(Photo: WSWA) Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America is releasing this spring its first-ever report on just how involved wholesalers get in their communities titled Investing in Communities. Through various philanthropic efforts across the country, wholesalers large and small are giving back - an effort that goes largely undocumented. "Because the work of wholesalers is so widespread in every community where they operate, and it has long been behind the scenes, we felt it is an essential story to tell because philanthropy and engagement are an essential part of who wholesalers are and how they operate," says Jeff Solsby of WSWA. The wholesale industry is widespread with over 63,000 workers earning a total of approximately $5 billion in wages each year working at 4,400 locations, the report says. Produced on a biennial basis going forward, every winter and spring in odd-numbered years, the report’s release will coincide with the seating of new congresses and legislatures, and will be updated and refreshed on an ongoing basis, according to Solsby. From organizations such as the American Cancer Society, Autism Speaks, Make-A-Wish Foundation, American Red Cross and Meals on Wheels, to name just a few, wine and spirits wholesalers are showing dedication to community health, social responsibility, children, people in need, veterans and cultural resources. "WSWA is an association that doesn’t push this activity - our members do it on their own for a variety of reasons," Solsby tells us. "One of those reasons is that wholesalers are all family-owned businesses, and family involvement and community engagement go hand-in-hand. Employees often report feeling like they are a member of the family and that is one of the key distinctions for wholesaler employees." Wholesalers are local marketing experts and build brands for suppliers in each local market they serve. This means that their staff and professionals are deeply engaged in a host of activities and philanthropic endeavors in their communities. Horizon Beverage Group is one of the many wholesalers highlighted in the report. It has donated $80,000 to the Massachusetts Restaurant Association Educational Foundation to help develop future culinary leaders. "We live in the community, we’re a part of the community so it’s important to give back to the community," says Horizon’s Senior Vice President Doug Epstein. "Where we work is where we live." Much of Horizon’s customer base is small local businesses so it wants to support that, Epstein tells us. "Some of our customers are from the supermarket or club stores, but a majority are local operations — it’s about the ownership of living here," he adds. While giving back has always been something that wine and spirits wholesalers have been regularly involved in, Epstein agrees that the industry’s philanthropic efforts have largely gone unnoticed and undocumented. "It’s nothing unusual, we’ve always done it, but we never had a way to codify it and say to the public, ‘Hey, look at this, this is the value that the three-tier system provides to the marketplace,’" he elaborates. "We’re regulated locally, we’re operated locally and we give back locally." He describes the first-of-its-kind report as "an important vehicle for [wholesalers] to measure [themselves] and see what direction [they’re] going." As an association, WSWA feels that the story of philanthropy and community engagement is powerful and important, Solsby says. "And it’s one of our goals to do a better job of telling this story to a wide array of audiences." Because of the nature of industry, wholesalers directly engage with clients, often having real relationships, which spurs a level of philanthropy unmatched by other industries, such as the automobile or software industries, Epstein points out. "I think that if people stepped back and thought about it, every charity event that they go to, and what part a beverage alcohol wholesaler takes part in that, particularly the legislatures and the public, I think they’d really be amazed if they added it all up," he says. "It gets taken for granted, even by our own industry, but it’s a wonderful thing we do, and it’s really one of the high points of what we do, I think, compared to other industries." Download the report. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: Brown booze, red wine raise winter spirits The art of marketing wine to millennials Culinary incubators: Where food businesses go to grow How the food industry is making sense of big data How Newk’s Eatery sees fast-casual 2.0 WSWA’s first-ever philanthropy report spotlights wholesalers’ community involvement originally published by SmartBlogs

Without question, what happens at the top — priorities established, strategies set or changed — cascades throughout the entire organization. How can it be true, then, that anyone at any level can be a leader? The answer is by "leading up" (or "managing up"), a key part of values-based leadership that allows people to positively influence their boss or even the boss’ boss. Leading up is especially important when companies are undergoing periods of dramatic or rapid change. During these times, feedback from across the team is crucial. Let’s look at a couple of examples from the headlines. Animation studio DreamWorks has put in place a restructuring after spreading itself too thin over multiple platforms. Before the restructuring, CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg reportedly told investors, DreamWorks endured a "painful" period. Based on interviews with current and former employees, The Wall Street Journal reported that "workers of all ranks grew to have little faith in creative decisions, watching as fast changes forced expensive rewrites and schedule changes kept production budgets fluctuating."1 You have to wonder: could that painful period have been shortened or made less excruciating if more people had "led up" to influence strategic direction? Boeing, which for years emphasized new technologies for faster and farther-flying jets, is now focusing on "incremental improvements that it can deliver more quickly to airlines with greater reliability and at a lower price," said Ray Conner, chief executive of Boeing’s commercial airplane unit, to the Journal. As Boeing shifts its strategy, particularly around R&D, will senior management seek feedback from across the organization?2 As changes in strategy and creative vision are unveiled by senior leaders, input must be welcomed from across the organization — whether it’s what works best on the production line or what customers are saying. When I began my career as a junior analyst, my colleagues and I would sometimes scratch our heads over the directives that came down from the top. I made a vow that, if I ever became a boss (one of "those guys" making the decisions), I’d always listen to the people doing the work because they had a valuable perspective. Fast forward many years and I was one "those guys" (a gender-neutral term), eventually becoming CFO and then CEO and chairman of Baxter International, a $12 billion health care company. Because I always invited feedback, people knew they could tell me exactly what they thought. Although I based my final decisions on the best information I had at the time, I sometimes received feedback after a memo went out on a change in procedure or strategy from people who weren’t afraid to "lead up" and tell me, "Harry, if this is what you want us to do, we’ll do it. However, are you are aware of the following …?" And, when a change was implemented that made sense, people were quick to provide positive feedback, as well. Information flowed in both directions, which is the sign of a healthy, values-based organization. Leading up requires clarity and confidence. The key here is self-reflection, which is a fundamental principle of values-based leadership. Self-reflection is the gateway to self-awareness, to understand yourself and your values as you relate to and influence others. Personally, I engage in self-reflection at the end of the day when I ask myself questions such as: Did I do what I said I was going to do — and if not, why not? Did I fall short of expectations? How did I treat people? If I could live the day over again, what would I do differently? For leading up, self-reflection can act as an early warning detection system when something feels uncomfortable or "off." Through self-reflection, you become more honest with yourself: "Am I being resistant to change, or am I truly concerned?" As you decide to voice your opinion, such as about a new strategy or policy, self-reflection will keep you aware of your motivation. Am I acting in my own interest (wanting to "look good" or make someone else "look bad") or am I really acting in the interest of the organization?" With the insights gained from self-reflection, you can go to your boss with more clarity and confidence. Perhaps your boss didn’t see things as you did and is open to feedback. As you present your argument logically — why something doesn’t make sense, is not in the best interest of the organization, or is not grounded in values — your boss may very well come on board. If your boss doesn’t get it, and perhaps doesn’t want to get it, you will be faced with another challenge. Your only chance here is to go to your boss’s boss. Before taking that step, self-reflection keeps you grounded: "Has anything my boss said changed my mind? Am I ego-invested at all?" If you remain convinced about speaking up, it’s time to take the step of asking for a meeting with your boss’s boss—and inviting your boss to come along so there is no question about what is said or decided. As organizations respond more quickly to changes in the competitive landscape, getting feedback from across the ranks is imperative. Those who have the clarity and confidence to "lead up" by speaking up are demonstrating their values-based leadership. They are committed to doing the right things for the right reasons — and acting in the best interest of the organization. Erich Schwartzel, "How Jeffrey Katzenberg Is Rewriting Dreamworks’ Script," The Wall Street Journal, March 29, 29015. Jon Ostrower, "At Boeing, Innovation Means Small Steps, Not Giant Laps," The Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2015. Harry M. Jansen Kraemer Jr. is the author of "Becoming the Best: Build a World-Class Organization through Values-Based Leadership" (Wiley, 2015), and the best-selling "From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-Based Leadership." Kraemer is the former chairman and CEO of Baxter International. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better, smarter leader. Related Posts: Will your company change or die? The truth about people and change — and what to do about it How to involve yourself in change Subtle sabotage: The invisible impediment to change Exude confidence when speaking to your CEO, part 2 "Leading Up": Being a values-based leader at any level originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartBlog on Education is shining a light on education technology innovations during May, exploring the latest products and tools and the hottest trends in ed-tech. In this blog post, we learn how education leader Fred Ende uses Voxer. I’m sorry. I just can’t stop talking about how much I love Voxer. Seriously, have I mentioned Voxer and how much I love using it? I was first introduced to Voxer last spring, and at first, I thought of it as a handy Walkie-Talkie tool. It was easy to use, and it fit a need I had with my current phone (plus it was free), so I figured, why not? But, it wasn’t until late summer, when a number of my colleagues and I found ourselves in a large Voxer group that the tool’s incredible worth became clear to me. For those who haven’t yet had the opportunity to experience Voxer : Check it out. It can be downloaded at no cost from the Apple, Google and Windows stores. Imagine a tool that takes the best of text messaging and photo sharing and add in the emotion and inflection of voicemail messages. In effect, Voxer allows for asynchronous verbal communication with the added bonus of being able to incorporate text, photos and file sharing. The premise of using Voxer is simple. Touch the orange button to talk. But though the premise might be simple, the impact is complex, and, in all honesty, life-altering. Let me explain. Since Voxer allows for the creation of closed groups (up to 15 people in the free version), you immediately know that your thoughts are safe. You can have difficult conversations and explore challenging ideas with others whose thoughts help to shape you as a learner, a leader and a person. You can delve deeply into exploring an idea, with conversations that last for days, without having the conversations seem to last for days (if that makes sense). While truly, all this is great, for me, the life-altering aspect is tied to the reflection that Voxer almost forces you to engage in. I love to talk. And, truth be told, there are times when I probably talk a little bit more than I should. While I’ve been told that I’m a great listener, I know that I’m a great talker (and by the way, lest you think my ego needs some checking, "great" here doesn’t necessarily have to do with the quality of what I say; the quantity of words that come out of my mouth tends to be substantial). I’m proud to say that Voxer has helped me grow tremendously in this area through two different means. First, when you push the "talk" button, you’re on the clock. Literally. The minute that orange button goes to green, a timer starts running. I never really thought about my talk time before (aside from in a very general way, like saying to myself, "I can’t talk for too long at the start of this meeting" or "I only have 10 minutes in this agenda; how am I going to make the use of that time?"), so seeing the seconds and minutes fly by was eye-opening. I’ve begun to use five minutes as my marker, thinking ahead to what I want to say so I can get it across in the clearest and most concise manner possible. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But I’m getting better. Second, unlike with an in-person conversation, there is never an opportunity for "uncomfortable" silence. All the silence on Voxer is, by nature, comfortable. I often provide the most helpful responses to queries and requests for feedback when I’ve had time to think. The fact that, with Voxer, a question can be asked, and the asker doesn’t have any preconceived notions on when (or necessarily who) will answer it is incredibly liberating. This extended wait time is exactly what we all need if we are going to best process the information we’re buffeted with daily. I can clearly state that I’ve become a more consistent reflector of my own thinking, and the thinking of others, because of Voxer’s design. I can speak to the wonders of this tool not just from its impact on me, but also on others that I work with. I recently facilitated a workshop on incorporating various "newer" technology tools into professional development work. When it came time to explore Voxer, we engaged in an asynchronous article reflection, from five different areas of our campus, enjoying the great weather, eachother’s "virtual" company and the reflection time we had in between comments (or voxes). Voxer has the potential to make protocol work even more powerful, by helping participants to give thought the time it needs to grow well. No tool is perfect, but for me, Voxer is pretty darn close. What I want from any tool (new technology or old) is an ability to put it down or turn it off feeling like I’ve built my own capacity to become a better learner and leader in using it. Voxer might be "push to talk," but it has required no push to get me to see how I’ve become better from its existence. Fred Ende (@fredende) is the director of SCIENCE 21 and currently serves as assistant director of Curriculum and Instructional Services for Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES. Fred is an ASCD Emerging Leader and along with writing here, he also blogs at ASCD EDge. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering EdTech, Higher Education and more. Related Posts: SmartBrief honors innovative bloggers: Meet this month’s winners The serious business of classroom fun Evolution of the "good" teacher Whole child? Whole learner Cyberschools: Tips for launching a local program Leading inside the Vox originally published by SmartBlogs

