I think I found my new cMOOC hit. After Educational Technology MOOC #etmooc, I searched high and low for a connectivist MOOC that could give me the same ‘highs’ as I had experienced with this one.  I was looking for a MOOC where I could apply what I learned to my work immediately, but also one where I looked forward to checking in the Google + community to see what everyone else is talking about and doing - and make a new friend or three. The MOOC is called Exploring Personal Learning Networks and it was created by the team @JeffMerrell and @KGS_Scott Kimberly Scott who are also part of Masters Program Learning & Organisational Change at North Western University. When I first saw the cMOOC advertised in Jeff’s tweet, I immediately registered in the Google+ Community as this was a topic of great interest for me in particularly, how organisations could encourage their staff to broaden their own enterprise learning networks or external learning networks for their own professional and personal development. I saw an opportunity for me to bring the concept to life within our own organisation using the social networking tools we have available.  I saw it part of our future strategy for Learning and Development professionals to have their own networks and then to promote, encourage and support others within the organisation to find their own in their line of work. I don’t have the answer for how I can do this practically, but my instincts tell me that if I’ve had such a wonderful experience connecting, networking and learning from my own global network through social media  - and with some of them, actually collaborating on projects - then Personal and Enterprise Learning Networks have merit and worthy to explore further. Maybe it’s an untapped area of opportunity for organisations? I just need to be able to define the benefit and value in hard tangible financial terms to my senior managers who may see this as just an excuse to socialise online.  But lucky for me, one of the tasks we have to do is to come up with a pitch to sell the concept of PLNs to our organisation. In the first week, we were encouraged to do two things: Set goals that we wanted to achieve with our PLN Try something new What are my goals? A survey was uploaded onto the Google community and we were encouraged to submit our goals into this survey which collated the data.  The results are quite interesting - and you can see it here. What really piqued my curiosity is that in the question "Which competencies are you focussed on developing" many of the responses were on confronting direct reports and conflict management.  My instant reaction was huh? Lucky this result was balanced out by personal learning and innovation management as I was beginning to think that everyone was going to have the same issue I was having - namely, how do we explain and demonstrate the value of PLNs to our managers and stakeholders without being ready for some robust debate, discussion and maybe an argument? My goals were mainly related to the following: Continue to broaden and increase my personal learning network Develop professionally and personally Establish a freelance consulting business in the long term A short term goal that had been brewing in my mind recently and which I wrote a recent blog post titled, Third Place in Company and Conversation: A Place Where My PLN Gathers was to establish a Meet Up group of Melbourne based Learning and Development professionals in all industries who are on Twitter or social media.  I established Third Place and we will have our first after-work social introductory drinks next Thursday night at the Royal Melbourne Hotel (if anyone is interested in coming along - see the website to join and and get details!) I’m excited with Third Place because not only will I meet my extended Melbourne based PLN in person, but I will also create ‘assets’ or responses to weekly activities for the Exploring Personal Learning Networks MOOC using these people too (if they want to get involved). Although it’s still an idea mulling around in my head, I’m thinking about creating a video montage of real people talking about how a PLN helped them in their role to state the case for PLN and advocate their role in an organisation. Real people, real stories…that’s the pitch. Try Something New @AlisonSeaman tweeted a question asking if anyone had used the application Shadow Puppet. Naturally, as a sucker for a new app, I downloaded it and played with it and immediately saw that I could have so many uses for it.  It’s a simple app that you record your voice to your photos and create an instant slideshow that you can share across Facebook, Twitter or email. I loved it so much that I decided that I created an introduction for the PLN and here it is… The feedback for this was quite positive and I think it inspired others to download the app and try it out for themselves. (Just between you and me, I have used this app to create a slideshow for an internal job I’m applying for.  I’ll have more details in this blog soon but I put the finishing touches to it this morning). Finally, I knew that this MOOC was the right one for me with regards to the buzz and excitement around a group of people who were meeting again in other parts of the internet in other chats…. Looking forward to Week 2! Read the Story & See the Conversations: Week 1 Storify of Twitter Chat on Exploring Personal Learning Networks Interactive Twitter map that shows me being a bit of a chatterbox Filed under: Development, XPLRPLN Tagged: 2013, Exploring Personal Learning Networks, MOOC, October, October 2013, PLN, XPLRPLN

