Mark Fidelman recently published a piece on Forbes entitled, "Microsoft’s View of the Future Workplace is Brilliant, Here’s Why". I’m not sure if Mark wrote the title or whether Forbes editors were in charge, but it really doesn’t do the post justice. The second half of the piece is where the true brilliance is … if you’re someone like me who is passionate, fascinated and somewhat dogged about the future of work, and how it is made up of open leadership, enterprise 2.0 and connected learning. Mark states: I can say with confidence that the workplace has to change dramatically in order to remain effective. From there, he outlines 10 key reasons why. You should have a read, it really is good stuff. From my vantage point, (and what my book is trying to depict) our organizations are built on 19th century learning styles coupled by 20th century leadership models fused with 21st century technologies. "She ain’t pretty she just looks that way." (thank you Northern Pikes) Leaders remain trapped; their default modes of executing first before engaging with others is becoming ridiculous. Couple this leadership style with the adage learning only occurs in a classroom or eLearning course. (sidebar - why does the C-Suite continue to accept ‘number of people who took a course’ as a viable metric?) The technology that is creeping if not storming into the organization (thank you Enterprise 2.0) should be causing leaders to rethink their 19th and 20th century models of learning and leadership. No, technology can’t solely fix behavioural problems which is precisely why you cannot change an organization’s culture unless (in parallel) you try to enhance or improve all three tenets: learning, leadership and technology. One of Mark’s best paragraphs is as follows: The new role of management is to facilitate the finding of solutions; not to dictate them. The new role of management is to facilitate "connections", to match people with the right skills and abilities to projects where those skills are most needed. The new role of management is to remove hurdles to engagement by building approvals mechanisms into workflows. This, in my opinion, is the combination of a brave new org where holistic models of learning, leadership and technology coalesce to create the wishful panacea palace called ‘future of work‘. I just hope it doesn’t take another century. I hope we’re ‘ahead by a century‘. Related Posts:Linking Company Growth to Enterprise 2.0 & Learning 2.0Hierarchy starts with a ‘Higher Arc & Key’A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an EnigmaThe Link Between Leadership, Learning & Organizational…The Mysterium Tremendum Leader

Series creator Ron Moore teased fans at the show's Comic-Con panel with new things to come in Season 2. The post Ron Moore Promises ‘A Whole New Outlander‘ Next Season appeared first on WIRED.

I’m a proud Canadian, but on Sunday, May 27th, 2012 my level of pride exponentially increased as a result of 31 year-old Ryder Hesjedal, a native of Victoria, British Columbia, who became the first Canadian ever to win one of the three heralded Grand Tour cycling races, the Giro d’Italia. It’s akin to India winning the Olympic Gold Medal in Ice Hockey. If you’re unfamiliar with cycling and specifically the Grand Tours, imagine being on your bicycle for three weeks, pedaling between Vancouver and Chicago (3,500 km), climbing up thousands of meters of mountains while moving at an average speed of 38 km/h. Insane, I know. Imagine being 6’2 and weighing only 159 lbs to boot. Outlandish, I know. Aside from my patriotism and passion for cycling itself, I’ve been reflecting on Ryder’s win from a leadership perspective. Proactive Leadership - in November of 2011, Ryder’s management team (Garmin-Barracuda) informed him that he was going to be the ‘team leader’ for the 2012 Giro d’Italia. (this means the team would be helping him win the race) Not only was it a boost of confidence, it was an act of proactive leadership that allowed Ryder (and the team) to begin mentally preparing for the 2012 Giro itself.   Open-Minded Leadership - when Ryder was in his early teens, he and his family agreed to work with Swiss-born immigrant Juerg Feldmann, whose specialty was fitness and lung capacity.  He wanted to help the young lad increase his VO2 max (a way to quantify capacity of oxygen during exercise) to help his athleticism. By the age of 16, Hesjedal’s lung capacity was 4.6 litres, two times the amount of ‘normal’ people. When competing in the Giro, Ryder’s lungs were able to take in almost four times the amount of air and oxygen that you and I can handle. That is being an open-minded leader even at an early age.   No ‘I’ In Team Leadership - although Ryder’s name goes down in history as the first Canadian to win a Grand Tour and the 2012 Giro d’Italia itself, you can’t win a cycling race, particularly the Grand Tours (Spain, France or Italy) unless you have a team that is committed, communicative, collaborative and selfless. The Garmin-Barracuda team epitomizes this notion that there is no ‘I’ in team. Throughout the three weeks of racing, Ryder continually heaped praise on his teammates: "I’ve been doing this for a long time but it still amazes me what we’re able to accomplish. And I’m going to savour this for a long time." (notice he used the word we’re) "We kept confident and said today is the day after missing out yesterday. The team was behind me 100% on the run in to the climb. Pete Stetina and Christian Vande Velde (Garmin Barracuda teammates) were never far from my side and Vande Velde put me in final position on the final approach. I just had to go for it and it went perfectly. This pink jersey is a product of good strong team work." (notice the use of team throughout his statement) "The team was incredible, every guy rode incredible, I am honoured by their effort and all we did here. Thank you to my team, my directors, the whole staff and all of our amazing sponsors, and my beautiful family and friends." (notice the humility) There is a lesson in Ryder’s Giro win for all of us. It may take brawn but it also takes a leadership brain to accomplish any goal. Chapeau Ryder. And yes, below are our young goats dressed in Pink holding 31 pink carnations and daisies hours after his win. Related Posts:The Mysterium Tremendum LeaderWhose Your Brian Reid?The Link Between Leadership, Learning & Organizational…5 Ways to Become Less Collaborative at WorkInterlocutors of 2012 (the goats are better for it)