Customer loyalty is very hard to gain in an era where countless businesses are offering the same products and services to the same audience. Customers have lots of choices, and as soon as they find the "supposedly" next best thing, they take their money, family and friends with them. Instead of just building a customer loyalty program, focus on building WOW customer experience and the loyalty will follow. A WOW customer experience is when a business is really great at providing their customers with amazing products and also genuinely provides excellent service. When a customer experiences both components simultaneously and consistently, it activates an emotion that creates loyalty and trust, which turns that customer into a walking word-of-mouth marketer for your business. Now imagine having 100 or 500 customers just like that. You now start to build a tribe of supporters for your business. In reality, not all businesses are built like that. Some businesses have awesome products but bad customer service, and other businesses have not-so great products but amazing customer service. Here are 3 ways to build an effective WOW Customer Experience: 1) Experiment Most times it might not be a direct competitor that your customers are cheating on you with. It’s new fads or new business concepts that enter the marketplace instead. This doesn’t mean you need to change your entire menu, product line, or service to compete, but it’s good to experiment with other offerings without comprising your existing business. For example, if you’re an Italian restaurant and a new Mexican restaurant is attracting your customers, do not start selling Mexican food. However, if your customers are continuously asking about gluten-free options, you can highlight the gluten-free items on your menu or consider adding more gluten-free options for them to choose from. You should do these things not because they are the "hot thing" to do, but because you really care about making your customers happy and providing them with an enjoyable experience. 2) Tools It is very important to have the right tools in order to build a great customer-service experience. They will help you to conveniently and efficiently manage your relationships with your customers. Consider these three tools to use: FiveStars FiveStars helps small businesses create custom rewards, where any customer can sign up with just his or her phone number. It takes care of your customer engagement needs with automated campaigns, including incentives to bring back lapsed customers and special rewards on birthdays. In a head-to-head comparison, FiveStars gets nine times more members than other rewards programs. Something that I really love about Fivestars is that business owners control their own rewards and promotion content and own all of the data, including contact information and notes. A great example of a business that is seeing great results by creating a WOW customer experience and utilizing FiveStars loyalty program is Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries. According to a recent feature by Loyalty360, the restaurant’s same-store sales shot up 18% thanks in part to their customer-experience program. They take customer service very serious and this is built in their business’ philosophy of each and every employee, including the founder. When you really care about creating a five-star experience for your customers, it will show. Sociallybuzz App The SociallyBuzz app is the easiest, simplest and most affordable way for business owners to manage their social media channels and online reputation on one mobile dashboard. This is important because it helps small business owners manage their relationships with their customers on multiple social media channels. The relationship is what drives a customer to build trust with a business, which in turn repeats business and encourages true word-of-mouth promotions from customers. This social media manager app also helps small business owners manage their online reputations. A business’ reputation is probably the most important aspect of anything previously listed here because any negative reviews may prevent a customer from visiting a business, or worse, if those reviews receive no responses. Business owners who respond to negative reviews show other customers that they are eager to own up to faults or explain the situation if not. And, more importantly, they show that they care about customers’ feedback and experiences. With great reviews and an engaged business owner, more customers will come to a business. SocialToaster SocialToaster helps you engage your fans and makes sharing your content over their social networks easy. I like the context of SocialToaster because it uses gamification to amplify word-of-mouth recommendations from the most trusted source, your customers. Once your social community connects their social media accounts, SocialToaster will activate them to help your business have a larger reach, more influence and higher visibility. Rewarding your tribe and providing them with the tools and resources to help them share your message is a sure way to create a WOW customer experience. 3) Conversation Think about this for a second: how do you communicate with your customers? Is it one-way, where you’re always talking about what you offer and what your customers must do for you? Or is it a two-way conversation in which you listen, engage and create meaningful conversations with your customers? Conversations with your customers must feel natural and not forced. Creating a WOW customer experience is not a marketing strategy or tactic. This should be part of your culture and your business’ DNA. Taking this approach will ensure that all your employees will treat your customers the same way as if you, the owner, were talking with them. Having all your employees on the same page creates less confusion and a genuine expectation to create a five-star experience for your customers. Doing any or all of the above will show your customers that you’re listening and care about their needs. Andre Kay is CEO and founder of Sociallybuzz, which exists to help businesses grow using social media. By helping them reach relevant customers, build customer loyalty, mange reputation and increase revenue. We protect relationship with their customer, create effective campaigns, manage their social channels and online reputation 24/7. Read the company’s blog and follow it on Twitter and Instagram. Related Posts: Andy's Answers: How to create your word of mouth marketing plan Social loyalty programs pay off for retailers 3 signs your small business is ready for Snapchat Social marketing success begins with a strategy A look inside Wells Fargo’s new social media "command center" How to create a WOW customer experience originally published by SmartBlogs

Chefs at last year’s Championship BBQ (Photo: Bill Milne) On Sunday, May 17, professionals from the foodservice and hospitality industry will gather at Chicago’s Navy Pier for the 18th annual Championship BBQ to benefit Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign. More than 1,000 people are expected to attend the fundraiser, where they will sample tasty bites and beverages and watch chefs in action during the BBQ competition. This year’s chef lineup includes Missy Corey from Publican Quality Meats in Chicago, Stephen "Smokey" Schwartz from Burnt End BBQ in Kansas City, Mo., and judge Stepahanie Izard from Girl and the Goat. SmartBrief interviewed Share Our Strength co-founder Debbie Shore and Championship BBQ creator and former publisher of Food Arts magazine Barbara Mathias about how the event helps combat child hunger and what attendees can expect this year. How did you come up with the idea for the Championship BBQ fundraiser? Mathias: I wanted to host an event during the NRA Show that would be fun and different from what everyone else did. I thought, "wouldn’t it be great to host an event that would be for chefs and also raise money to end hunger?" Food Arts had the power to recruit all the best chefs and we had found the cause that made sense for us. After all, we are all in the business of feeding people in foodservice, ending hunger just seemed like a natural fit. How is No Kid Hungry involved in the BBQ fundraiser? Shore: We are honored to continue to be the beneficiary of the Championship BBQ. The close relationship between Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign and the restaurant and foodservice industry is highlighted so well at an event like the BBQ where we come together in celebration and to support more kids getting access to the food they need. How much money has the event raised for No Kid Hungry, and what has the organization been able to achieve with those funds? Shore: Last year, the BBQ raised $110,000 for No Kid Hungry, and the funds support our national and state-based work to connect more kids with more meals. In America, one in five kids will face hunger this year. No Kid Hungry is ending childhood hunger today by ensuring that kids start the day with a nutritious breakfast and families learn the skills they need to shop and cook on a budget. Since our No Kid Hungry campaign launch, we’ve raised funds to get 345 million additional meals to kids struggling with hunger. How has the event grown from its early years? Mathias: The first BBQ was at a restaurant in Chicago called Rivers and it took place on the patio — it was a smash hit! We didn’t have enough room for all the people that showed up. So the next task was to find a spot that could hold us all, and we found a great spot, Galleria Marchetti which had beautiful gardens and outdoor space to hold all the grills. We held the BBQ there for the next dozen years and when we outgrew that space as well, we moved the BBQ to Navy Pier, where we have been for the last several years… Last year we had over 1,000 people. The best part is that we have been able to raise almost $2 million for Share Our Strength. What part of the event are you most looking forward to? Shore: There’s a lot of positive energy generated in a room where you have incredibly talented chefs creating amazing dishes for people who understand and appreciate the power of food. I’m looking forward not only to witnessing that excitement, but also sharing the story of how the people in that room, on that night, will be making a difference for kids all over the United States as we make no kid hungry a reality. Mathias: Each year the event gets better than the previous year, so we expect this year to be the best one yet. There’s always a memorable moment … The best place to be on Sunday afternoon will be the 18th annual BBQ and cookout at Navy Pier. As always, we invite all the restaurant and hotel folks in town to be our guest.  SmartBrief is the official media sponsor of the Championship BBQ benefiting No Kid Hungry. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: How to let customers know you’re participating in Dine Out For No Kid Hungry Q&A with Michele Gorham: How giving back can grow your business How to be a leader against childhood hunger NRA Show 2015 to serve up 4 days of food and beverage education Accurate nutrition info, training are essential as restaurants prepare for menu labeling Q&A: Championship BBQ in Chicago celebrates 18 years of fighting child hunger originally published by SmartBlogs

Our SmartBrief on Leadership newsletter started on April 9, 2008, and it looked a little different than it does today. Remember when "Web site" was spelled that way and when BlackBerry was the market leader? What hasn’t changed is the goal of us here at SmartBrief — to help today’s and tomorrow’s leaders be a little better, a little smarter and a little wiser as they work, and to do so with a short digest that links to great stuff but only takes a couple of minutes to read. Over the years, we’ve adjust what we’re reading and collecting for you, the readers, to better serve what you want and, maybe, to nudge you in a certain direction. Last year, we added a Smarter Communication section in response to an obvious reader demand for help with the many situations where deft and nuanced communication is required. Starting this week, we’ve updated our newsletter again. What’s staying? Same e-mail, every day. Our top 3 sections, on leading better, strategic management and communications, will still deliver the same short summaries and story links. And we’re still bringing the "diversion" at the end to liven things up. Furthermore, this blog will still be bringing actionable insights about the difficult journey of leadership, whether you read them here first or discover our writers through our newsletters. What’s new? Each day, we’ll spotlight a specific area that affects leaders and aspiring leaders. Today’s is Smarter Working — every Monday, we’ll examine how to be more productive, but without simply adding more hours to your work week. The other days? Here’s the plan: Tuesdays: Innovation & Creativity Wednesdays: Customers First — a look at what’s working and what’s not in customer service and customer experience delivery Thursdays: The Big Picture — what’s next in the economy and the workforce of tomorrow. Not just lines of data, but going beyond that. Fridays: Smarter Living — helping us all get our minds and bodies in better shape as the weekend begins. And we’re adding a daily section called In Their Own Words, which will offer Q&As or first-person accounts from CEOs and others — advice and rumination directly from people who have been where you want to be. My hope is that we’ll meet more of your needs while still valuing your time. Please sign up for or pass along the SmartBrief on Leadership newsletter, and e-mail me if you have any feedback, good or bad. James daSilva is a senior editor at SmartBrief and manages SmartBlog on Leadership. He edits SmartBrief’s newsletters on leadership and entrepreneurship, among others. Before joining SmartBrief, he was copy desk chief at a daily newspaper in New York. You can find him on Twitter discussing leadership and management issues @SBLeaders. Related Posts: Running scared when failure occurs Why culture and leadership matter for disruptive innovation How 2 distributors created a digital tools strategy Why 2015 is the time for distributors to spend When to talk and when to act We’ve made SmartBrief on Leadership even better originally published by SmartBlogs

