofit leadership and staff in communities of color serving people of color

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."

a new MOOC model: uses open source web content as course design. Won't need a traditional instructor or large start-up investment. Known as a mechanical MOOC.

Blog post by Stephen Downes exploring what a MOOC does and does not do--it does not replicate or build on past failed educational pathways where a person--adult or child--is not motivated enough to invest time in his/her own learning path. He mentions that online gaming is the best pre-MOOC and equivalent to MOOC for young people. Makes me wonder about my addiction to WordsFree and Scrabble on my iphone and desire to beat the computer again and again. Or enrolling in a MOOC where the opportunity to connect with smart, similarly-quested learners/achievers/doers must motivate me to overcome challenges of schedule, technology, serendipitous approach to learning, self-expression, etc. The MOOC is simply a much bigger playground where my motivation and my two feet (or eyes!) rule my behavior .

"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"

Article by Peter Cappelli, Washington Post, September 5. "Companies simply haven't invested much in training their workers. In 1979, young workers got an average of 2.5 weeks of training a year. While data is not easy to come by, around 1995, several surveys of employers found that the average amount of training workers received per year was just under 11 hours, and the most common topic was workplace safety - not building new skills. By 2011, an Accenture study showed that only about a fifth of employees reported getting on-the-job training from their employers over the past five years."

White paper by Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk, and Nancy White, April 21, 2008 on Building a collaborative workplace "THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP Leadership is a keystone for establishing supportive collaboration cultures, especially in teams and communities. This is based on how leaders mainly embed their beliefs, values and assumptions in the fabric of their organisation. There are six main behaviours that leaders display that mould the organisation's culture.[3] What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis-are they paying attention to collaborative strategies and behaviours from team, community and network perspectives? How leaders react to critical incidents and organisational crises-are they sacrificing long-term goals for short-term fixes which sabotage collaboration? Does fear of connecting to the larger network keep them from tapping into it? How leaders allocate resources-are they investing in the collaboration capability? Is it attentive to all three types of collaboration? How leaders express their identity through deliberate role modelling, teaching, and coaching-as our leaders collaborate, so do we! How leaders allocate rewards and status-are your leaders rewarding individual or collaborative behaviours? Or both? How leaders recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate-are collaborative talents sought and nurtured?"

side by side of the old WIA and new WIOA law. Good summary of changes of services and delivery systems. Emphasis on coordination by Workforce Investment boards. Chart compiled by the National Skills Coalition.

From The Next Web (TNW) News by Michael Redbord, the VP of Global Customer Support and Technical Services at HubSpot. Backs up what the Forbes, USNews, and other articles are saying about the ability of liberal arts majors to think, problem solve, see from different perspectives, and translate the technical into common language. Although geared towards recent grads, good advice for any job seekers on applying for jobs, a resume that tells your story, not your lists of accomplishments, and evidence of your investment in yourself.

Love this post by Seth Godin on "too long; didn't read" mentalities as we all proceed in the "checklist mode" of grazing here and there but never stopping long enough to read, understand, and make sense of things. He mentions the importance of "trusted curators" and how it is up to us to decide how to invest our time. Implications for WLS: building dashboards, prioritizing, culling, controlling the incoming flow are all important skills to master for online work. We build on old concepts--dashboard for online focus, leading online--and become trusted curators too to provoke curious second and third thoughts leading to conversions on our site. Excerpt: One option is to read incisively, curate, edit, choose your sources carefully. Limit the inbound to what's important, not what's shiny or urgent or silly. The other option is to assume that you already know what you need to know, and refuse to read anything deeply. Hide behind clever acronyms, flit from viral topic to flame war, never actually diving in. It appears that this is far more common than ever before. Here's what I've found: When I read in checklist mode, I learn almost nothing. It's easy to cherry pick the amusing or the merely short, but it's a quick thrill with very little to show for it.

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

beautiful success story of how no-kill animal shelters got a big boost with networking approaches, uniform data collection, and creation of new medical specialty--shelter veterinary medicine.

Eight trends that medium and large sized multinationals recognize but are not necessarily investing in--such as mobile or individualized personal learning or self-directed learning, Consultancy.uk, August 12, 2015

By Laura Murphy, January 6, 2016. Some of it is building investment in Freelancers Union services. Also volunteering in community, finding a hobby, etc.

like this assessment of value of gap year by Abby Falik