Robert Kazinsky—the actor who plays Orgrim in 'Warcraft'—told the Comic-Con crowd his love of the game it's based on once caused a girlfriend to leave him. The post Orgrim Lost His Girlfriend Filming Warcraft appeared first on WIRED.

"If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself."  Henry Ford In the corporate world where deadlines are rampant, constant innovation is indispensable, workloads are mounting, and financial pressures are omnipresent, it’s no wonder the employees of many organisations feel as though they are disconnected from one another. Many employees have become disenfranchised or disengaged and as a consequence, it has led to poor business results and lost opportunities. In late 2010, the Corporate Leadership Council released its quarterly engagement trends report. Results indicated that only 22% of employees planned on staying in their current positions. Supplementing the point, 21.6% of all employees surveyed described themselves as highly disengaged. As a consequence and according to Gallup Management Journal, this disengaged and disconnected culture (in US-based organisations) is costing $300b per year in lost revenues alone. Is there a remedy for such calamitous organisational health? One budding approach that may help unify your team, your business unit and your organization to ultimately enrich and enhance your corporate culture, such that all employees feel as though they are moving forward as a connected group, is through the deployment and utilisation of an internal enterprise-wide micro-blogging platform. How Micro-Blogging Came To Be It was back in 1985 when communications researcher Friedhelm Hillebrand of Germany sat at a typewriter, tapping out words on a sheet of paper, trying to establish the ideal number of characters for a new point-to-point message service for cellular mobile telephones. He and his colleagues were devising a text-based communication system that would soon become ubiquitously known as texting. That magic number of characters became 160 and is now used pervasively across most mobile telephone devices for instant text messaging. The problem for any organisation, however, was that texting typically involved person-to-person exchanges and therefore wasn’t open to the entire spectrum of employees. Thus, in 1988, Jarkko Oikarinen of Finland developed IRC (Instant Relay Chat) after toying with the idea of distributed chatting through status messages using computers and internet protocol. Flash ahead in time to 2006 and the concept of IRC and person-to-person texting was significantly enhanced by Odeo Company General Manager Evan Williams and programmer Jack Dorsi of the United States, to become an open, internet-based, 140 character messaging, collaboration and status update service we now know as Twitter. This was the beginning of a new term; micro-blogging. PC Magazine defines micro-blogging as follows: A blog that contains brief entries about the activities of an individual or company. Created to keep friends, colleagues and customers up-to-date, small images may be included as well as brief audio and video clips. Moving Towards a Culture of Sharing Inside organisations, however, there is a dichotomous attitude at play. On the one hand, there are many employees utilising Twitter (or external micro-blogging) to connect, learn, share and inspire with external friends, family and even colleagues; on the other, organisations haven’t yet grasped how this invaluable technique might actually help with its internal culture, its objectives, and ultimately its business results. According to research published by McKinsey and Company in December, 2010, only 13% of companies felt as though micro-blogging was actually enhancing company culture. The encouraging sign, however, is that this sentiment is up from the 2009 data point of 10%. It’s incumbent upon senior leaders in the organisation to accurately and appropriately understand the tangible benefits of an internal micro-blogging service for its employees. If executives believe that Twitter or micro-blogging is either a waste of time or simply a fun outlet, they are missing the point entirely. This mindset might actually cause further damage concerning the number of disengaged employees that are on the rise inside today’s organisations. Micro-blogging, quite simply, should be thought of as a method in which organisations might flatten its hierarchy, increase the number and quality of relationships between employees, and speed up the exchange of knowledge, ideas and information within the business. Micro-blogging can also help mitigate missing connections between the field worker, the front line, the individual contributor, the manager, the director, the VP and the executive suite. By gaining access to peers that one might not otherwise know, the flow of organisational information and knowledge speeds up at a fraction of the time and cost. Micro-blogging, therefore, is truly humanising the pulse of the organisation yet driving business benefit. It’s