The assessment of scholarly writing has traditionally been outsourced by institutions of higher education to revenue-driven publishers. The central idea was that if a publisher judged a work to be good enough to help meet their financial goals, it was publishable and creditable. The prestige of the publisher determined just how creditable its assessment was. Thus, scarcity was assured and scholarly publishing sustained itself for a great many years. Publishers took on the substantial capital investments involved in publishing on paper: editorial and marketing staff, paper, ink, printing operations, warehousing and transportation. However, those publishers also received content and peer-review services at little or no cost owing to institutions crediting those activities toward faculty promotion and tenure. In return, higher education was provided with very sophisticated assessments of faculty scholarship at next to no cost. Faculty were provided with the opportunity to have their scholarly work validated in ways that would enhance their prospects for promotion and tenure. Research faculty additionally received improved prospects for their grant proposals as their publishing reputations grew. This symbiosis worked astonishingly well for all those on the production side of scholarly publishing. Publishers met their financial targets, colleges and universities were able to inexpensively promote and assess scholarship, and faculty could gain the recognition and validation of their work which, in turn, earned them enhanced status and income. Publish or perish wasn’t so terrible because there was an entire ecosystem devoted to the publication of good scholarship. On the consumption side, access to scholarly publications could be had through subscription or à la carte purchase. Academic libraries were the biggest customers for journal subscriptions and scholarly books, providing faculty and researchers no-cost access to as much of this content as an institution could afford. Except for textbooks, scholarly publishing was a nicely balanced market. This was also a fine tuned and delicately managed symbiosis that had evolved over many, many years. It was imbedded so deeply into academic culture, sharing the fruits of academic work this way seemed to most at the time as simple best practice. So, what could possibly go wrong? Three things: declining subsidies for public higher education, legislative open access mandates, and the emergence of e-publishing technologies. Let’s look at each of these separately. The e-publishing revolution Although digital technologies entered the world of publishing in the mid 80s, the output continued to be in the form of paper. There was a very capable genie doing page layout and automated typesetting, but still confined to the bottle controlled by a small, elite group of publishers. Thanks to Adobe’s Portable Digital Format (PDF) and, later, the International Digital Publication Forum’s (IDPF) EPUB format, it became possible to dispense with capital intensive paper entirely. Now, almost anyone could afford to create digital documents readable by almost anyone else with any kind digital device. The genie was out of the bottle. The concurrent rise of the internet provided the last piece of the machine that would enable everyman as publisher. Those digital documents could be duplicated and dispatched to any part of the globe within seconds and at little or no cost to this new plebeian publisher. Open access mandates In the United States, United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world, governments became acutely aware of the issues arising from taxpayer supported research not being freely available to taxpayers. This led to legislation and policy mandating open access to publicly supported research. Indeed, this concept has spread even to research organizations receiving no government support. It has even spread to the development of learning materials from entire e-textbooks to single concept simulations, diagrams, or images. These are collectively referred to as open educational resources (OER) and commonly reside in open educational repositories. Rather than asserting an "all rights reserved" copyright, these materials normally carry a "some rights reserved" Creative Commons license. Often, free use is permitted on condition of attribution alone. It is an idea whose time has obviously come. Declining financial support for public higher ed The last recession (2007-2009) saw radical cuts in state subsidies to American public colleges and universities. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, states are still funding higher education at below pre-recession levels and the outlook for the near future is not optimistic. These as yet un-recovered higher education budget cuts resulted in tuition increases exceeding all other Consumer Price Index categories, including health care. It is no wonder that student debt rose to astronomical levels. At the same time, higher education budgets for library acquisitions were severely cut. Academic access to research journals and scholarly books actually declined. Together, these three factors provide the motive, the opportunity, and the means with which to disintermediate the traditional scholarly publishing enterprise, and that process is ongoing. However, the transition isn’t going to be pretty because cultural change in higher education has never been easy and the obstacles are not insignificant. Perhaps the most difficult obstacle in the path toward open scholarship is what to do about the assessment and valuing of academic work. The current limitations of open access publishing Even where traditional publishers continue to be involved, open access mandates dilute or negate the validation of academic work in the minds of many who serve on promotion and tenure committees. There are two models of open scholarship involving publishers: gold and green open access. Green OA is where an author publishes with a traditional publisher and then posts a version of that work on the web so that it is freely readable by any and all. Gold OA is where an author publishes with an OA publisher paying an article processing charge (APC) to cover the costs of publication, instead of that cost being covered, for example, by subscription fees to libraries. The problem here is that Gold OA publishers needn’t exercise the same cautions in deciding to publish since the APC provides all of the income they can legitimately expect. Indeed, a new kind of publisher, one that exercises no cautions whatsoever, is on the rise. Beall’s List of predatory open access publishers shows the number of these organizations growing. Similarly, Green OA publishers cannot expend as many resources on evaluating submissions as a closed publisher can because many of those who would have paid for access will now read the free open version instead. They simply don’t have the income to sustain a high level of scrutiny. Consequently, promotion and tenure committee members find it increasingly difficult to differentiate between green or gold OA publishing and vanity publishing. Yet, they must find a way around this dilemma. Failure to find satisfactory procedures to value open scholarship will only serve to disadvantage an institution in the quest to attract and retain top academic talent. Even worse is the predicament of faculty who opt to create OA learning materials such as e-textbooks and other educational objects, posting them to open educational repositories that are not refereed or juried in some way. Since anyone can share open resources that are not subject to pre-publication assessment, the value of being "published" in these venues is questionable. Young, tenure track faculty may find themselves, like Sisyphus, exerting great effort toward open scholarship without promise of reward or relief. Publish or perish remains, but finding a traditional publishing venue is harder than ever and getting properly credited through open publishing is much trickier. They find themselves far more perishable than their predecessors. Moving toward post-publication assessment So if pre-publication assessment isn’t working, what about post-publication assessment? Can we develop and implement systems and organizations that bring ex post facto assessment to the fore? We do have an exemplar in Merlot, an open repository with a fully developed peer review process coupled with crowd-sourced assessment. Merlot shows us that it has been and can be done. The trick will be to scale this concept to encompass all of scholarly publishing. Recall that peer reviewers who work for publishers are usually compensated only by institutional recognition. Can that recognition encompass work done for organizations like Merlot? What about faculty who participate in crowd-sourced evaluation? Might those institutions find ways to encourage that too? Publishers have failed to deliver high-quality assessment of academic work under open access conditions. It’s time to look elsewhere. Institutions of higher education can bridge this gap by crediting work in open repositories with peer review systems in place and by participating in the development of organizations like Merlot that conduct post-publication review in all areas of scholarly publishing. In other words, it is a simple matter of leadership. Higher education is both the primary producer of scholarly work and the primary consumer of that same work. It is no longer necessary or prudent in this digital era to add unnecessary cost to scholarly publishing via outsourcing. The return is too small. It will actually cost higher education less overall to bring scholarly publishing in-house, not at the institutional level but at a much larger scale, so that critical publishing services, such as editing, can be made available to OER contributors in an efficient and cost-effective manner. This is largely a matter of cultural and organizational, not technical, change. Frank Lowney is projects coordinator for the Digital Innovation Group at Georgia College & State University. This article is part of a content collaboration with eCampus News. The article also appears on eCampus Symposium. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering Higher Education, College and Career Readiness, Leadership and more. Related Posts: No Related Posts Understanding why scholarly publishing today is a cultural, not technological, issue originally published by SmartBlogs

Pedagogical innovation and support has been a much discussed topic in academia, especially at this juncture, where an increasing number of universities are discussing what the university of the future should look like. The urgency of the world’s post-secondary education needs is moving faster than universities can keep up, and hence, new models of diverse scholarship not only have to be piloted, but also modeled for mainline pedagogy and scholarship. Academic culture that endorses and supports an open and free exchange of information, ideas, and output has the potential to not just increase research, but transform the scholarship that is an outcome of that research. Open access, which provides unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed research, has been touted as a model that will reform the scholarly publications of the world, or at least of our country, since 2002[1]. Yet, despite this grassroots movement to promote open access by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) to build unprecedented opportunities to create an open access environment, promotion and tenure committees have been slow to adopt (if at all) the output of scholarship in open access models over the traditional monograph publishing. A survey led by information scientists [6] found that 60% of the faculty respondents felt that publishing via open access would damage their chances of tenure and promotion. From my own experiences, observations and discussions with faculty colleagues, this issue becomes more profound in disciplines such as humanities and even some social sciences where the research output has traditionally been a monographic print publication. Preaching to the choir Libraries have been vocal proponents of open access publishing and have tried to helm the movement of aligning open access publishing with promotion criteria into mainstream tenure processes, as well as work with faculty to ensure that open access publications get the same credibility as their mature and traditional print counterparts. Given the rising costs of journal subscriptions [2] and the nightmare of author rights (where most authors sign away their rights to the publishing vendors), libraries have long realized that reforms in scholarly publishing are due. Their support notwithstanding, until those open access reforms and alternative models are adopted, instituted and applied by universities and faculty, these models will stay just that — models, and not policies. New publishing also means social media Another consideration for reimagining publishing in this digital age is how social media affects scholarly research. Instagram and Twitter rule the roost in the modes for instant exchange and flow of information and SnapChat is the de facto insta-output channel. The question of how universities and libraries can capture the research and immediate outcomes that our researchers and faculty disseminate is becoming pivotal to the advancement of research goals. For example, a research lab outcome that was shared between two researchers using Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter could be crucial to another group of researchers in another part of the world; but without a communal platform to share this open access research or these building blocks of scholarship, the moment of collaboration is lost. Also, per traditional norms in academia, scholarship that is not in an H-index journal is not credible scholarship that can be used for furthering research in a meaningful way. Fortunately, this entrenched mindset about scholarly publishing is increasingly coming under question by younger faculty who see the future of scholarship in a much different way than their academic forebears. All hope is not lost A growing number of junior faculty are experimenting with dynamic and more engaging ways to collaborate and distribute their creative scholarship. As Stevan Harnad argues in his 2003 article on the research cycle in Information Services & Use: "Researchers do research in order to make an impact — so that their findings will have maximal effect on the present and future course of learned inquiry" [3] Harnad is being joined by more and more like-minded academics to make a decisive case (and rightly so) for universities, scholarly societies and faculty to move towards publishing that is not bound by the shackles of vendors and publishers. For instance, the California University System actively encourages faculty to publish in open access journals [4] to ensure that authors retain the rights to their works, and faculty promotion and tenure portfolios are not put at risk for publishing in open access journals. Indeed, there is an additional case to be made for publishing on non-journal open access platforms; for example: academic writing in blogs, on websites or even in e-laboratory notebooks is on the rise. Libraries are currently making efforts to capture this data as part of e-archives and institutional repositories, but these innovative channels have yet to seep into the promotion and tenure criteria as acceptable forms of scholarship. Moving into the future Needless to say, there are ample questions that surround scholarship produced via these emerging channels. Yet, aren’t these the same questions that have plagued traditional print publishing (and still do)? To cite only one example, quite a few high index journals have had to, in recent years, retract articles they published when these articles became marred by controversy thanks to plagiarized data or unreproducible or flawed data [5]. Scholarship can be flawed, no matter if the publishing platform is open or closed. If anything, when scholarship is published in an open access mode, there are more eyes looking at the information and vetting it, thereby allowing for a more thorough analysis and dissection over a blind, three-person, peer-reviewed process. Promotion and tenure committees and rank committees at universities, which are comprised of peers of the same discipline, should analyze the quality of the content and not just the h.index of the journal that it was published in, and need to be mindful that open access journals (depending on their structure) can have a peer review process which is just as stringent as that of those journals that are behind a paywall. Committees should also be conscious of the considerably higher impact of scholarship disseminated through open publishing, as it lends itself to more exposure over subscription-based journals or pricey hardcover monographs. And this should be a criterion that factors into the promotion and tenure policies. Beyond the tenure process, each discipline’s academy also needs to consider more than just traditional faculty research and start to look to interactive projects and experiments which could lead to new research projects. Information, when shared openly, spurs unexpected human interaction, which leads to more complex intellectual developments, and open access is the driving mechanism. Open access is just a conduit, but what it opens up is a far more robust dialogue about teaching, frameworks, interactions and inter-connected research. And that is one of the many vital things that academia needs to focus on as it shapes up for the "university of the future." Salwa Ismail is the department head of library information tech at Georgetown University. References: Open Access Directory. (2014). Timeline of the Open Access movement. [Online]. Accessed March 28, 2015 at http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Timeline Corbett, H. (2009). The Crisis in Scholarly Communication, Part I: Understanding the Issues and Engaging Your Faculty. Technical Services Quarterly, 26(2), 125-134. doi:10.1080/07317130802268522 Harnad, S. (2003). The research‐impact cycle. Information Services & Use, 23(2/3), 139. Roscorla, T. (2013). Open Access to Scholarly Work Gains Steam in California Universities. Center for Digital Education. [Online]. Accessed March 30, 2015 at http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Open-Access-Scholarly-Work-California.html Cyranoski, D. (2014), Papers on ‘stress-induced’ stem cells are retracted. Nature News; Nature Publishing Group. doi:10.1038/nature.2014.15501 Pain, E. (2007). Minds Closed to Open Access. Science, 315(5818), 1479. This article is part of a content collaboration with eCampus News. The article also appears on eCampus Symposium. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering Higher Education, College and Career Readiness, Leadership and more.       Related Posts: No Related Posts Why going Open is critical for the future of the university originally published by SmartBlogs

