To increase the number of available jobs, the former Secretary of State laid out a plan to offer businesses $1,500 in tax credits for every employee they hire and train. The post Clinton: Why Training for the New Economy is Key appeared first on WIRED.

We are thrilled to announce the Sixth Annual Adobe Learning Summit, co-located with DevLearn 2013 hosted by eLearning Guild in Las Vegas. At this event, you’ll get a chance to meet Adobe experts, industry luminaries, experienced eLearning and Education professionals, and the engineering team at Adobe. You can choose your sessions from five different tracks […]

The title of Chapter 8 is "The Collaborative Leader Action Model" This 91 second video snippet sees me (Dan Pontefract) describe the background to Chapter 8 of the book Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization. To become more collaborative, it’s my belief leaders of any ilk have to rethink their daily model of interaction. The Collaborative Leader Action Model — or CLAM for short — provides not only the method in which to do this, it provides examples of it being successfully utilized. Click the video to find out more about the CLAM. Related Posts:Flat Army: Chapter 10 OverviewFlat Army: Chapter 11 OverviewFlat Army: Chapter 7 OverviewFlat Army: Chapter 6 OverviewFlat Army: Chapter 5 Overview

Meteorologists are promising another El Niño, but the storm has left the west coast bitter and wanting the last two times it promised to come around. The post We’re Expecting You, El Niño, But You’ve Let Us Down Before appeared first on WIRED.

It’s a cliche, but not one without merit. You’ve no doubt heard the phrase "that decision is above my pay-grade" at least once in your career. Whether in jest or seriously, we’ve all been witness to its intent. For those that use it for comic relief, it’s my belief it’s done so to relieve tension — I use the term ‘clowning’ in Flat Army as a key ‘being’ attribute of connected leaders — but it’s also unknowingly utilized to make fun of a serious situation. What is that situation? Decisionthink. Huh? You’ve heard of groupthink before, right? Coined by Irving Janis in 1972, groupthink portends a group of people to be thinking the same way, blinded by differing opinion or statistical proof otherwise. It’s been hailed as the purported reason for classic groupthink examples such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and arguably the 2011 Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver. But ‘decisionthink‘ is a wee bit different. It’s refers to a group of leaders who jump to action before stopping to think if others ought to be included in the process of discovery. It highlights leaders who make a decision before connecting with others and considering options before the creation or action process commences. Decisionthink is dangerous. It creates a class divide in the organization, particularly if the decision needs important information and data from others. What if employees — lower on the machination of corporate hierarchy — could help bring about a much improved final result? That would be as delightful as a mille-feuille in Paris. (you really have to try one of those) In Chapter 8 of the Flat Army book, I introduce a concept called the CLAM - the Collaborative Leader Action Model. It donned on me — after completing the manuscript and final publishing edits — that the model is actually a mechanism to prevent decisionthink. I hadn’t even come up with the term ‘decisionthink‘ until two beers into a flight from Toronto to Vancouver recently … which is really a shame as I would have actually put it into the book, but what do I know. (I’m not the editor) By virtue of connecting with others and considering options BEFORE a decision is made, perhaps we can prevent decisionthink from gaining further traction in the organization. Although never proven, when Coca Cola Enterprises launched ‘New Coke’ back in 1985 — to much universal panning including Time Magazine who referred to it as the second worst invention ever — it was rumoured to have occurred without involving key members of the executive team. Would the debacle have ensued if that leadership team were to have reached out to others in the organization, outside the C-Suite, first? More recently, Apple launched their version of Maps and similar to Coke, were panned just about everywhere on the planet including Wired who referred to it as ‘Mapocalypse‘. I have no proof whatsoever — think of this as dp speculation — but I have a suspicion that decisions were made in secrecy and many Apple employees could have prevented the public relations nightmare had they been invited into the ‘connect and consider options’ stages of the CLAM. Yes, I know … some decisions need to be made privately and cannot involve everyone — or even a few — in an organization. But, rather than defaulting to ‘let’s make a decision now’ thinking, why not make your first decision about who you should connect with first to consider options before you make a decision to act. Run away from decisionthink. And if you do, I believe your organization will rid itself of comical (or serious) comments such as "that decision is above my pay-grade." Related Posts:An Example of the Flat Army CLAM in Action: BC Ideas2ActionFlat Army: Chapter 8 OverviewGoing Forward to the Past: Management Yahooliganism &…the FLAT ARMY cheat sheetYa, I Cry at Work. Do You?

This year at mLearning DemoFest 2013, I showcased an Interactive eBook on the new Drag and Drop Interaction in Adobe Captivate. There were 38 mobile learning demonstrations and the conference attendees looked at each project from table to table, and cast their votes for their favorite mobile learning solutions. It gives me immense pleasure to […]

Last night's episode finally turned Lee Pace's Joe into a truly rehabilitated character. The post Halt and Catch Fire GIF and a Graf: Joe Gets Out of the Way
 appeared first on WIRED.

When I was in discussions with my executive editor about the Flat Army cover, it took a nano-second for me to sign off on the first iteration from the Wiley art department. I’m biased, but I think it looks fantastic. After the front cover was sorted out, it was time for me to talk about my wishes for the back cover. Perhaps I’m naïve as a first-time author, but I insisted that there be no ‘special’ quotations from other authors or industry leaders on the back cover. When I interviewed Henry Mintzberg for the book he was quick to point out that he would not be providing a quotation for the back cover. "Fine with me," I said to Mr. Mintzberg. I don’t think they have a part in today’s publishing world either. Why? Let’s say I did ask Mr. Mintzberg to pen a few words about Flat Army and/or Dan Pontefract. If he agreed to do it, he’d be forced to write something nice, wouldn’t he? (and we had literally just met) What if I asked other colleagues/friends like Marcia Conner or Chuck Hamilton or Lang Davison or Mark Fidelman or Gautam Ghosh … wouldn’t they be compelled to write something nice as well? I didn’t want to put quotations on the back cover because it smacks of elitism. Sure, I may not sell as many books due to the decision, but Flat Army is about being, well … flat … and having a few highly recognizable names on the back cover seems antithetical to the intent of the book. Instead, I defined flat, army and flat army and I’ll let my words speak for the book as opposed to those of anyone else. Related Posts:Announcing the Front Cover of Flat ArmyWordle Graphic of Flat ArmyThe Remarkable Leadership Story of Conner & Cayden Long10 Free Copies of Flat Army … Participate to WinMintzberg, Managing & the Missing Element of…

Meet the company that thinks the era of the cypherphone is upon us. The post The Turing Phone Is Built to Be Unhackable and Unbreakable appeared first on WIRED.

We recently launched Adobe Presenter 9, and with that came the very powerful Learning Analytics dashboard which integrates the traditional quiz outcomes to create a modern and powerful solution for analyzing student learning outcomes. With this solution, you can detect potential problems with learning and get an opportunity to intervene early - improving the chances […]