a running commentary of what might have previously been discussed at the water cooler, the lunch table, or in the classroom; only now, the entire organisation has access to the dialogue and can take advantage both by listening and by contributing back. Exchanging Ideas; Improving Culture, Knowledge and Networks Employees typically have a voice when they are in team, project or manager-subordinate meetings. Occasionally, they might chime in when attending town halls, classroom sessions, and all-hands meetings. When micro-blogging is brought to fruition inside the organization, safely tucked within the corporate firewalls, the connection can be extremely powerful. Senior leaders have the ability to listen in and get a stronger sense of what is going on in the company be it related to employee opinions, ideas, issues, or opportunities. Employees not only can connect and be part of the dialogue; they can read the opinions and ideas of their peers as well as senior executives. "Micro-blogging isn’t an elephant sitting in the room," says Bert Sandie, Senior Director of Technical Excellence at Electronic Arts. "It’s something that epitomises tangible business value through the informal exchange of ideas and knowledge leading to improved results." Micro-blogging, by virtue of its definition, has an additional benefit. The actual micro-blog entries are short, concise and succinct. Most enterprise micro-blogging platforms limit the updates to 160 characters or less, similar to texting. This brevity forces everyone in the organisation to carefully think through their update or their response. Furthermore, due to the fact micro-blogging technology is an enterprise controlled application itself, (whether hosted internally or on the cloud) employees must log into the system, thus there is no chance for anonymity. In terms of increasing the engagement level and culture of an organisation, micro-blogging can provide several benefits, including: Greater understanding of what is actually going on in the organisation across teams or projects Personalizing and demystifying the aura of senior leaders Seeking opinion and exploring options before decisions are made Driving engagement and the feeling that everyone’s opinion is important Increasing social status of employees in business related matters Providing information that is timely through non-formal use Building trust amongst senior leaders and front-line workers in open, transparent ways Weak chance of disrupting already established workflows Risks and Pitfalls Enterprise micro-blogging can be viewed by employees and leaders as simply one more tool or one more task they need to make time for. Employees might already be suffering from information overload having to send, receive and process too many pieces of information through multiple channels. If micro-blogging is not introduced and positioned as a way in which to help save time, improve existing work processes, and to increase engagement within the organisation, it will undoubtedly be negatively viewed by employees. Jun Zhang, Jane Cody and Yuling Wu of Pitney Bowes introduced the "noise-to-value paradox" in 2010 as a possible impediment to micro-blogging adoption. If employees are unable to appropriately filter or make sense of various micro-blog streams, they may abandon the application due to a lack of context and full understanding. From a technology perspective, an organisation will have to decide whether to host the micro-blogging platform within its own firewall, or utilise the service of a hosted provider. The latter may cause some concern from the vantage point of the Chief Security Office. Furthermore, if the service is not accompanied by an enterprise-wide guideline and learning plan, some employees may not fully understand the security implications of what they share. Anything an organisation does to encourage intelligent and appropriate use of internal micro-blogging may help to counter security and ethical threats. In Summary Henry Ford obviously did not experience micro-blogging inside of the automobile company he helped to build. If still alive, he unquestionably would agree that micro-blogging helps increase bottom-line success through improved collaboration, engagement and a corresponding connected culture.  If everyone is in fact moving forward together, micro-blogging can be a useful tool and behaviour to assist with the end goal of becoming successful as united organisation. Originally published to EFMD Global Focus magazine. Related Posts:Micro-Blogging is Good for Leadership, Good for Your Culture#Top #5 #Reasons #To #Love #Hashtags #In #Your #Enterprise…6 Use Cases for Enterprise Micro-BloggingTweet Kings & Pretty Things (aka Micro-Blogging Habits)Let’s Rename Micro-blogging to Chatting

A massive collection of Marvel stars gathered at Comic-Con on Saturday, but it wasn’t for the the Marvel Studios panel—it was the 20th Century Fox one. The post 20th Century Fox Stole Some of Marvel’s Swagger for Comic-Con appeared first on WIRED.