Beginning this month, SmartBlog on Education in collaboration with eCampus News will bring you monthly point/counterpoint-style blog posts about top issues in higher education. We kick off the content series with two experts’ thoughts on open access and scholarly publishing. Why going Open is critical for the future of the university by Salwa Ismail, department head of library information tech at Georgetown University Understanding why scholarly publishing today is a cultural, not technological, issue by Frank Lowney, projects coordinator for the Digital Innovation Group at Georgia College & State University Join the conversation on eCampus Symposium. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering Higher Education, College and Career Readiness, Leadership and more.   Related Posts: No Related Posts Higher Ed Conversations: Open access originally published by SmartBlogs

I spend many, many hours watching the NBA playoffs each spring. The first round is, in many ways, my favorite: up to four games per day, and intense excellence from so many players and teams. The playoffs bring out heightened tensions and passions. Trash talk can turn into physical play, which can turn into blatant on-court assaults that injure players, like with J.R. Smith’s inexcusable hit on Jae Crowder. Notably, when that happens, there are consequences (usually). Smith was ejected and later suspended for two games, being lucky to not miss more time. That may be of little consolation to the Boston Celtics, but Smith’s unacceptable violence has received some measure of punishment that will diminish his team’s capabilities. Contrast that with Tuesday night, when the Houston Rockets were busy clinching a series win against the Dallas Mavericks. The series featured dozens of fouls each game, numerous flagrant and technical fouls, and a physical style of play. That happens; the officials were generally pretty good at keeping order. The game, or rather the conversation around the game, also featured a now-infamous tweet by the official Rockets account that depicted, well, emoji "violence": The Rockets fired the head of their social media team after Tuesday’s controversial tweet. http://t.co/z2r2IzUBQrpic.twitter.com/bGyEyl8qMo — NBC Sports (@NBCSports) April 30, 2015 OK. That’s petty and silly. If a player said something similar, that would be criticized by the league and the media. But it’s not the violence we described earlier. It’s not the sanctioned violence of this past weekend’s Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao bout, and it’s assuredly not the real, yearslong and under-reported domestic violence that Mayweather and many boxing fans and journalist seem to think is not a problem. But it was enough to cost the tweeting employee his job. Chad Shanks was a four-year employee of the team , and with no word (publicly) that he was a problem employee and that this horse-pistol-emoji tweet was some sort of "last straw" situation. Two things that have bothered me: Mistakes happen. Will you have a response other than, "You’re fired"? Mistakes of judgment are inevitable when communicating publicly, particularly on the "say not think" publicity-seeking platform of Twitter. (Disclosure: I love Twitter, but I regretfully don’t follow the only rule: "Don’t tweet.") Furthermore, some mistakes bring days or months of negative consequences. This was not that: The Rockets’ account apologized that night after the Mavericks’ account noted the insult disapprovingly, and there was no further outcry for reparation. Surely, the Rockets are not firing someone every time they experience a failure while performing their job? Surely, the next time a pro sports team encounters a social media crisis, there will be a plan beyond "eliminate the person who pressed ‘post’ and then carry on"? Do you have the right perspective to apply the proper remedy? Let’s talk about perspective. Firing someone for a dumb, not malicious tweet. Firing that person without much of any review when his job is to do the very type of action that he was fired for. Firing someone for a "violent" tweet when we could spend tens of thousands of words documenting the unpunished crimes and other awful actions famous people take, deliberately and with malice, that have real-life effects and cause actual harm. Similarly, pick any news story about corruption, violence or scandal and realize how horrible it is when people are harmed, often irrevocably, and yet know that justice won’t be served any time soon. This situation has literally nothing in common with those scenarios. This, instead, and I cannot restate enough, is about PR people for a anthropomorphized collection of rockets firing a guy because he might have sent too-mean cartoony symbols to a bunch of PR people for an anthropomorphized collection of mavericks. Did Chad Shanks fail? Sure. Did the Houston Rockets give him any expectation ahead of time that such a tweet would be failure, and a fireable one at that? Maybe, but if tweets like this and this were praised, the culture and expectations were clear: Be edgy, push the envelope, and be especially bold when the Rockets are winning. Well, that’s what he did last Tuesday. Sometimes, you have to fire people. But even in those circumstances, it’s up to the leaders and the organization as a whole to learn. It’s up to them to —before and after firing — ask these difficult questions: "What is our responsibility for what happened? How can we react to these failings to minimize the chance of a repeat while still giving our employees training, opportunity and trust?" Finding the answers isn’t easy. As Georgia-Pacific CEO Jim Hannan said: "We all suffer setbacks and failures, but the key is not to overreact. The real value of failure is the time spent examining the causes and addressing the problems that factored into it, and then doing what is necessary not to repeat it. Sometimes the hardest part can be accepting it and moving on." Maybe the presence of Shanks really was the cause of the problem, and getting rid of him was the solution. But if so, what does the Houston organization plan to do differently? Can’t fire your way out of a problem. And, if Shanks indeed was the problem, is Dan Le Batard a fool for hiring him almost immediately? Or is he someone who realizes that a talented person who made a mistake is available, probably willing to work hard to redeem himself, and therefore the only fool would be someone not looking to seize the market advantage. (That is, of course, assuming there’s any advantage in anthropomorphized tweeting.) If you must fire, fire people because they’ve violated the law, the rules of your company or the mores and standards of decent culture and society. Fire people, possibly, who don’t want to try to improve after proper efforts have been made on all sides. Don’t fire people for a mistake that you helped cause. Don’t run away from the problem you helped create. James daSilva is a senior editor at SmartBrief and manages SmartBlog on Leadership. He edits SmartBrief’s newsletters on leadership and entrepreneurship, among others. You can find him on Twitter discussing leadership and management issues, but not the NBA playoffs, @SBLeaders. Related Posts: Ask these 9 questions to avoid hero worship and closed minds We can still learn from leaders who don’t walk the walk The worst social media screw-ups of 2011: Live from Social Media Week — Suxorz Awards Q-and-A with Lars Schmidt: How NPR uses social media for recruiting 6 tips for avoiding social media failure Running scared when failure occurs originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter. Last week, we asked: How important is a SWOT analysis in your strategic planning efforts? Critical — you can’t have a strategic plan without a SWOT: 22.76% Very — a SWOT is an important element of the plan: 34.14% Somewhat — a SWOT can help but it’s not required: 20.00% Not very — a SWOT has marginal value in planning: 5.86% Not at all — a SWOT is a waste of time: 1.38% What’s a SWOT analysis?: 15.86% Understand the Market and Your Position. A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is clearly an important element of any strategic plan. For those who see it as less important, I suspect it’s because the SWOT is done and then disregarded. To use it effectively, think through the implications of the SWOT. The strategic themes you identify in the SWOT should point you in the direction of major initiatives to pursue. The better your SWOT is linked to your ultimate strategy, the more successful you can be. If you need a primer or a brush up on conducting a SWOT, here’s a quick perspective on the topic. Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of "Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results" and "One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership." Related Posts: How well do you recognize when something will "trigger" you in a negative way? How involved are you with "more senior" conversations? How well do you motivate your people? What best describes the mix of work you do? How are you feeling going into 2015? How important is a SWOT analysis in your strategic planning efforts? originally published by SmartBlogs

Income inequality is a divisive issue in our political climate, bolstered in no small part by lingering tensions from the 2008 financial crisis, a recent push for a higher federal minimum wage, and a 2010 Princeton University study that identified $75,000 as an ideal salary for achieving happiness. Combine that with the fact that the average CEO earns 350 times what the average employee makes in the U.S., the largest such disparity in the world, and you can begin to understand how fair pay in the workplace has become a priority for U.S. employers hoping to retain top performers. In fact, some companies are taking drastic steps to address it. I read it on Reddit Maybe you’ve heard of Ellen Pao, interim CEO of the juggernaut discussion site Reddit. She recently was at the center of a high-profile gender bias lawsuit against her former employers, a Silicon Valley venture firm. Although she lost the case, she won a devoted following and opened up a dialogue about the equal-pay challenges women are facing in Silicon Valley. Apropos, Pao instituted a new salary strategy at Reddit to combat unfair pay — banning salary negotiations from the interview process. Pao is on to something. A University of California at Berkley study found that women negotiators are considered easier to mislead, increasing their risk of entering sour deals, and a study of Carnegie Mellon MBAs found that both women and men rarely negotiate their starting salary in the first place (7% and 57% of the time, respectively), for lack of training in negotiation skills. It begs the question of whether salary negotiations are actually helping pay inequality. Pao suggests that doing away with negotiations would help level the playing field, as they aren’t going to reward people who are better negotiators with more compensation. Google me this Google is on the other end of the spectrum — its policy is to pay unfairly on purpose, and it’s been that way since as early as 2006, according to Laszlo Bock of Google. In an excerpt from his book "Work Rules!", Block recounted how following the company’s 2004 IPO, they had to come up with a retention strategy that would ensure their top performers weren’t poached by other companies. They came up with "pay unequally." At Google, it’s a common practice to pay top performers a bigger salary than anyone else, and it’s taken to an extreme degree. Two employees with the same job title can have a pay variance of 300% to 500%. Salary is based on results alone, and they take it very seriously. Top performers get top pay, and vice versa. This aggressive approach to salary has paid off (no pun intended), as Google rarely loses top performers. Take it with a grain of salt, since as we know Google recently paid out $415 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from an illegal anti-poaching agreement made with Apple, Adobe and Intel. Having said that, a drawback to Google’s approach is that it creates what’s called a Power Law Curve in the workplace, where the top 5% of your employees are generating the lion’s share of productivity, making the organization more vulnerable to turnover (hence the extraordinary pay required to keep them). But to gain some perspective, Google is also the type of company that gets mildly disappointed by a $14.5 billion revenue statement. Even Bock admits that the wheelbarrows-full-of-money strategy may only be useful to highly competitive companies with deep pockets. Specific Gravity Gravity Payments, a Seattle-based payment processing company with 120 employees, would be the first to admit it doesn’t have Google money to toss around, but it is taking huge steps toward pay equality regardless with a decidedly different approach: pay everyone equally, no matter their position. CEO Dan Price took a $930,000 pay cut from his $1 million salary, and he’s doing it to make sure every single Gravity Payments employee gets paid at least $70,000 (a baseline figure arrived at thanks to the ubiquitous Princeton study mentioned earlier). Price calls his radical method a "capitalist solution to a social problem," and is banking on getting a return on his investment in the form of employee loyalty, productivity and well being. Price went so far as to film himself making the announcement and share it online to spread his message far and wide. It’s notable that city of Seattle has led the nation in the fair-wage fight, recently instituting the highest minimum wage goal in the country. Gravity Payments is only the latest company to come out in support of fair pay in a city that has become the spiritual center of the movement. More work to be done As the definition of work continues to blur, everything else will blur with it, including what constitutes a fair salary. As we move forward, there will be several more experiments and debates over what workers should be getting paid for, and how much that pay should be. There is also a growing sense of social responsibility that workers are all too aware of since the financial crisis. The company of the future must find objective methods for valuing employees, because the days of saving a few bucks at the negotiation table may be coming to an end. Cord Himelstein is vice president of marketing and communications at Michael C. Fina. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better leader and communicator. Related Posts: No ham please! What your employees really want for the holidays Should executives take an oath of office? How to kill your negotiation advantage How do you prefer to award outstanding performance? Today's bonus tracks Fixing income inequality in the workplace originally published by SmartBlogs