Jeff Corbin's blog post was featuredWhat the Developer Community Should Think About Slack and Box.comIn reading The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times last week, I couldn't help but take note of the fact that in the same day, companies involved in the early days of The Mobile and App Revolution (i.e. Slack and Box) were highlighted for their leadership position in the messaging/collaboration (Slack) and file storage (Box) space. Trying to take a 25,000 foot view of what these companies represent in the context of mobile B2B, I couldn't help but think that while they have hit on important opportunities, the big picture of what is taking place is getting lost. Just like the Internet bubble craze of the late 1990s, companies like Slack and Box are receiving billion dollar valuation credit just because they are riding the equivalent of the ".com" wave. In light of what history has demonstrated, one should question whether this is well deserved? I believe the answer is yes and no.Slack, more than Box has hit on something important - and that is an alternative to email. Box, that has been around since 2005, also is providing something of value with respect to file storage in the cloud. However, this is quickly becoming commoditized. I don’t want to dismiss what these companies do for a living. However, I believe they are taking a myopic and short-sighted view of the real opportunity underlying mobile technology, especially when it comes to its use in business. And this is getting lost in the hype of billion dollar valuations.Companies like Slack and Box should serve as inspiration for the developer community to think big about the opportunity that will present itself as mobile technology evolves and becomes the primary computing device in business. However, even as they take advantage of their current notoriety, they should not be considered the be-all, end-all when it comes to new technological solutions and our work as developers. They represent only a sliver of the big picture. Consider this analogy: AOL’s email service in the late 1990's revolutionized how we communicated at home and work; however it was Microsoft’s bigger vision for use of the Internet and solutions in the workplace that gave rise to Office and Outlook that essentially rendered AOL’s email service obsolete.As we know, history repeats itself. And here we are again. At APPrise Mobile, companies like Slack and Box motivate us to think bigger recognizing that as mobile technology evolves, so too will the need to develop more holistic and encompassing solutions that serve the need of our primary customers - corporate and internal communications, investor relations and human resource professionals. At the same time, just like in the case of AOL email and Microsoft Outlook, they force us to realize that this is just the beginning of the Mobile and App Revolution and the technology solution that will ultimately prevail and set the standard is yet to be determined.Jeff Corbin is founder and CEO of APPrise Mobile.See More

Mindfulness and meditation are quickly becoming mainstream in corporate America. The research is irrefutable that meditation contributes to positive outcomes along countless physical and mental health dimensions. And even the most traditional, conservative public and private enterprises are incorporating mindfulness and meditation into the cultures. Unfortunately, in the process, some confusion has arisen. Some people are confusing the two topics, erroneously believing that they are actually the same thing. But meditation is not mindfulness. It’s helpful to think of mindfulness as the ultimate goal or outcome that many leaders are striving for. It’s a sense of presence, being in the moment and unfazed by the chaos around us. It’s about bringing all of one’s attention to the current moment and exercising tremendous intention as a result. Mindfulness is a powerful state of being because this level of presence can activate the experience of ‘flow’ studied extensively by ‎Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and others. This state of flow is by definition one of the highest expressions of engagement possible.  (And given what we know about the power of engagement - and the ‘holy grail’-like search many organizations are undertaking to find it - this makes mindfulness very attractive to many executives.) But a daily growing body of research correlates mindfulness with many other benefits as well… from greater vitality and health, to improved decision-making and teamwork, to even enhanced financial performance. Meditation, on the other hand, is a tool for supporting and enabling mindfulness… but should not be confused with it. Organizations wishing to develop mindful leaders are taking a significant step by offering meditation training and meditation rooms on-site. But it’s just one of the many steps required to foster and embed this quality in the leadership culture. Organizations that are cracking the code on this are taking other steps as well. They are: Forcing leaders to rest and rejuvenate. Mindfulness requires a high degree of physical and mental energy - neither of which is possible when leaders are exhausted and burned out. Yet the leaders who’ll benefit from mindfulness most also tend to be the least able to appreciate this reality. So, organizations are beginning to force the issue. While some are going so far as to enforce tech-free days that allow for more thinking and interacting time, others are requiring that vacations be taken rather than banked. Aligning their performance management