It’s perhaps fair to say a majority of Microsoft Outlook email users might utilize the following adage if pressed into a decision: "I’ll give you my email when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!" People sure do love their email. The Radicati Group recently published findings suggesting in 2012, Microsoft Exchange (the back-end system that delivers the actual email to the Microsoft Outlook client) holds 53% market share of all enterprise email systems (powered by the Outlook client) yet by 2016 this will jump to 68% market share. This naturally got me thinking. It got me thinking because the conundrum with email is that its user driven in a one-to-one or a one-to-many flow. It’s not exactly collaboration, rather, its piecemealed, jagged communication. JP Rangaswami over at Confused of Calcutta had a rather brilliant observation recently in a post entitled, "On Collaboration", where he stated: E-mail has been the bane of collaboration, an unfit-for-purpose tool that has often been used to accentuate and enhance division and discord rather than collaboration. Yet for most people it is the standard tool of collaboration. This may have been so to begin with: a time when e-mails were short, when formality was conspicuous in its absence, when mail lists did not exist, when the cc and bc buttons didn’t exist, when there were no attachments. The first problem with e-mail is that it’s publisher-driven, the power is in the hands of the sender. For those enterprise clients and organizations who continue to use Exchange and Outlook, it begs the question … why isn’t SharePoint becoming part of both the back-end and the front-end? Why not merge communication with collaboration? Why does Microsoft continue to build SharePoint separate from Outlook and Exchange? Oh sure, you can synchronize content between SharePoint and Outlook, but that’s not what I’m after. I’d like to see communication become collaboration, and given the fact so many people are unwilling to give up their email, why not rebuild Outlook and Exchange such that it became a true collaborative platform (with all the social enterprise bells and whistles imaginable) and less about communication. (ok, it can keep email) Perhaps what I’m suggesting is to deprecate SharePoint in favour of a singular communication AND collaboration platform from Microsoft. Call it OutShare or ShareLook. I don’t care. Peeks, inline replies and a weather bar (allegedly features in Outlook 15) exacerbates my point. For those in Redmond, if you’re reading this, surely the SharePoint and Outlook/Exchange teams can work ‘collaboratively’ together to align forces and create a stunning singular product that incorporates this line of thinking. Maybe it’s in the cards for version 16? Related Posts:Review: SharePoint Conference 2011The Connected CultureStandalone LMS is Still Dead (rebutting & agreeing w/…The Hare, the Tortoise and the Jackass of Social HRVirtual Worlds in an Organization are not a Time Waster (and

Since 1967, the Mint 400, one of the continent's most grueling races, has been drawing some of motorsports' top names to the Nevada desert. The post The Off-Road Race So Wild You Barely Need Front Wheels appeared first on WIRED.

Week 11 of the WIRED 'Star Wars' Challenge is already here. Behold your assignments! The post Here Are Your WIRED Star Wars Challenges for Week 11 appeared first on WIRED.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m a big fan of trying to create simplicity from chaos. That stated, I am more comfortable when a part of (or the instigator of) chaos itself. As Churchill once said, "to improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." Perhaps my own personal leadership style is one that evokes equal parts chaos and order. Give your brain a dose of ‘mental Olympics’ and read former VISA CEO Dee Hock’s "Birth of the Chaordic Age". The tweet version of Chaordic Theory, in essence, is a new organizational form Hock calls "simultaneously chaotic and orderly." Chaordic is any self-organizing, adaptive, non-linear, complex system, whether physical, biological, or social, the behaviour of which exhibits characteristics of both order and chaos or, loosely translated to business terminology, cooperation and competition. Hock may be 83 years old, but this is an open invitation for him to pen a few words to the back cover of my pending book. A ‘connected culture’ is one that simultaneously drives organizational clarity with precarious innovation. It is one that believes equally in leaders who demonstrate reciprocity as it is an executive board who insists upon a consistent strategy. It is order amongst chaos; and chaos amongst order. A ‘connected culture’, in its simplest, orderly and most chaotic form, refers to the point at which all employees act as one corporate organism. As an individual, he or she thinks not about himself or herself, rather, they act with the greater good of its people and the organization itself in mind. As an organization, in totality, business units, teams and projects are united such that duplication is negated and a selfless amount of contribution is the norm. The ‘connected culture’ of an organization is the point at which chaos meets order coupled by an infinite and unobstructed flow of corporate commonality. It is professional panacea. The following diagram aims to depict what I refer to as a ‘connected culture’ in an organization. What does it mean? Further details in the book, but in short: Reciprocal Leadership The shift from hierarchy to wirearchy with situational hierarchy. Leadership is reciprocal, and it should not be held accountable to the fabrication of presumed leadership via the org chart found in Microsoft Outlook or otherwise. Collaboration & Learning The Collaboration Cycle and the Connected Learning frameworks are good starts. Bottom line? The culture of an organization is going to become more connected if these principles are applied throughout your company. Engagement and Empowerment It’s amazing to me why more companies (and leaders) don’t understand the relationship between an empowered organization and one that is engaged. To become a ‘connected culture’, attention must be paid to both of these important ‘E’’s Consistent Strategy It is somewhat dumbfounding the number of organization that alters their strategy when pressure mounts. Heeding to the whims of Wall Street, Bay Street or The City, executives often flee what was arguably an originally sound strategy. Imagine their employees? Think they feel connected to their culture if it’s changing every second Tuesday? Innovation Identity A ‘connected culture’ will manifest if employees are encouraged to adapt an identity encouraging innovation. A risk averse culture, one that relies on a select few to dream up new ideas will suffer the fate of actually becoming (or being) a disconnected culture. Recognition & Feedback What do employees want? The ‘connected culture’ of an organization can surface if employees are recognized for their efforts while also being provided consistent and authentic feedback. Conversely, if an employee isn’t recognized nor is feedback ever provided, the ‘connected culture’ of an organization will never be reached. I’m going into summer hibernation. Thanks for dropping by. See you in early September. In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy this paper entitled, "Who Killed the Inner Circle? The End of the Era of the Corporate Interlock Network". Perhaps things are in fact changing for the good. Related Posts:Is Your Company Culture Linked to Social Learning Success?The Link Between Leadership, Learning & Organizational…What’s Needed First? Culture Change or Enterprise 2.0…Steer Clear of Organizational Leadership TurbulenceFuture of Work: Add Open Leadership, Enterprise 2.0,…