Every leadership expert supports the importance of having a mission and vision that everyone in the organization can rally around and use to support decision-making. But in today’s challenging world of education is that enough? We all face dramatic budget constraints due to decreased revenues. Along with the fiscal pressures comes a renewed scrutiny from the public we serve. In this environment, we must be able to demonstrate that every dollar we are spending on technology is really making a difference for our students. Models exist to help us in this endeavor including CoSN’s Value of Investment (VOI), Dr. Reuben Puentedura’s SAMR, Koehler and Mishra’s TPACK, and BrightBytes Labs’ CASE. No matter which framework you use to make decisions and evaluate the progress and effectiveness of your program, it is absolutely critical that you are basing those critical decisions on solid data that can be clearly communicated to stakeholders to ensure continued support and investment. Brad Hagg is the chief technology officer for Warsaw Community Schools in Warsaw, Ind. Brad has served in education technology for more than 16 years and is a Certified Education Technology Leader (CETL). Brad was selected as a "20 to Watch" Educator for 2013-2014 by The National School Boards Association. He is passionate about using technology to accelerate learning for today’s digital learner. ***** Tech Tips is a content collaboration between SmartBrief Education and GreyED Solutions. Have a tech tip to share? Contact us at techtips@greyedsolutions.com Miss a Tech Tip? Visit our Tech Tip archive. ***** Related Posts: No Related Posts Tech Tip: What are we aiming for? originally published by SmartBlogs

CFOs increasingly help organizations make business decisions outside the finance arena, stepping beyond their traditional role to partner with other executives on strategy and long-term planning. For many CFOs, the transformation from scorekeeper to strategic partner requires more than a paradigm shift — it requires a major step forward in data-analysis capabilities and cloud-technology adoption. Predictive analytics and flexible modeling with new cloud technologies, combined with the pervasiveness of Big Data, are interesting new challenges for CFOs who have been in the weeds dealing with regulatory compliance since Sarbanes-Oxley arose in the early 2000s. Strategic thinking is ingrained into most CFOs’ DNA, and it’s time to push that thinking to the forefront while scaling the business, growing revenue and keeping tabs on all the moving pieces. Here are four lessons that have served me well during my career and remain relevant as the role of the CFO continues to evolve: Credit: Recite.com 1. Master the fundamentals first Today, most financial departments have their compliance issues in check and are instead focusing on using data and technology to move quickly. Regardless of the situation, it’s crucial to establish a solid foundation before building beyond it. The basic infrastructure of general accounting, transaction processing, financial reporting, tax and compliance, and cash management should be humming smoothly before finance attempts to tackle broader operational or strategic initiatives. Once these core financial systems are in place, the CFO will be better positioned to lead operational work, strategy and higher level business discussions. 2. Build a strong partnership with the CIO Finance and IT must work closely together to use technology most effectively and encourage efficiency across processes and resources. In particular, the CFO can benefit from the chief information officer’s knowledge of emerging technologies and understand true return on investment. Meanwhile, the CIO can benefit from the CFO’s view of the company’s business model, revenue and future direction. The CFO should also play a key role in data standardization and definition, helping the CIO ensure cross-functional data standards. At my current company, Invoca, we use many cloud-based applications across the financial organization as well as sales, marketing, development, and product management teams. We recently invested in a state-of-the-art business-intelligence tool that enables us to gather disparate data across all our applications, with actionable reporting and analysis that helps us optimize our investment decisions. 3. Embrace the cloud As companies add more applications to their infrastructure, business-information tools will have to gather data from various internal and external systems. Cloud-based tools will become a necessity rather than an option — even for the finance department. Despite some common perceptions, moving to the cloud can actually enhance a company’s data security. It’s key to work with secure cloud providers (including SAS 70 Type II Audit certification, EU-US Safe Harbor certification and compliance with PCI DSS). Cloud-based financial management applications help streamline and standardize internal and external processes. At Invoca, we use cloud-based and mobile-friendly tools for expense reporting, procure-to-pay, payroll processing, CRM, banking and cash management, in addition to our core financial systems. Not only does this increase the speed with which data can be accessed and reduce the internal costs to support transaction processing, it also provides the agility to quickly respond to changing organizational and market needs. 4. Get smart about predictive analytics Analysis is inherent to finance, but today, the CFO must gain insight into much more than financial data. The ability to understand customer behavior, social media insights, vendor trends and other insights can bring a rich perspective to strategic financial planning. The challenge is to distill a vast amount of data into actionable insights, patterns and predictions. Technology is instrumental when analyzing massive amounts of data from different sources, then taking action based on those insights. We recently acquired a cloud-based business-intelligence tool that allows us to gather data across Salesforce, marketing automation, financial, call intelligence, our own customer activity, Web search and social media analytics and other tools. This nearly real-time visibility into data across our Invoca universe allows us to model predictive scenarios around how, when, and how much to optimize our planned investments into any customer segment, and when to decrease our investments in others. The ability to make sound decisions at light speed is critical for us as a SaaS company. As technology accelerates the pace of change across all job functions, the role of the CFO will continue to become more integral to executive strategy discussions. No other function within a company has the scope of being able to see across the organization, analyze historical trends and make informed predictions about economic value. It’s time for CFOs to adjust their job description — and for the rest of the C-suite to take note. Cynthia Stephens, chief financial officer at Invoca, has over 25 years of executive financial management, operational and strategic advisory experience in a variety of private and public technology companies. Most recently, she was senior vice president and CFO for Harvest Power, a venture-backed renewable energy company, which grew 100% annually to more than $100 million in revenue and achieved its first positive annual EBITDA during her tenure. She was previously CFO for Infoseek. Related Posts: The only financial metric business leaders need to know Collaboration: It’s not what you think it is Breaking down silos: How we did it in 4 steps Planning for the next generation of professional services providers Where do you spend your time? The strategic CFO originally published by SmartBlogs

Later this month, tens of thousands of restaurant professionals will gather in Chicago for the National Restaurant Association‘s annual show. The foodservice industry’s largest trade show consists of four days filled with education sessions, demonstrations and an expansive show floor packed with exhibitors showing off the latest restaurant trends and technology. This year’s show kicks off at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 16 with education sessions including "Recruiting, Hiring and Training in Non-Traditional Settings," and "The Art and Science of Site Selection." Over the course of the show, sessions will cover a range of topics, from nutrition and sustainability to franchising and workforce engagement. The daylong Restaurant Finance Summit will return to the show this year, with a keynote address by Russ Bendel, chief executive of The Habit Burger Grill. The popular beer, wine and spirits portion of the show will operate under a new name starting this year. Formerly known as the International Wine, Spirits and Beer event, attendees can visit the Beverage Alcohol for Restaurants (BAR) area of the show May 17 and 18. Buffalo Wild Wings President and CEO Sally Smith will deliver a keynote address Sunday morning, and the semi-finals for the Star of the Bar competition will take place right on the show floor. Three finalists will move on to the final round at Restaurants Rock at Chicago’s House of Blues. Restaurants Rock will celebrate its fifth year as the NRA Show’s official after party, where attendees can mix and mingle after the show. Chef, restaurateur and host of Food Network’s The Kitchen Geoffrey Zakarian will host the party this year. Show-goers can also catch Zakarian at the World Culinary Showcase, along with other top chefs such as Rick Bayless, Elizabeth Falkner, Jeff Mauro and Maneet Chauhan. New to the show this year, Startup Alley will give restaurant technology startups a chance to display their innovative products and ideas. Attendees should look out for companies including in-store audio platform Storestreams and delivery service Doordash. Some other don’t-miss attractions at the show: the Alternative BiteStyle pavilion focused on special diets, answers to your sustainability questions at the Conserve Solutions Center and the 3D Printing Zone, where attendees can see 3D printers in action and get a taste of geometric sweets. Are you attending the show this year? What sessions, booths and bites are you most looking forward to? Tell us about it in the comments. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing.   Related Posts: Q&A: Championship BBQ in Chicago celebrates 18 years of fighting child hunger Accurate nutrition info, training are essential as restaurants prepare for menu labeling 3 fast casual execs share their secrets to success NRA to dish up 4 days of tastes, trends and hot foodie topics Q-and-A: Health care law update with NRA’s Randy Spicer NRA Show 2015 to serve up 4 days of food and beverage education originally published by SmartBlogs

