Group items tagged

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

This video by Seth Dickens poses two questions 1) What do I know that could be shared? and 2) What do I want to learn? While I might disagree with the order, the rest of the video (about 4 minutes long) does a beautiful job of explaining what a learning (professional or personal) network is and what it allows one to do to connect purposeful and learn. Other information: Uploaded on Feb 21, 2012 This short video is an introduction to PLNs; known also as "Professional Learning Networks" and "Personal Learning Networks." These simple, organic networks help professionals to continually learn and add new skills and knowledge through informal learning. I'd be delighted to add you to my PLN, whether you're just getting started, or have already established a network. Join me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sethdickens Find me at my blog: www.digitalang.com/blog For Teacher-Training Seminars & educational Consultancy please contact info@digitalang.com This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free: to Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work , to Remix - to adapt the work, to make commercial use of the work provided under the following conditions Attribution - You must attribute the work to Seth Dickens -www.digitalang.com Noncommercial - You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Share Alike - If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

blog post by Kurt Mackey at MongoHQ, a distributed company, on working remotely and how hard it is to come up with an effective system for engaging workers. It is a work in progress. Need firewalls between personal life and work life--sound has to be managed for one thing. Mentions the blending of in-office staff and remote staff and a 'standard' for everyone to use the same collaboration tools, be available via the same channels, and produce documentation of interactions that are important to share. Has a whole section on the practical (and the tools they use to communicate) prefer async communications! Have a central work tool (Compose to record what is being produced each day); day to day communication in Hipchat, use pre-reads to meetings on a Wiki that get updated on Hackpad during the meeting, open mailing lists, Sqwiggle for face time, and Google Hangouts, too. Final recommendation is to "keep iterating" to build a remote friendly culture.

Blog post by David Truss, Pair-A_Dimes, January 4, 2011, on learning at work by professionals, i.e., teachers. Has much more good stuff to say than this excerpt but I find this useful for Information Overload. Another term I ran across lately--practical obscurity--in relation to why we are now part of NSA's scope--because costs have fallen so low to monitor so much behavior online--voice and text--that what was once unavailable without a lot of costs is now quite feasible for someone to monitor, such as NSA, Google, Facebook, etc. Excerpt: "I read a post recently by Jeff Utecht, whom you have worked with, that said this: "Today at school I answered personal e-mail, updated my Facebook status, Tweeted, looked up flights for winter break, and even read articles that didn't pertain to school. And they say we're becoming less productive at work. What really is happening is the line between our work life and our social life is becoming blurred more and more every day." and he continues: "Sure I use some of my work time to do social things, yet I get home from work after 3pm and answer work e-mails, text faculty members about a computer problem, and work on lessons and things that need to be done. So it's an even swap. I'll use some of your time, you can use some of mine.""

Incredible post by Beth Kanter on integrating learning into nonprofits' work, January 2, 2014. Very grounded piece that links to excellent resources. References Charles Jennings' framework of adding learning to work, embedding learning in work, and extracting learning from work. Ends with these questions: How does your nonprofit integrate learning into your work? How do you as a nonprofit professional incorporate professional learning into your work? - See more at: http://www.bethkanter.org/learning-at-work/#sthash.CxcnOOYv.dpuf

work/life integration not work life balance anymore

Austin Kleon's blog, January 27, 2014, via Mashable on Twitter. Wonderful attribution matrix--what it is, who made it, and when, why we should care, how you found it, where we can find more things like it. These are all good notes to put in our Diigo description of bookmarks, I believe.

article in Economix by Catherine Rampell, March 8, 2013 on the rise of part-time work. Excerpt: We are nowhere near recovering the jobs lost in the recession, and the track record looks even worse when you consider that so many of the jobs lost were full time, whereas so many of those gained have been part time. Compared with December 2007, when the recession officially began, there are 5.8 million fewer Americans working full time. In that same period, there has been an increase of 2.8 million working part time. Part-time workers - defined as people who usually work fewer than 35 hours a week - are still a minority of the work force, but their share is growing.

blog by Harold Jarche on the Connected Workplace, 4.15.2013 Excerpts: "Implicit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships. It requires trust before people willingly share their know-how. Social networks can enable better and faster knowledge feedback for people who trust each and share their knowledge. But hierarchies and work control structures constrain conversations. Few people want to share their ignorance with the boss who controls their paycheck. But if we agree that complex and creative work are where long-term business value lies, then learning amongst ourselves is the real work in organizations today. In this emerging network era, social learning is how work gets done." ..."Personal knowledge management (PKM) skills can help to make sense of, and learn from, the constant stream of information that workers encounter from social channels both inside and outside the organization." ..."Collaboration skills can help workers to share knowledge so that people work and learn cooperatively in teams, communities of practice, and social networks." ..."Leaders need to understand the importance of organizational architecture. Working smarter in the future workplace starts by organizing to embrace networks, manage complexity, and build trust."

"The way mothers and fathers spend their time has changed dramatically in the past half century. Dads are doing more housework and child care; moms more paid work outside the home. Neither has overtaken the other in their "traditional" realms, but their roles are converging, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of long-term data on time use. At the same time, roughly equal shares of working mothers and fathers report in a new Pew Research Center survey feeling stressed about juggling work and family life: 56% of working moms and 50% of working dads say they find it very or somewhat difficult to balance these responsibilities."