Interestingly, I recently learned that the term ‘stakeholder‘ was coined at Stanford Research Institute in 1963 to describe ‘those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist‘. I then started thinking about the term ‘table stakes‘, which lead me to Wikipedia. Table stakes: … refers to the minimum entry requirement for a market or business arrangement. It can refer to pricing, cost models, technology, or other capability that represents a minimum requirement to have a credible competitive starting position in a market or other business arrangement. HR is both table stakes and a stakeholder for an organization. It gets an unbelievably bad rap in some circles, but these days, I don’t believe it’s about HR needing a seat at the table. In fact, I believe they are the table. Of course, if HR begins to play offence, takes the bull by the horns, and enacts a human capital strategy that provides a more cohesive way in which employees can more efficiently do their job, then yes … it makes sense. If HR remains passive, plays defence and simply takes marching orders from elsewhere, then no … it cannot and will never be both. To be the ‘table’ of the organization, HR needs to provide a solid foundation that connects people to people and people to projects, ideas and information. It needs to make it easier for employees to do their job. When you sit at a table with other people, you naturally feel connected. It’s a table and you’re sharing. It could be that you’re simply sharing the space, but nonetheless, you’re sharing. A table connects people. It can permit ideas to surface. It bridges distance. It acts as a solidifying force. It shares a meal. It’s easy. HR should be the table of the organization. Recent acquisitions and a seismic shift in the HR technology space only underlines what is in motion. The big guns like IBM, Oracle, SAP and Salesforce realized HR’s opportunity to become a true stakeholder when they began gobbling up companies such as Kenexa, Taleo, SuccessFactors and Rypple. They saw it as table stakes. For it to be a stakeholder in the organization — to truly become the force that connects its employees and makes work-life more efficient and productive — it needs to stop thinking a seat at the table is the ultimate win. It’s now time for HR to actually be the table. It’s table stakes for the organization of tomorrow.   Related Posts:The Hare, the Tortoise and the Jackass of Social HRWaiting For SuperExecutive: Why Executives Should Get on the16 Months of Social Learning Platform Insanity: A RecapVirtual Worlds in an Organization are not a Time Waster (andAutotelic: The Word of 2013

With such little space and such defined functionality, not everything makes sense on the Apple Watch. These apps do. The post The Only Apple Watch Apps You Actually Need appeared first on WIRED.