Welcome to SmartBrief Education’s original content series about the unique stories of teacherpreneurs. These are the innovative individuals confronting challenges, creating solutions and bringing them to market.  "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."- Lao Tzu I’ve always had an innate sense for helping others, a desire to assist and spring into action when an opportunity arises. Starting my career as a kindergarten teacher, there was no shortage of opportunities for helping. There was helping to build routines, helping to facilitate friendships, helping to thwart off homesickness, helping to tie shoes and zip coats and certainly helping to build foundational academic skills. The joy I found in teaching and learning was the ability to help these little minds develop, process and understand the world around them. What I had not anticipated was the amount of helping that would take place with my colleagues as my career continued as a classroom teacher. While asking for help as a child is seemingly natural, it is much more difficult as an adult. Perhaps this stems from a fear of being embarrassed by preconceived notions of what we "should" already know as adults. Whatever the case, I began to notice patterns of my colleagues asking questions in private, rather than in large groups or team meetings, particularly when it came to technology, the topic that seemed to have the ability to paralyze even master teachers. As a technology enthusiast who always dabbled with gadgets and software, especially in my classroom, my desire for helping others was magnified in this space of confusion, embarrassment and concern surrounding teachers’ use of technology. I became a resource for these colleagues looking for answers, assistance or just assurance in their journey with technology. I discovered that adults need to know, just as our students do, that wherever they are on their learning journey is OK; everyone needs a place to start from in order to move forward. My passion for teaching was amplified through these experiences, pushing me forward to roles that allowed me to take a more formal approach to working with my colleagues. After three years in the classroom, I transitioned into a media specialist role where I was able to specifically focus on helping teachers integrate technology into their classrooms. This focus was especially beneficial as I was able to continually see how assisting teachers at this level impacted students in the classroom. I was able to see growth in student engagement and interaction, better communication between teachers, students and parents, and a new level of differentiation in the classroom through the use of technology tools. The common thread that continued through these experiences was the need to reassure and approach these "teachable moments" with my colleagues as, customized conversations personal to their individual journey. There was no black and white approach to technology integration, recognizing the unique needs of learners (both students and teachers) and making it relevant to their own situation. Even with the myriad of technology tools (software and hardware) available for use, the approach to understanding and integrating these into the classroom was a very grey area. My interest in how these resources could be used to inform instruction and enhance the student learning experience propelled me further in my professional journey as I transitioned out of a direct instructional role to an administrative role where I served as the district’s executive director for technology. From this new vantage point, I observed magnified levels of my previous discoveries and became more aware of the grey that existed within education technology products. From the design and development to the selling and purchasing, I often felt myself tilting my head inquisitively wondering if these products "to help learners" were designed in isolation or with the input and clarity of teacher thought. After we developed an enormously successful and well-respected 1:1 program in our district, we became sought-after as thought leaders in this space. Appealing to my desire to help others, I was enchanted with consulting and coaching others in their journeys even when I was frustrated by other districts because they were trying to apply the "black and white" template, rather than individualizing the grey of their own situation. Through these experiences the idea of our company, GreyED Solutions, was born as an effort to address the need for personalized assistance in helping districts to create a blueprint for their planned success in reaching and visioning their instructional technology goals. My experiences as an educator have been invaluable on the entrepreneurial journey, grounding my work and serving as a guide along the way. For those who share the entrepreneurial spirit and wish to embark on this type of journey, stay connected to your educator roots and draw from your teacher toolbox: Monitor and adjust. Just as you do with instruction in your classroom every day, monitor and adjust your business according to market demands, customer feedback and upcoming opportunities. Personalize and differentiate. Adapt your offerings and services based on the individual needs of clients meeting them where they are at, just as you would address the variety of needs of students in your classroom Build relationships. Get to know your customers and colleagues to build a network that is focused around working together to achieve common goals. Don’t operate in isolation; it takes a village to build a company. Communicate. Tell your story, share your work and spread the news of exciting projects and success. Your classroom newsletter is a fabulous reference for providing a framework to highlight 1) what is new and upcoming to watch for, and 2) what is worth reporting on to highlight the success of hard work. Never give up. Just as you would never give-up on a student struggling to make their way, never give up on your journey. Try a new approach, ask for help, bring others into the conversation, do what you have to do to steer the ship to calmer waters. Don’t give up or be discouraged when challenges arise, work hard and the rewards will be great. Julie Carter is co-founder and CEO of GreyED Solutions. Carter began her career in education as a classroom teacher and media specialist and then moved on to become the executive director of technology for Minnetonka Public Schools in Minnesota. There she supervised a one-to-one computing effort and was recognized by the Apple Distinguished Educator Program and the National School Board Association. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering educational leadership, special education and more.   Related Posts: The beginning of the new school year starts now Transforming the narrative about teaching Be the change you want to see Starting the conversation on teacherpreneurship Leading with our own hearts and minds "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" originally published by SmartBlogs

Culture is a real field of study and real, if nothing else, in the sense that people believe in it and can perceive good, bad and nonexistent cultures. But "culture" used off-hand is vague. It implies stasis when individual humans are not static. An organization is merely a collection of individual humans, and so culture is always fluctuating, affected by internal and external forces, and fragmenting. This difficulty in moving from the concept to the murkier reality is possibly why John Traphagan recently warned against the term "company culture": "The problem here is that while we use the term "culture" constantly, most of us give very little thought to what that term means and how its use influences behavior and thought within organizations." But that leaves us at square one. Perhaps we’d be better to spell out what exactly we mean by culture itself, as well as a "connection culture." What are the terms, the shared values and the conditions necessary? What is the science and research behind these claims? What are the proper caveats for the complexity of defining a company culture, building one and maintaining it at scale and over the long term? How do we build culture at scale, especially when "culture" is ultimately about many local, social cultures within an organization? How do we get started, even if we aren’t the boss? Michael Lee Stallard, with Jason Pankau and Katharine P. Stallard, makes this effort in the concise yet richly dense "Connection Culture: The Competitive Advantage of Shared Identity, Empathy and Understanding at Work," released last week by the Association for Talent Development. I recently spoke with him about the book (disclosure: I have a blurb up front praising the book), what a "connection culture" means and what inspired him to write this, his second book. There’s much, much more in the book, but for now, here are some highlights of our discussion that hopefully sketch the journey to the book and what it stands for. The discovery: What happens when people feel heard "Connection Culture" was over a decade in the making, even though Stallard wrote "Fired Up Or Burned Out" in the meantime. The first seeds of what such a culture might look like came firsthand, many years ago, after Stallard had shifted from investment banking to becoming chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley’s private wealth management division. Stallard, new to this business, didn’t assume he had the answers. He looked to learn indirectly through research and directly by traveling to various global offices. He showed people at these offices his thoughts and asked for feedback. Some were suspicious, but others welcomed the opportunity. "You just have those truth-tellers who will tell you what they think," Stallard said. "And I learned a lot from them. And I also found that, a number of them who were very enthusiastic. I heard some people say, ‘Wow, it’s about time someone from New York started asking questions instead of telling them the answers.'" Stallard took back that information, with due credit given, and what happened next? Feedback started coming from those offices: "Hey Mike, you know, Goldman Sachs is doing this, I thought you ought to know about it. Or, we’re seeing this in clients, and we thought this might be something that’s of interest to you. And it really just created this global network of intelligence, where these people who were on the front lines were picking up the phone and just calling me when they had something they thought I should know about. Two key insights Stallard learned: These teams wanted access to information and were finally getting it. This lack of access had not been because of malicious intent by senior management, but rather a failure to recognize that such teams "were curious. They wanted to know." Showing interest in people’s insights reaps rewards. Stallard recognized he didn’t know this business, and by asking for advice and giving due credit, he rewarded and encouraged further help. "It gave them a voice to share what they knew. I could see they were enthusiastic about that. … And then the cynics started converting, saying, ‘You know, Mike, he’s one of us. He’s on our side.'" Simply put, as Stallard phrases it in the book, we’re talking about "shared identity, empathy, and understanding." Stallard eventually left Morgan Stanley, armed with that knowledge plus plus years at other multinational companies and experience seeing how difficult corporate mergers were in terms of culture. Burnout does not a good culture (or healthful person) make Why did Stallard leave Wall Street? Frankly, he was burned out. As he recently wrote: As my job became more demanding I grew increasingly disconnected from my family. I didn’t feel well. My health began to suffer. I needed a lot of coffee to get me going in the morning and alcohol to slow me down at night. Eventually I left Wall Street to recover and figure out how I drifted so far from who I aspired to become. On a personal level, Stallard could also sense how culture affected his actions. "At some stages of my careers I was eager to get up in the morning, and the hours flew by, and I didn’t want to stop working," Stallard said. "And other days I could hardly get out of bed. … I hadn’t changed. It was the culture I was in that was having a positive or negative effect." The research-backed health dangers of disconnection His initial research then helped him develop this seed of an idea through the insights of others. "When people told me [about] when they felt engaged," Stallard said, "I just periodically heard the word ‘connection’ or ‘clicked.’ … it was all about this clicking or feeling connected to — ‘this work feels like I was made to do this.'" From there, he and his research partners started to drill down into this focus over years. Over time, he realized, having a sense of connection means people are less stressed. Connection "makes people feel safe. It improves their decision-making ability and their creativity because they do feel safe," Stallard said. "And when they’re in a culture that’s fast-changing, it can be threatening. And then people go into a stress response, where their bodies physiologically start to allocate blood glucose and oxygen to the ‘flight or fight’ systems. … And if they’re stuck in that state all the time because their culture is not safe, it’s a culture of control or a culture of indifference to people, then they’re very vulnerable" in their health. This is also a long-term problem. Overall health, digestive and immune systems, and ultimately productivity (the workplace problem) and serious health problems (the personal problem). Scott Eblin, among others, has written on the mind and body aspect of work. Notably, Stallard entered his research fearing a culture of control, but his research taught him that a culture of indifference was actually worse than (most) cultures of control — no human connections, just toxicity and loneliness. What are the values of a connected culture? So, we know some of the problems. But what is the fix? Most broadly, Stallard says: "How do we create a culture where we will be our best, individually and collectively, so that we’re more creative, we’re better decision makers, we’re healthier, we’re happier …" His book chooses six universal needs of humans: respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth, and meaning. I asked him specifically about belonging, partly out of my own interest and because it feels to me like a personal step beyond respect and recognition and autonomy — the latter three are much more common phrasings in HR departments. Belonging can be as simple as managers caring about employees "not just as means to an end, but they care about them because they’re people, because they’re breathing," Stallard says. "And they hold people in high esteem because they’re human beings." When Paul Spiegelman was at Beryl Cos., he enacted an online system for employees to alert executives whenever an employee had some sort of need. As Stallard relates: "[One employee] broke his glasses in an accident, and so Beryl had his glasses replaced. And I think Paul actually went and visited him when he was in the hospital. You know, little things like that … these may not be hugely expensive things, but they are very heartfelt, genuine beliefs on the part of the leadership at that company. And the people who work there know it, and they perform. They feel like a family company." Success stories, big, medium and small Another example meets several of these needs, yet is incredibly simple: A one-word change in labeling by Pfizer. After a merger, when the company saw how the other firm called workers "colleagues" rather than "employees," Pfizer adopted this practice for the whole company. "Language is important. And it just sends a message to the colleagues they work with at Pfizer … that you’re one of us," Stallard says. Beyond that, Stallard says, Pfizer looks to its managers to develop talent and push that talent outward. People who have not just autonomy but also real opportunity for personal growth are getting a leg up, in most cases, on the search for the other universal needs. Fortunately, you needn’t be a huge corporation to create a great, connected culture. You needn’t even be at headquarters. Stallard has recounted the story of Bryan Crawford, who refused to lay off people at his New Zealand subsidiary in 2008. His alternative plan brought all employees together, with transparency about the problems and teamwide involvement in the solutions. It worked so well that his unit nearly quadrupled in size and their culture lessons are being adopted by the broader organization. It takes brave action, planning and followup, but it can be done even if you’re not the boss. For even smaller companies, it can be more difficult, Stallard admits. One step is to offer new and different projects to help blocked employees grow. Another is the famous "20% time" or some variant. A third option that almost by definition requires a "connected" culture, Stallard shared, is active mentoring: "[One CEO] said, ‘Everyone needs a mentor,’ so they identified what everyone wanted to grow in, and they would pair them with someone who was good at it. And it created these mentoring relationships where, if I wanted to be a better speaker … that person would share with me what they do, some things they’ve learned from their experience. And every year it would change: ‘What do you want to grow in this year?'" What can you do? Plenty. All the above examples sound top-down, but HQ cannot enforce culture. "Recognize that the most important culture is the local subculture, the people you interact with day in and day out," Stallard said. After all, Pfizer could issue a directive and create conditions to ease its implementation, but it was ultimately up to many people in many places. Stallard could be open to feedback and communicate with Morgan Stanley employees as group CMO, but the people at each location also had to buy in. So, how can we begin? Chapter 5 of "Connection Culture" offers more than a dozen steps to help people get started on making "a connection culture actionable and operational." These steps require reflection, investigation and trial and error. They are not simple, but they are not unnecessarily complex or impossible missions. This, of course, is easier when you’re in charge — either the CEO or a department head or some other kind of manager. But, as Stallard said in our conversation and in the book, each person can build connections without becoming distracted by what’s not in their control. As he writes: "Be intentional about developing the habits of attitude, language, and behavior that connect, and work to develop a connection culture in your organization. Start local and see how it grows from there." James daSilva is a senior editor at SmartBrief and manages SmartBlog on Leadership. He edits SmartBrief’s newsletters on leadership and entrepreneurship, among others. Before joining SmartBrief, he was copy desk chief at a daily newspaper in upstate New York. You can find him on Twitter discussing leadership and management issues @SBLeaders. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better, smarter leader. Related Posts: Will your company change or die? The secret of U2’s success 3 ways Pixar gains a competitive advantage from its culture Cultivating a culture of creativity To maximize engagement, get them started right What’s a connection culture, and how do we get there? originally published by SmartBlogs