systems with the idea of presence. They are focusing more attention on routine, informal, on-the-spot, non-evaluative feedback to correct or reinforce performance. Ongoing and timely dialogue is replacing onerous annual processes and removing the specter of judgment and future recriminations. Shifting from a plethora of priorities to a few key intentions. Mindfulness is challenging when everything is an urgent A-prime priority, when there are 101 corporate initiatives as well as a mission, vision and values to be lived. Organizations committed to helping leaders develop greater mindfulness appreciate the value of simplification and are editing back the tomes of corporate directives, replacing them with leaner, cleaner intentions that can drive focus and activity. Starting at the top. Leaders at all levels look to those above them for guidance about what’s acceptable and what’s required to get ahead. Hard-charging, ‘mindless’ leaders beget more of the same. But when executives take the first step toward modeling mindfulness, others have permission to follow. In one organization with a 24/7, always-on culture, responses to emails were expected nearly immediately. Employees literally slept with their phones as a result. Three months after executives committed to corresponding by email during working hours only, it’s no longer considered dedicated or ‘cool’ for anyone in the organization to send middle-of-the-night emails. Mindfulness is a multifaceted quality that has the potential to dramatically improve individual satisfaction and organizational success. Meditation is a powerful tool to support it. But, let’s not stop there and think we’ve done the job. Executives and human resources professionals alike are on the forefront of a new frontier in human performance… if we are mindful enough to take advantage of the opportunity! Image courtesy of Chaiwat at FreeDigitalPhotos.net The post Meditation Alone Does Not a Mindful Leader Make appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

For those who know me, know I don’t sit still. My mind is always ticking over with something, making plans, organising something or experimenting with some new app or software. Even quiet times at work you’ll find me reading articles, commenting in blogs, participating in tweet chats, doing MOOCs, listening to TED talks, podcasts or webinars. Anything to keep my mind active. For me, the uncertain and anxious times in-between organisational restructures are perfect opportunities for professional development. But I’ve been noticing a trend over the recent years.  I seem to be having lots of professional development. Why let all this wasted time make me unproductive? I may as well put it to good use and tackle my to do list of self-education. We are in week 2 of the Exploring Personal Learning Networks cMOOC and I’m loving it because it’s making me think creatively and giving me the freedom to apply it directly to my work. It’s my new pet project and already I’m thinking of how I can complete the assignment of coming up with a pitch for a CEO on the value of personal learning networks to an organisation. I can see that I’ll probably have to use the assignment in ‘real life’ soon when this scenario arises in our organisation. It will happen. It’s only a matter of time. So I decided to crowd source it.  Ask my PLN to solve an organisational issue around on boarding to demonstrate how effective networks are in solving a business issue. [Hence why you may have seen my Tweets and Google + posts asking for any onboarding examples.  I’m killing two birds in the one stone here.  The responses will form my pitch for the cMOOC but also, I’ve been asked to develop an Induction program  at work and I’m using my PLN’s stories, links and references to create a starting point for my plan].  Luckily, with 41 responses in Yammer, it seemed that everyone had an onboarding story they wanted to share about what worked and what didn’t. But I digress…. let’s go back to talking about productivity. Believe it or not, I enjoy going into work every morning to follow through my routine of grabbing a coffee, finding a desk, setting up my gear, logging on and then checking into the Google+ community to see what others are up to, what they’re writing about, what they’ve learned, check out their photos and blog posts. I’ve gotten myself into a morning routine where I revel in the silence of the office…just me alone with all my PLN. I read somewhere this week that getting feedback on social media equates to getting a dopamine hit - a high - and there’s something addictive to it.  I believe that. I’m living proof. This week I’ve been reading various reports of the high levels of disengaged people at work and frankly, it’s depressing. Despite adding the reports on Yammer hopeful for some replies and robust debate, they may as well have tumbleweeds flowing through them. No replies. Nada. Obviously disengagement in the workplace is not as exciting as onboarding stories. And I’m left asking the question incredulously, "doesn’t anyone else find this stuff important enough to comment on why they think this or do they just not care?" Maybe they don’t. Maybe I shouldn’t take things so seriously? Maybe I should just lighten up - go with the flow.  Whatever. No I don’t work that way. I need to be inspired. I need a good news story. It’s either that, or I’m writing to David Walliams and Matt Lucas to consider creating a comedy show like "Come Fly With Me" but on corporate life because I don’t know whether I need to laugh….or to cry anymore. But what did I say about not being able to sit still?  