I tweeted a joke hashtag last week. @dpontefract: I’m proposing a new hashtag … #e20socbizhrtechedtechentswfutureofworktchat … that just about covers it In retrospect, perhaps I wasn’t joking. What’s going on out there in vendor land is rather interesting. What’s going on in our organizations is equally intriguing. On one hand, we have vendors from the larger technology companies and spaces (Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce et al) snapping up HR technology companies whilst other smaller cloud-based companies continue to sell themselves as the "social business" or "human capital cloud" saviour. I am fond of SuccessFactors at the moment. (an SAP company) Under the tutelage of Vishal Sikka and Sameer Patel (amongst others) it seems they are listening to the needs of its customer base and the HR space in general by actually evolving social software such that it’s not a shiny object rather it’s becoming what Sameer calls, "social glue". This is an important distinction from simply dropping social media or collaboration tools on an organization and suggesting it’s now more collaborative by virtue of wikis or blogs. Who cares, that’s not enough. And that’s where we begin our metaphor for the day. To those social business, collaboration, HR technology and Enterprise 2.0 software vendors — on-premise and/or cloud — that continue to flog features versus behaviour change, your hare-like attitude is becoming annoying if not alarming. There are far too many organizations listening to the hare preach about the virtues of collaboration features only. "Get these collaboration tools into your organization as quickly as possible because your employees need to start blogging and creating wiki’s," says several hundred vendors today. I wouldn’t be listening to the hare for it’s the tortoise that is my torch-bearer. The hare wants to sell you licenses. The hare is quick to depict features and functions. The hare is burning out. The tortoise, on the other hand, might be viewed as ‘slow’ right now, but she is eloquently amassing a vision that weds organizational culture, engagement and behaviour to the technology to improved business processes, results and outcomes. I don’t care if conversations in a micro-blogging platform are threaded, per se, I care what micro-blogging can do to help culture, engagement and behaviour. Start there first Mr. Hare and you will act more like the Tortoise. This, in my opinion, is a good thing for you to begin doing. My bet is on the Tortoise. Whatever ‘Social HR Technology‘ company, outfit or division that is methodically building out the behaviour change needed by so many organizations today will win the race. We are simply at the end of the beginning; the hare is out of touch with the reality of today’s organizations. And sadly, too many organizations are listening to the hare versus thinking through their behaviour change first. And what about the Jackass you ask? Sadly, it’s those within the organization itself who are both blind and deaf to the wave that is cresting their culture. They ignore the behaviour change needed whilst doubling down at the jackass table remaining ambivalent to the equally pervasive tsunami of social collaboration technology possibilities in their midst. They’re out there; a sea of jackass drones causing harm to their employees. These are the type of leaders within organizations who simply wouldn’t understand a joke like #e20socbizhrtechedtechentswfutureofworktchat Do you? Related Posts:To Really Drive Enterprise 2.0 Forward We Need A Behaviour…16 Months of Social Learning Platform Insanity: A RecapMicro-blogging can help build your organisational cultureThe ‘Occupy IT’ Movement of OrganizationsHR Doesn’t Need a Seat at the Table, it is the Table

At super-low temperatures, a crystal called samarium hexaboride behaves in an unexplained way. The post Paradoxical Crystal Baffles Physicists appeared first on WIRED.

I’m not a particularly religious man, however Time Magazine, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated founder Henry Luce once said, "We didn’t invent the idea of delivering news through stories about people. The Bible invented it." And frankly, he has a point. Peter Bregman, author of 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done states that an easy way in which to begin changing an organization’s culture is by telling stories. I further posit that if we truly want to improve employee engagement, company productivity, future innovation, and customer satisfaction, organizations should ensure the culture of an organization surfaces and circulates both positive and not-so-positive stories into the conversation ecosystem. Steve Dale also opines that storytelling is invaluable when it comes to knowledge sharing. To me, knowledge sharing is as synonymous with collaboration technologies as it is with storytelling in your organization. Therefore, an easy math calculation suggests that storytelling + collaboration technologies = an engaged, productive, knowledgeable, learned and customer satisfied organization. Is it that simple? By flooding (or at least encouraging) the internal ecosystem of an organization with positive and not-so-positive stories, you will undoubtedly create a groundswell of cultural change. As the adage goes, "stories beget stories". A great example of storytelling affecting change in an external and positive light is via GlobalGiving, a charity organization that gives social entrepreneurs and non-profits from anywhere in the world a chance to raise the money that they need to improve their communities. Since 2002, GlobalGiving has raised $67,930,184 from 271,216 donors who have supported 5,829 projects. But what this extraordinary organization has learned is that it can do even more good in this world if it developed what they call ‘better feedback loops’. Through the web, and open to anyone and everyone, GlobalGiving launched a Storytelling project to collect community feedback that assists in the decision making process, the learning process, and the information process as cycles of investment are positioned and made. Since 2010 and specific to Kenya and Uganda initiatives, scribes have collected 40,600 stories from over 5,000 community members by asking a simple question: "tell us about a time when a person or an organization tried to change something in your community." Using the brilliance of Dave Snowden’s SenseMaker technology and the Cynefin framework, the stories get mined to assist in the process of providing funding and tangible solutions to their communities’ most pressing needs. If stories are working to dramatically assist the very unfortunate in Kenya and Uganda, surely an organization can find ways to invoke the same opportunities inside their physical and virtual walls to help drive employee engagement, productivity, knowledge and customer satisfaction. Right? Related Posts:What’s Needed First? Culture Change or Enterprise 2.0…The Collaboration CurveCase Study: Tim Hockey, a Collaborative & Transparent…To Really Drive Enterprise 2.0 Forward We Need A Behaviour…Tabula Rasa, Enterprise 2.0 & Induction