In this blog Jarche combines his work, David Ronfeldt's work, Stephen Downes work, and Dee Hock's work to look at how work gets done in various traditional, and also new networked ways. Good diagram of collaboration and cooperation from Goal-oriented to opportunity-driven (serendipitous)

Clear blog on cooperation trumps collaboration in networked working and learning

From the Huffpost Health, March 2, 2014. With more people working from home or working from home sometime, here are 5 tips from Gracie Gordon on how to work effectively from home.

by Kelly Wallace Finding work life balance needs to be reframed as a person, not working Mom, issue, especially since we are all connected 24/7. Companies are becoming less flexible, not more, especially after Yahoo banned working from home. Men want flexibility as well, and statistics show more men than women telecommute, which defies the popular conception of working moms being the highest percentage of telecommunters. Until the conversation includes everyone, not just focuses on women, there will be no change in perception of the issue in the c-suite.

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

Jacob Morgan has outlined in this Forbes article from 11/11/14 the 7 Principles of the Future Employee. These are the 7 core ways that future employees will work. The 7 are: Flexible work environment; Can customize work; Shares information; Uses new ways to communicate and collaborate; Can become a leader; Shifts from knowledge worker to learning working; Learns and teaches at will.

From the Atlantic July/August 2013 edition by Stephen Marche "Men's absence from the conversation about work and life is strange, because decisions about who works and who takes care of the children, and who makes the money and how the money is spent, are not decided by women alone or by some vague and impersonal force called society. Decisions in heterosexual relationships are made by women and men together. When men aren't part of the discussion about balancing work and life, outdated assumptions about fatherhood are allowed to go unchallenged and, far more important, key realities about the relationship between work and family are elided. The central conflict of domestic life right now is not men versus women, mothers versus fathers. It is family versus money. Domestic life today is like one of those behind-the-scenes TV series about show business. The main narrative tension is: "How the hell are we going to make this happen?" There are tears and laughs and little intrigues, but in the end, it's just a miracle that the show goes on, that everyone is fed and clothed and out the door each day." He goes on to criticize Sheryl Sandberg for perpetuating an outdated model of women acting like men to get ahead. Marche advocates for a new paradigm of family friendly policies that reflect the reality of today - couples making decisions based on economic and social factors, not whether they will get to the C suite.

Blog by Harold Jarche, April 30, 2012. This excerpt IMO justifies why women (and everyone else!) needs to know how to work in social networks to learn and to help others learn and apply their "capacity for action" in their workplaces and elsewhere. They can transform their workplaces through enriched learning practices. They may not have the HR title but they can still role model organizational learning on a small scale at least. Excerpt: "Individual learning in organizations is irrelevant, as work is almost never done by one person alone. Knowledge, Senge said, is the capacity for effective action (know how) and it is the only aspect of knowledge that really matters in business and life. Value is created by teams and mostly by networks of people. While learning may be generated in teams, this type of knowledge comes and goes. Learning really spreads through social networks." Excerpt: It shows that the company never gave any thought to organizational learning. ■Are employees narrating their work in a transparent environment? ■Does the daily routine support social learning? ■Is time made available for reflection and sharing stories? "Narrating their work in a transparent environment," "support social learning," and "reflection" are all linked to other resources.

Great article by Susan Weinschenk, Brain Wise: Work better, work smarter, September 11, 2012, and why dopamine keeps us "seeking" when we already have enough information. excerpt: Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or twitter or texting? Do you find it impossible to ignore your email if you see that there are messages in your inbox? Do you think that if you could ignore your incoming email or messages you might actually be able to get something done at work? You are right!" ... "Instead of dopamine causing you to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behavior. From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps you motivated to move through your world, learn, and survive. It's not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your searching for information. Research shows that it is the opioid system (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure." Turn off the cues - One of the most important things you can do to prevent or stop a dopamine loop, and be more productive is to turn off the cues. Adjust the settings on your cell phone and on your laptop, desktop or tablet so that you don't receive the automatic notifications. Automatic notifications are touted as wonderful features of hardware, software, and apps. But they are actually causing you to be like a rat in a cage. If you want to get work done you need to turn off as many auditory and visual cues as possible. It's the best way to prevent and break the dopamine loops. What do you think? How do you deal with dopamine loops? Are you willing to turn off your cues?

Alison Griswold from Business Insider, Oct. 8, 2013. In addition to the same tips from others, she adds separating your digital devices so you are working on specific devices for work, and set aside others for play. This is especially doable if you get tech devices from your company.

A PDF presenting the mission and strategic plan for Association for Women in Science 2011-2014. Well done in design and content. Look at these goals and objectives: Increase awareness of issues that impede and endanger American competitiveness by limiting progress in STEM careers Promulgate results of important national studies on gender inequity in learning environments and workplaces Work with federal and local agencies to show how gender equity aligns with their goals for workforce development Actively seek out opportunities for positive coverage in the media of AWIS activities and positions Highlight ways to restructure STEM environments to foster diversity and inclusion to advance national competitiveness Focus on career transitions and special needs of women of color and other underrepresented groups Actively propose and support federal legislation and initiatives which are consistent with AWIS policies and position statements such as, but not limited to: 1. Economic equity; 2. Flexible work options; 3. Parental leave; 4. Improvement of post-doc employment status; and 5. Title IX compliance. Develop mechanisms to engage individuals and chapters in advocacy Identify opportunities for innovation and systemic change across multiple work sectors Promote best practice models for employers and educators by gathering and highlighting examples from different disciplines, work sectors, and industries Highlight the central role of professional societies in advancing women's careers Expand our voice through strategic alliances and partnerships