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A membership site is not a money-machine. The clue is in the name: membership site. It is a collection of people. You don’t just set it up, take people’s money, give them some content and walk away. They are there for an experience. They want something, and you have a duty of care to give it to them. Back when I first set up my Spirit Authors site, I attended a training session with the developers of WishList Member. The one thing they said repeatedly to our group was: ‘People COME to your site for the content, but they STAY for the community.’

The bottom line is this: a membership site is not a product; it’s a business. As such, it doesn’t just need good content; it needs a business model, a marketing plan and a team of people who know what they need to do and how to do it.

For those that host online communities for their members, the new front-line staff may very well be the person managing the online community.

Wohlers is the lead staff manager for SPE Connect, a platform for SPE’s 141,000 members to meet and discuss their industry, and its multiple communities for various technical areas, subdisciplines, and association committees.

It’s almost always evangelism and coaching,” s

1. Make a digital home for projects in a learning management system (LMS). This type of digital organizer is somewhat similar to the tools, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, that PMs use in the work world. For class projects, an LMS can act as a container and organizer that supports team communication and collaboration, the project calendar, assignments, polls, journals or blogs, grading, and other resources and materials. The New Tech Network of PBL-focused schools uses a proprietary LMS called Echo. Another PBL-focused platform to consider is Project Foundry. More general LMSs include Schoology, Edmodo and Google Classroom. Chalkup has a rubric builder built into it. Or, if a minimal project organizer will do, consider constructing a wiki. A simple wiki site such as Google Sites or Wikispaces might be all a class needs.

But whether or not they succeed will depend on the alignment of a very special trinity: leadership, culture and strategy. Collaborative organisations have leadership models that are open, conversational in style and flat. That’s certainly the style at Tangerine where everyone is a “leader” and everyone can expect to talk to anyone and be listened too.

These organisations also have cultures that are open, high on trust and low on fear of failure. The message isn’t: “What went wrong?” but “What did you learn?”. They have strategies that clearly articulate the benefits of new styles of working. And they create the structures that support, recognise and reward it.

Overall, there are eight ways to spot a collaborative organisation:   Leadership teams model collaborative behaviours Resources are devoted to developing and sustaining this way of working High levels of task interdependence The default setting is sharing information There are high levels of trust Conflict seen as part of the creative process – everyone understands and can deal with it The environment of the company and its technology support collaborative working People don’t have to talk about it – it’s just the way things get done

And I think that’s probably a result of how it was initially rolled out. In some places it’s led to a lack of understanding around how everyone can make an ESN work for them – using it to meet their specific challenges and in a way that best suits each individual. It’s definitely not a question of trawling through a live feed to find something that may or may not be relevant to them, an ESN, used properly, is so much more than that. And it’s up to us in our team to really bring that story to life for each employee. A mammoth task with over 100,000 of us! 

One word: COLLABORATION. With our size, geographic scale and employee numbers an ESN, with all the opportunities for collaboration that it affords, is a game-changer.   

he “silo effect” is caused by a remarkably small number of people who gradually drain the silo‘s grain. Its negative impact can be huge on the performance of the total team; eventually leading to a loss of business. However, I’ve seen clients successfully deal with these “silo effects” within the walls of their company. I’ve sat in on several Pull Design Workshops and have personally seen this transformation occur.

broader definition of workplace learning;  one that encompasses all learning experiences that take place in the organisation – not just those that are organised and managed by L&D – but ones that happen as a result of individuals and teams working together on a daily basis.

“The role has shifted over the years, from leader of a portfolio of training elements to enabler of learning,” he said. “More than anything else, it’s a shift in mindset.”

But it’s not a matter of waiting for the change in mindsets to happen before you start your new work; it means starting your new work to bring about this change in mindsets.

Managing a diverse workplace begins with strong policies of equality from the company.

qualifications of the candidate based on the quality of his experience

creating teams and special work groups within the company.

Encouraged by Watson Sr. and his executive team, employees often formed their own study groups. One, known as the Owl Club, allowed employees to study any subject they wanted at company expense. Such programs evolved into adult learning classes, and eventually into grants for employees to pursue college credits and degrees

Today, industry specialists around the world in IBM Global Business Services use an array of e-learning tools—including podcasts and Twitter—customer on-site classes, and IBM conferences and classrooms to educate customers on everything from the use of social media and cloud computing, to how to build a smarter rail system. And IBM employees worldwide take advantage of their networked community to draw upon each other’s skills day and night to solve customer problems and develop the capabilities clients value most.

Keeping Your Skill Set Current Can Be Key to Keeping Your Job Small and midsize companies can’t afford to not keep up with technology, and neither can enterprise-level companies. This past fall, IBM notified employees, who it had determined needed additional training, they were required to step up their technological game, and that they would receive only 90% of their salary while embarking upon this additional training. Talk about an incentive to stay on top of changes in technology ! According to the article in the New York Times covering this move, some IBM workers received an email letting them know that an assessment had determined certain members of the team had “not kept pace with acquiring the skills and expertise needed to address changing client needs, technology and market requirements.” While some criticized the move, the reality is that employees can no longer be complacent when it comes to their grasp of technology and how to use it to help their businesses grow. That’s something to keep in mind, for sure, whether you’re just embarking on a career or whether you’re already in the workforce and want to make sure you have the skills you need to stay marketable.

The Modern Worker Needs to Be Constantly Learning

Is the gig economy just an intermediate step in the progression toward a fully automated robotic workforce?

my fictitious medical device firm would need to adjust to a team-based deadline model, with incentives to make sure the job gets done on time by somebody, even if the 5-hours-a-week-employee and the 10-hours-a-week-employee both decide not to work this month.

With the opt-in work week, everything changes.

1. “Hybrid HTML5 development will gain enterprise momentum.”

2. “Enterprise mobility will become more widely adopted. We will see more mobility and digitalization projects.”

3. “A fragmented industry will continue to consolidate into fewer, better platforms.”

Biases cause people to focus too much on success, take action too quickly, try too hard to fit in, and depend too much on experts.

Challenge #2: A fixed mindset. The psychologist Carol Dweck identified two basic mindsets with which people approach their lives: “fixed” and “growth.” People who have a fixed mindset believe that intelligence and talents are largely a matter of genetics; you either have them or you don’t. They aim to appear smart at all costs and see failure as something to be avoided, fearing it will make them seem incompetent.

people who have a growth mindset seek challenges and learning opportunities.

The key trends

1 – Learning focuses on increasing business results

2 – Strategic talent management becomes essential

There is a growing demand for the ability to connect to others. It is with each other that we can make sense, and this is social. Organizations, in order to function, need to encourage social exchanges and social learning due to faster rates of business and technological changes. Social experience is adaptive by nature and a social learning mindset enables better feedback on environmental changes back to the organization.

the role of online community manager, a fast-growing field today, barely existed five years ago.

The web enables connections, or constant flow, as well as instant access to information, or infinite stock. Stock on the Internet is everywhere and the challenge is to make sense of it through flows of conversation

1. "We can do it"

2. "Good job"

3. "That was worth it"

They’ve been sold on meditation as a simple way to bear the unbearable.

In other words, if you’re stressed out, you’re not working hard enough on your personal focus strategy. You’re letting the team down.

the marketing of mindfulness as a solution to work stress and life balance rather than the complex spiritual approach to living it is meant to be.