Pico Park takes 10 players and forces them to work closely together to succeed. The post A Raucous, Teamwork-Teaching Game for 10 Players appeared first on WIRED.

"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life."  John Lennon According to Michelle McQuaid - a leader in psychology interventions in the workplace — Americans are unhappy at their place of work and they simultaneously loathe their direct manager. Key points McQuaid surfaced in a study she conducted with Americans include: 36% of Americans are happy at their job / 64% are unhappy 65% indicate a better boss would be them happier at work / 35% said a pay increase would If those polled actually got along better with their boss 55% stated they would be happier at work while 60% suggested their performance would increase Only 38% believe their bosses are ‘great’ More ammunition lies ahead. A study conducted at Indiana University that researched tweets over a three year period also proved we’re getting a lot unhappier.  In China, despite a financial boon that has enveloped many citizens in the country, the level of happiness dropped from 28% (itself, not very impressive) to an astonishing 12%. Chris M. Herbst at Arizona State University proved both men and women have seen their sense of life satisfaction decrease over a twenty year period. The World Happiness Report does us no favours either. In their seminal research, they state: One striking finding of happiness research is that the time of day when people are least happy is when they are in the presence of their line manager. This suggests that too many managers fail to inspire their workers and rely too much on mechanical incentives and command. Of course we’ve known for years thanks to the Easterlin Paradox that money doesn’t buy happiness either. For example, in the U.S. gross national product per capita has grown by a factor of 3X since 1960 yet average happiness in America has remained the same since that time. That is, Americans have more money, on average, yet their level of happiness has flat-lined. Where am I going with this doom and gloom? I was staring at my iPad the other day thinking to myself, ‘I certainly do a lot more swiping than scrolling with this device compared to my laptop.’ And then it hit me. What if bosses were more like an iPad versus a laptop? What if they acted more horizontally than vertically? What if — by swiping versus scrolling — bosses were able to flatten their style such that their team members felt they were part of the solution? Would we be happier at work?   Related Posts:Virtual Worlds in an Organization are not a Time Waster (andAutotelic: The Word of 2013The State of Culture, Collaboration & Enterprise 2.0There is Nothing More to Say in 2011 … but ThanksGive Piece a Chance

KYOTO, JAPAN — In Brave Yamada-kun, the titular lead is a full-time video game company employee who codes his own games on the side in nothing but his underwear. It’s an RPG about a guy who makes RPGs in his spare time, who then leaps into his own creation to become the hero. I ask […] The post Art Imitates Life in this Indie RPG About Making RPGs appeared first on WIRED.