Members of the education technology community turned out Tuesday night for the 2015 CODiE Awards ceremony, presented by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) and honoring the most innovative products and services in the education technology market. The annual ceremony and dinner reception, which was held at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, are a highlight of SIIA’s Education Information Summit. Twenty-three companies received honors in 28 categories. uCertify was the big winner of the night, taking home seven awards, including overall "Best Education Solution" for uCertify Course. McGraw-Hill received three awards, including overall "Best Post Secondary Solution" for McGraw-Hill Connect. Schoology nabbed two awards, including overall "Best PK-12 Solution" for its learning management system. Here is the complete list of this year’s winners, listed by category, solution and company: Best Arts and Creativity Solution: Middle School Art, Pearson Education Best Career and Workforce Readiness Solution: uCertify LEARN, uCertify Best Classroom Management Solution: Metria Master Teacher Edition, Metria Teaching and Learning Technologies, Inc. Best Collaborative Social Media Solution for Educators: edweb.net, edWeb.net, Best Corporate Learning/Workforce Development Solution: (tie) Storyline 2, Articulate and uCertify LEARN, uCertify Best Cross-Curricular Solution: K-12 Website and Mobile Solution, SharpSchool Best Education Cloud-Based Solution: The SpringBoard Digital, College Board (SpringBoard) Best Educational App for a Mobile Device: Istation ISIP Advanced Reading, Istation Best ELL/World Language Acquisition Instructional Solution: ReadingA-Z.com, Learning A-Z Best Game-Based Curriculum Solution: ST Math:Middle School Supplement, MIND Research Institute Best Instructional Solution in Other Curriculum Areas: uCertify COURSE, uCertify Best K-12 Course or Learning Management Solution: Schoology, Schoology Inc. Best K-12 Enterprise Solution: The MyLearningPlan Enterprise Solution, My Learning Plan Inc. Best Learning Capacity-Building Solution: SmartBook, McGraw Hill Education Best Mathematics Instructional Solution: TenMarks Math, TenMarks Education, Inc. Best PK-12 Personalized Learning Solution: DreamBox , DreamBox Learning Best Postsecondary Enterprise Solution: CrisisManager, SchoolDude Best Postsecondary Learning Management Solution: Edvance360 LMS-SN, Edvance360 Best Postsecondary Learning Solution: uCertify COURSE, uCertify Best Postsecondary Personalized Learning Solution: McGraw-Hill Connect, McGraw Hill Education Best Professional Learning Solution for Education: Professional Learning Platform (PLP), Knowledge Delivery Systems, Inc. Best Reading/English/Language Arts Instructional Solution: Edgenuity English Language Arts, Edgenuity Inc. Best Science Instructional Solution: Science Bits, Science Bits Best Social Sciences or Social Studies Instructional Solution: The Discovery Education Social Studies Techbook series, Discovery Education Best Solution for Special Needs Students: Unique Learning System, n2y Best Source for Reference or Education Resources: PBS LearningMedia, PBS Best Student Assessment Solution: uCertify TEST, uCertify Best Virtual Learning Solution: uCertify LAB, uCertify This year marks the 29th anniversary for the CODiE Awards. All nominated products and services go through two rounds of review, first by a committee of tech-savvy educators then members of SIIA. "SIIA’s 2015 Education CODiE Award winners are some of the most innovative, high-impact education products out there," said Karen Billings, vice president and managing director of the ETIN-SIIA, in a prepared statement. "We congratulate all of this year’s CODiE Award winners, and thank them for the contributions they have made to the education industry."   Related Posts: No Related Posts Meet the 2015 SIIA CODiE award winners originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartBlog on Education is shining a light on education technology innovations during May, exploring the latest products and tools and the hottest trends in ed-tech. In this blog post, we learn how next generation student assessments are different from past trends or fads. As a social studies educator for the past 27 years, I’ve seen my share of educational fads and trends. Many of the strategies or tools employed in my classroom 10 years ago are not what I use today. One thing that has remained constant in my teaching practice is my need to make the best instructional decisions, based on data, for my students and to make the learning engaging and personalized for them. That is why at this tenure in my teaching career, I am excited to see how next generation student assessment systems are becoming standard practice in the classroom. These assessment platforms or tools allow me to incorporate the formative assessment process throughout my classroom assessment practice. Next generation assessment systems allow me to efficiently create and conduct my assessments, engage my students, inform my instructional decisions and help my students adjust their learning. Next generation student assessment So what do I mean by "next generation student assessment"? What are these assessment platforms? How are they different from the trends or fads from the past? When I talk about next generation student assessment, I talk about more than the digitization of paper-based assessments to computer-based form. I talk about assessment systems that are intuitive, adaptive and flexible, which incorporate formative assessment methods throughout. It is the formative assessment process that enriches both the teaching and learning process. This is what makes these systems different from systems from the past. At Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools (ISD 196) in Minnesota, today we are providing a next generation assessment solution that allows our teachers to generate and share assessments with their colleagues, share results and constructive feedback with their students, gain in-depth actionable, individualized, and immediate data for each student, and provides students with tools to be active and engaged participants in the assessment process. Personalization of student learning Having engaged and motivated students in the assessment process is a key part to personalizing student learning. Since our implementation, we have seen students take ownership of their learning during the assessment process through activities such as predicting their scores, setting goals and expectations, providing confidence ratings, self-assessing, and reflecting on their performance. These activities facilitate student-teacher conversations during the assessment process, thus transforming an assessment activity to a learning activity. More importantly, the self-assessment and self-reflection processes of reconciling their performance with their prediction helps students gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, encouraging more ownership of their own work. Data-driven instruction When students participate in these learner-centric assessment activities and take ownership of their learning, they provide our teachers with actionable information that drives their instruction. Next generation student assessment systems facilitate this data-driven instruction process, making it easier for our teachers to identify where students’ learning gaps are and where they have been. Having these data by standards, benchmarks, or learning targets at my fingertips have allowed me to reflect on my teaching practices and better meet my students’ needs. At the district level, teachers across all of our schools are now having the same transformational experience. Not only do individual teachers have this trove of information about each student at their fingertips, teachers can share this information with their colleagues in their professional learning communities or data teams. The ability to work with colleagues to design and create common formative assessments and to share the results with their colleagues is what "drives" the data-driven instruction process. Results from the common assessments now make our PLC discussions more lively, more rich, and most importantly, more actionable. At ISD 196, we made the leap in 2010 and have reaped the rewards since. Our next generation classroom assessment platform has allowed our students to personalize their assessment experience and take ownership of their learning. It has also provided our teachers with standards-based and actionable data to inform their instruction. And that is why next generation student assessment is here to stay in our district and not a passing fad. Todd Beach is the district curriculum lead at Independent School District 196 in Rosemount, Minn. He taught social studies at middle school and high school throughout ISD 196 for 27 years. In 2010, the Minnesota Council for the Social Studies named him the Minnesota Social Studies Teacher of the Year. Beach is also a consultant for the College Board. District 196 has chosen the next generation assessment platform from Naiku. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering educational leadership, special education and more.     Related Posts: Twitter connects learning inside, outside the classroom Digital distraction in the modern classroom Editor’s Choice Content Award: July The power of digital student portfolios 7 takeaways from #ISTE2014 Using next generation assessments to personalize learning, drive instruction originally published by SmartBlogs

Catch them doing something right. In today’s busy work environment, we’re all wearing multiple hats and moving at the speed of sound. It’s easy to get caught up in the web of customer demands, staff workload and the drama that occurs when things go wrong. Deadlines missed, customer complaints, quality of work issues… it seems commonplace to follow-up on an issue when something goes wrong with an employee, but how often do we catch our people doing something, right? If you know the three practical secrets of managers who effectively use techniques from "The New One Minute Manager," you will experience real results with a more effective workforce and increased productivity - which spells profitability for your organization. Out this week, "The New One Minute Manager" by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, M.D., has been updated for a new generation, and is an easily read story that reveals three very practical secrets: One-minute goals One-minute praisings One-minute reprimands When effectively managing a team, it’s important to understand what success looks like and that’s why setting up goals is a vital step. But many times those goals aren’t revisited unless an employee does something wrong, or even worse, when feedback is held until an annual review takes place. As a manager, getting into the habit of addressing only problems with people can be a dangerous pitfall - when did we stop celebrating successes? The one-minute praising According to "The New One Minute Manager," one-minute praisings are when you catch an employee doing something right! Managers who regularly give crystal-clear feedback on how a person is doing their job will empower an employee to succeed. Staying in close contact with team members is an important component, and allows a manager to catch their employees doing things the right way. And "doing something right" doesn’t always mean it needs to be perfect. One-minute praisings allow an employee to understand that they are on the right path to doing things an expected way. Growth through positive reinforcement — wow! That’s why one-minute praisings work. Let’s face it. As managers we are viewed as effective leaders when we have employees who are productive and happy. Seeking to stay in close contact with our team, especially with a new employee or during the start of a new project, may take us from our comfort zone. But in the end, catching people doing something right culminates in positive results for all. Susan Mazza works with leaders and their organizations to transform their performance from solid to exceptional as a business consultant, leadership coach and motivational speaker. CEO of Clarus-WORKS, founder/author of Random Acts of Leadership, and co-author of "The Character-Based Leader." She was named one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders by Trust Across America in 2013. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better, smarter leader.   Related Posts: 5 ways leaders inspire amazing call center performance Leadership accountability — a positive, simple approach When managing to results turns deadly Break unintentional management patterns and earn discretionary effort How to lead when your employees don’t have to follow The new one-minute manager originally published by SmartBlogs

Did you know you could save real money by composting waste at your restaurant? In some cases, businesses can save up to 75% on trash removal services just by reducing the amount of waste that is hauled away. With International Compost Awareness Week beginning May 3, the National Restaurant Association’s Conserve program is encouraging more restaurants and other small businesses to start composting their food waste. Yes, it can be challenging, but also rewarding. While it requires additional effort and planning, once a program is in place, operators will reduce their trash hauling and tipping fees by limiting the amount of food waste they send to landfills. For anyone wondering what compost actually is, it’s the natural process of breaking down organic waste into a nutrient-rich soil mixture to feed plants. Compost is added to gardens, crops and landscaping to help fertilize plants and enrich the soil they’re grown in. Most people can compost at home, but because of the volume of food scraps restaurants produce, their waste generally has to be hauled away to a commercial-grade composting facility. So why should restaurant operators care about composting their food waste? Here are three reasons: It reduces waste disposal costs. Food waste is full of water, making it heavy. Even though heavier items cost more to haul away, composters need food scraps so they’ll often pick it up for a reduced cost (or occasionally for free). Businesses may soon be forced to compost. Some states, such as California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island, are already regulating large volumes of food waste going to landfill. Though most restaurants are exempt from those efforts, cities including Seattle, San Francisco and New York have passed laws that could end up affecting larger restaurants. Food is too good to waste. We love food and don’t want it to go to waste. Compost facilities take plant trimmings, such as broccoli stalks, damaged cabbage leaves and spoiled carrots, and make soil amendments that nourish new plants to make nutritious food. That is a big plus! In addition, when food decomposes in a landfill, it can emit methane, a greenhouse gas. Composting is a win for the environment, the community and businesses. Composting is part of an overall strategy to use food efficiently. Get involved, start your own program today and help make a difference. Are you sold on composting and want to begin? Read more about composting on the Conserve website. Conserve offers environmentally responsible tips, tools and solutions for restaurants interested in sustainability. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: Q&A: What can restaurants do to reduce food waste? Q-and-A: NRA Conserve director talks restaurant sustainability 3 easy and inexpensive ways to save water Don’t get boxed in: How restaurants can save big with cardboard recycling Infographics: The Food Waste Reduction Alliance releases analysis of food waste by industry 3 reasons to care about composting originally published by SmartBlogs