I spend so much time yammering - the word, not the product - about collaboration and how to become more collaborative as a leader (and team member) that over the years I’ve neglected those of you that are looking to become less collaborative. I sincerely apologize for this oversight. As Neil Young once said, "this note’s for you." 1) Ignore Your Email I know, the sure volume of email continues to rise so what’s the point in answering it? Why not ignore it altogether? Tell everyone you know from this day forward you’re going to pretend email doesn’t exist - a bit like what Canadians do with Celine Dion and Nickelback. Benefit? You’ve now saved the 50% of your day currently devoted to answering email which you can now use being more non-collaborative on other initiatives and opportunities. 2) Cease All Meetings What’s the point of meetings anyway? Does it really matter if you’re there or not? I mean wouldn’t it make more sense for you to stop setting them altogether? When asked to attend a meeting, why even bother showing up? Whenever a calendar request shows up in your inbox, immediately delete it. Treat it like the junk mail that shows up at your home. Benefit? You can now make decisions in your office without the distraction of other people’s opinion and input. The time you’d save by foregoing debate and discussion is infinite. You’re also saving your voice (laryngitis is nasty) and surely preventing the potential for contracting any airborne or tactile germs from your colleagues. 3) Command and Control This might be a continuation of your current leadership style. If that’s the case, shazam … more time for you to be less collaborative. If you’re new to command and control, it might take some getting used to. First step is to stop listening to your team. (Think Pat Sajak - he clearly wasn’t listening to anyone when he started that awful nighttime talk show) Second, think of all the ideas yourself. (This is a huge time saver) Third, once you’ve got the idea, instruct someone on your team to tell everyone what they should do and by what deadline. Insist there be no questions. Enforce perfection. Benefits? What’s not to love about ‘command and control’. You get to act like a King from medieval times ordering people around without a care for their feelings or wellbeing. Jack Welch may even give you a prize. 4) Office Ivory Tower It may seem counterintuitive, but to become less collaborative, you’re going to want to find an office tower that allows you to close yourself off from everyone else in the organization. In fact, an open office environment is alleged to kill creativity. Exclusivity, superiority and righteousness is the new black; why park yourself in an open office environment when the top floor — with a private elevator hopefully — can seal you off from the peons and subordinates. Benefits? Now you can really ‘get things done‘ by omitting employee interactions with you of any sort. Win-win when you think about it. Much like the reunion tour of the Jackson 5 featuring a hologram of Michael himself. 5) Mandate Classroom Training Only Start sending everyone back to class. Corporate training is a $135 billion industry and there has never been a better time to stop the silliness of informal or social learning; two culprits of a more collaborative organization. To become personally less collaborative, start mandating two weeks of classroom training for every employee. You must insist, however, that no other learning takes place in the organization. Two weeks in a classroom and that’s it and your employees are not to discuss with you what they learned either. Benefits? You (and your employees) won’t be tempted by the inanity of collaboration tools or practices found in informal or social learning and as a result, you’ll be saving time, effort and money. It’s a bit like imagining there was a Frederick Taylor University … wait, there is one. Hallelujah. There you have it. My top five ways in which to become less collaborative. Of course, if you disagree, there’s always the Flat Army method. (coming soon) Related Posts:Friday Fun: You Don’t Have an Office?Hey Microsoft! Why Not Merge Outlook with SharePoint?6 Use Cases for Enterprise Micro-BloggingI’m Not Scared of Email; I Developed a System called…Why I Love Newsle

'Back in 1995' replicates the low-poly awkwardness of PlayStation 1 games, warts and all. The post 90s Nostalgia Meets Survival Horror in Back in 1995 appeared first on WIRED.

From the source, newsle: … finds articles about you, your friends and colleagues, and anyone else you care about and notifies you minutes or hours after they’re published. I take pride in my network. I often gaze at so many of you thinking, ‘why didn’t I think of that‘ or ‘how cool is X?’ I take pride in building up my network too. As I often say, "I store my knowledge in my network." So, when one of you sent me an anonymous email notifying me of newsle, I was happy. (yes, newsle gives you the option of sending an anonymous or named email to your network once you sign up for the service) I had never heard of newsle until that email came today. I’m glad it did. Unbeknownst to some of you, I have Google Alerts set up to be notified of your digital footprint. It’s a great service that proactively informs me of your awesomeness. (yes, it’s a word) Instead of Google Alerts, I now have newsle … which allows me to see a curated version - think of it as an RSS personal network feed on steroids — of your whereabouts and contributions in the quoted arena. Maybe it’s something you said at a conference, or you were interviewed, or you released a new whitepaper, etc. Whatever the case, I now have you tracked. You’re in my digital cross-hairs via one easy to use, simple and aggregated site. Newsle … you made my week. Related Posts:Friday Fun: You Don’t Have an Office?Friday Fun: Get Back to WorkDan’s Personal 2012 GoalsCredo of the Collaboration CanoeThere is Nothing More to Say in 2011 … but Thanks

Access Games’ Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro has a notability problem: he may be more well-known than his creations. While his games (Deadly Premonition, D4) have won him fans, they’re not exactly mainstream hits. Still, as an independent creator with a reputation for getting noticed, Swery was on hand at BitSummit in Kyoto this weekend to exhibit […] The post A Chat With Deadly Premonition‘s Creator, Swery appeared first on WIRED.

I’m excited to show you for the first time the front cover of the book. More details to come shortly. Related Posts:flat army bookThe Remarkable Leadership Story of Conner & Cayden LongFlat Army: Chapter 2 OverviewFlat Army: Chapter 3 OverviewFlat Army: Chapter 5 Overview

Things got really emotional during the Comic-Con panel for NBC's recently cancelled horror show. The post Hannibal Fan Devotion Is Alive and Well, Even If It’s Cancelled appeared first on WIRED.