Anyone who is seeking to persuade, negotiate, or sell something is wise to learn the art of the sound bite. Good sound bites are brief, pithy statements that sum up what you are trying to say. Short, sweet and to the point. Proficient users of sound bites are attuned to their usage. This comes from being well read. Keep up with the issues but also read for pleasure. The purpose of sound bites is simple — help people remember what you said and why you said it. When concise and colorful they reflect the speaker’s personality and amplify the message. Click here to view the embedded video. John Baldoni is chair of leadership development at N2Growth, is an internationally recognized leadership educator and executive coach. In 2014, Trust Across America named him to its list of top 100 most trustworthy business experts. Also in 2014, Inc.com named Baldoni to its list of top 100 leadership experts, and Global Gurus ranked him No. 11 on its list of global leadership experts. Baldoni is the author of more than a dozen books, including his newest, "MOXIE: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership." If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better, smarter leader.   Related Posts: Communicating in a crisis A-C-T your way to receiving feedback Confident leaders invite dissent Resilience: Your tool for success Don’t waste your time — focus on your purpose The art of the sound bite originally published by SmartBlogs

(Photo: Salata) Cutting food waste is a team effort that can get much more complicated when the team is growing fast. Houston-based Salata has grown to 42 restaurants, with 11 more in the works this year. Each corporate and franchise store employs between 15 and 20 people, and the fast-casual design-your-own salad chain has developed practices for cutting food waste that are a key part of the company’s training program. Recently, I spoke with David LaBorde, director of product development and vendor relations, about Salata’s waste-reduction strategies. On developing the training program Training has been a huge project, a huge focus for us. We’ve been working on it intensely for about 15 months or so. We hired a consulting firm that’s helping us rewrite the manuals. We invested a lot in our training team, in developing corporate trainers to train managers and directors of training, all to make sure we’re setting stores up for success. We had perfected the construction side and opening stores, and so we were able to crank out new stores before we could actually train a manager to run it properly. We said "Wait a minute, we need leaders to make sure we have the same Salata experience in each store." It became a huge focus for us this past year. On developing best food-waste practices We’re part of the healthy dining trend and we’re all about customization, so it means being environmentally conscious and watching our footprint as much as possible. We teach exactly how to prepare all our fruits and vegetables — here’s how you cut this, here’s how you trim that. Number one it’s to save on costs, but it’s also to make sure we’re utilizing as much of the food that’s been given to us as possible. It’s 100% evolving. We’re constantly reevaluating and changing procedures to try to improve. For example, a year ago, we used to do it all by hand. Then we introduced a slicing and dicing machine, which can increase production and also give us more consistency and less waste. Simple machines, like a manual slicer, can have a big impact. It’s the impact it has on the restaurants — it can save labor hours and cut waste. By putting the carrots in the slicer, we’re using 100% as opposed to slicing it by hand and throwing the ends away, for example. We’re utilizing more and more of the vegetables we have. How food-waste practices affect the supply chain It has a lot to do with the items we use. We use a medium sized carrot because of its uniformity in size, color and taste. It’s why we have certain specs — we’re not going to get a jumbo carrot. We use California garlic and not Chinese garlic, because it’s more potent. Franchisees do their own ordering, but we control what their options are to order from. We work closely with our vendors across the country, so they know our standards. Having those partnerships with our suppliers, learning their strengths and weaknesses is important for upholding our standards. The distribution of moving goods across the country has been a massive part of my job, especially when you handle such short shelf-life products. But also, we make dressings and sauces, so getting a fresh mango sauce from Texas to Illinois in a cost-effective manner is a challenge. Moving product across the country and sourcing — that’s absolutely a challenge. When we have conversations about where we grow, and growing smartly and strategically, we look at growing where our suppliers are. Tips for operators looking to cut food waste First, I would say, work extremely closely with your suppliers and partner with them at all different levels, including distributors, manufacturers and food vendors. We did this with our salmon supplier. We would buy skin-on salmon and we would trim and there would be waste, and we would bake it and use it in our seafood dip. We ended up talking with different suppliers, getting to know them more. There was a sales rep from Orca Bay, we were getting to know them and he said, "we can cut this for you." We said, "we utilize the waste." He came back and said,"I can do that, too." They ordinarily trim the fish and throw away the waste, he was able to produce a product for us with less waste because their skilled pros did it for us. Having that kind of partnership, we can brainstorm together. The other thing would be absolutely listening to your guests. We started out in Dallas, with big bowls, and our guests never finished their meals. They either took it home or they didn’t because it was already dressed. We created a smaller salad. Many people add a cup of soup, but it’s actually the perfect size — it fills you up, but it’s not crazy portions so you’re not throwing out so much. Guests can eat an entire meal without wasting food. We developed a new menu option that was a win-win for everyone. It was a challenge to market. A lot of our franchisees and managers worried about the small salad introduction, they thought they would lose their shirts. They thought people would go through the line, order the small salad but get all the toppings they would get on a regular salad, but pay a smaller price. So we did more training, we put up signage, we did training videos explaining, "this is how you portion, this is how you explain to the guests." It took off, food costs were not impacted and now it’s about 30-35% of total sales. On cutting waste on the kids menu We launched our new kids meal about six months ago. We wanted to give the Salata experience to children. We used to just do a mini-salad or a mini-wrap. But in talking with a bunch of moms, including my sister who has three children, and working with suppliers, we came up with the bento box. It has six compartments, they can pick any five things they want, then the sixth compartment can be a dressing or peanut butter. kids love it, they get to pick what they want, parents love it because they can easily see what their kids are eating, and it’s got a lid on it so they can take it away. In regards to waste, it’s a customizable combo meal, in a way. They’re not throwing anything away because the child can pick exactly what they want. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: 3 reasons to care about composting Creativity: It’s what’s missing from career development No follow up on the follow up? Q&A: What can restaurants do to reduce food waste? Help employees remember your pearls of wisdom How Salata makes cutting waste a team effort originally published by SmartBlogs

This post is sponsored by Vertafore Sircon® Solutions. License and appointment standards and automation initiatives have delivered real benefits to carriers and distributors offering annuities. Despite these benefits, adoption of these standards remains limited to top distributors and carriers who use broker dealers as a key distribution channel. In this post, Tim Owen, vice president of product management at Vertafore, discusses representative management trends in the annuity market. Question: What are some of the existing issues in terms of the authorization to sell annuities? Tim Owen: For carriers and distributors, license and appointment standards and automation initiatives over the last 10 years have delivered real benefits in terms of streamlining the process of getting reps authorized to sell annuities. These improvements allow companies to streamline their time to revenue from weeks to hours/days and reduce operational costs by eliminating manual data entry and reconciliation, all while improving compliance results by eliminating data entry errors. Despite these accommodations, adoption of these standards and their automation remains limited to top distributors and carriers that use broker dealers as a key distribution channel. The reasons for low adoption include: The complexity of licensing and appointing requirements due to the state-based regulatory system in the US. In addition, some products are dually regulated by FINRA which require securities registration as they are considered hybrid insurance and securities product. New and changing regulatory requirements. Interpretation differences between carriers and distributors of the rules and requirements. The different licensing and registration roles and responsibilities between carriers and distributors, since carriers are responsible for the appointment process, while distributors/reps are responsible for state license and registration requirements. Process differences including just-in-time (JIT) appointing from one carrier to another, as well as different requirements to do business with one distributor versus another. Legacy carrier and distributor systems that were not designed to automate licensing and appointing processes, and vendor solutions that have limited automation capabilities. The prioritization differences between carriers and broker dealers for licensing and appointing processes versus other core system and modernization initiatives. So we still have substantial opportunity to improve operational efficiency and compliance if we can drive down the cost, and drive up the adoption, of automation by leveraging and improving standards and best practices. Q: Why is broker dealer and rep experience so important? TO: The competitive environment in the industry continues to intensify. So it has become increasingly necessary for a carrier to deliver an improved broker dealer and rep experience. Here’s an example of how a carrier could utilize an improved rep experience as a competitive advantage: Chris is in charge of onboarding and managing rep compliance for a major life and annuities carrier. His goal is to keep the carrier compliant while getting and keeping reps authorized to sell quickly and efficiently. In order to attract broker dealers, his company has looked for a competitive edge to help them become a carrier of choice. While commissions and product features and pricing are the most common aspects used by carriers to differentiate themselves, Chris has learned that improved broker dealer and rep experience with onboarding and compliance can give them a competitive edge. With the ability to sell annuities within 24 hours, broker dealers would view his organization as an industry leader, especially as competitors rapidly respond to product and commission differences. In implementing a plan to improve rep experience, Chris was able to also improve company processes across the board such as giving those in charge of onboarding more time to focus on other areas of business. These individuals can reallocate their time to focus on other areas of business. Q: How is the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) addressing these issues? TO: To address the current challenges, IRI has created a License & Appointment Automation working group including distributors, carriers, standards organizations like the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), and solutions provider participants like DTCC and Vertafore. We are also working on a state of the industry brief to describe what we should do to continue to drive further automation, and increase industry adoption of automated solutions. Through more effective and prescriptive standards, adoption of automated solutions can be substantially improved. Chris, from the major carrier, will have the ability to optimize speed and efficiency, with improved compliance using such automated onboarding and compliance processes. If you are interested in participating in the working group, please reach out to your IRI contact or drop me an email at towen@vertafore.com. Q: Why is implementing license, education, training, and appointment automation so difficult? TO: The process to build and implement an automated solution is complicated due to the complex rules, varying interpretations of the rules, and multiple standards that exist for implementing license, education, training and appointment automation. The standards that do exist are more like frameworks or guidelines since they are not prescriptive enough to help drive more efficient implementations. By providing a reference model for how carriers and distributors should put in place a standards-based process, the industry and solution providers can automate processes more efficiently. Once these solutions pass a reference model testing and certification process, they can be instituted almost immediately. When that vision becomes reality more distributors and carriers, directly or via solution providers, will be able to adopt and leverage the standards created by the DTCC and ACORD, and implement more effective processes for annuities. Q: What are some best practices that annuity carriers can implement? TO: First, annuity carriers can adopt existing standards and help create a reference model for how to implement them. Second, they can better understand the needs and challenges of their annuity selling rep, and the broker dealer they work for. Third, if they decide to adopt a just-in-time (JIT) appointment process, carriers need to make it easy for their broker dealer partners to understand what products reps are authorized to sell in each jurisdiction. Lastly, carriers need to work closely with their legal and compliance departments to create simple requirements for onboarding new reps. For example, consider adopting standard background investigation questions like the ones on the new ACORD 821 producer information form, and consider accepting the ACORD 821 form itself in lieu of a custom form. The 821 form can be used even if the carrier is not a member of ACORD as long as they register with ACORD to use the form. Q: How will implementing a Sircon solution benefit annuity carriers? TO: Vertafore’s Sircon solutions team has worked hard over the last 20 years to understand the challenges associated with rep compliance and we have created automated solutions to address them. Our solutions increase staff efficiency as much as 60%, while reducing turnaround times as much as 80%. These solutions also improve compliance and rep experience. We participate in numerous working groups and collaborate with key organizations like IRI to better understand, define and facilitate the adoption of best practices in standards for automation. There is more to do, but we are making progress. Our current focus is to create solutions that connect the key stakeholders in the sales authorization compliance and verification process including regulators, producing reps, broker dealers, carriers and the education providers, to eliminate unnecessary steps and ensure all the stakeholders have access to current and accurate rep information. We help automate the process through integration with DTCC, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR). Related Posts: No Related Posts Improving rep experience through automation originally published by SmartBlogs