Patience is not a virtue of mine. Today, a fellow colleague came up to ask me about something but we got to talking about his passion.  It’s opera. He’s a tenor and travels around Australia singing to audiences.  He has a manager who co-ordinates his performances and manages his profile.  He’s well known in the opera circles. Do you know it was one of the best conversations I had in the workplace for a while? Why?  Because I saw someone fired up for something that he believed in.  His passion came out with his words, his actions, his eyes and smile. He was inspirational, magnetic and alive. I missed this in our workplace. After a long time of change and turbulence, I needed to see someone passionate again.  I needed to know that there were people who openly expressed their love for their art, their craft, their work, their hobbies and interests. I needed to be inspired in my workplace. Even my previous boss who left the organisation today turned to me at her goodbye lunch  and said, "I’m going to the Elliot Masie Learning 2013 Conference in the US because I need to be re-inspired for Learning and Development again". Even she was looking for it. Workplaces are missing the passion and inspiration but we’re thirsty for it. We need it. If organisations could bottle up that passion, they can achieve anything. [Photo: Fire In Your Eye by J. Durham]Filed under: Musings, XPLRPLN Tagged: 2013, Google, October, Passion, PLN, professional development

Ray Bixler posted a blog postHow Staffing the Checkout Line Can Boost the Bottom Line2014 marked the best year for U.S. job growth in 15 years, as the unemployment rate dipped to a post-recession low. With consumers more flush with cash and the economy continuing to gain strength, retailers will be increasing hiring - especially for sales and customer service roles. But these hires aren’t just about staffing the checkout or the help line - they can also be about boosting the bottom line.Just look at the research: according to a 2014 American Express study, 68 percent of customers said they are willing to spend more (14 percent more, on average) at a company that provides excellent customer service. And the reverse is also true: 37 percent of customers said they would switch companies after just one bad customer service experience.The key for retailers is to determine which candidates stand out from the pack, allowing them to make hires that will boost their bottom line. At SkillSurvey, we recently completed a study of the most common areas of improvement and strengths for customer service and sales candidates based on confidential feedback from their job references. So how can companies use this insight to make better, bottom line-enhancing hires?Customer service job candidates are strongest when it comes to people skills. Our data shows that 95 percent of these job candidates rate highly at treating other people with fairness and respect, a very important skill that will help gain - and keep - customers. Over 90 percent also show high levels of honesty, ethics and integrity. All of this means that companies should make sure that job candidates have competencies in these areas.And now for the weak spots: Our data shows that almost a third of customer service job candidates have room for improvement when it comes to encouraging customers to buy new products or services. In addition, references report that more than one in four candidates could improve at giving customers specific recommendations about their company’s products and services.It’s in these areas that the best candidates can really outpace their peers and make a revenue-driving difference inside a business. Companies looking to hire star customer service workers should delve into candidates’ ability to upsell. Employers should also explore candidates’ willingness to learn about their company’s products so they can make tailored recommendations to potential buyers. The key factors to look for here are the ability to listen well and to engage thoughtfully with customers.Why gamble with your bottom line and leave potential sales behind? Instead, make sure you’re hiring retail employees with the right skills to be the star performers who will boost sales. It’s clear what companies need to look for, and they should leverage all possible means at their disposal to get a clear picture of candidates’ abilities. References in particular can provide substantive feedback and a different perspective on candidates’ performance (other than the candidates’ own perspective, which is really all that comes across in an interview). Companies owe it to themselves - and their bottom lines - to do as much as possible to hire as successfully as they can for these roles, given their outsize impact on sales.Ray Bixler is CEO of SkillSurvey, a company that harnesses the power of reference assessments to help organizations more effectively recruit, hire and retain talent.See More

Each year, Merriam-Webster and others add countless new words to the dictionary. But, are words ever deleted? If so, I might suggest ‘career’ as a possible contender. Used in conjunction with so many other terms - like development, progression, success, etc. - in recent years, ‘career’ has contributed to untold dissatisfaction, disengagement, demotivation, and general angst in the workplace. The Problem: Over the past decade, the workplace has experienced seismic shifts: Leaner, meaner organizations are the norm. Layers of leadership have been removed. In many industries and segments, attrition lags behind expectations due to baby boomers working longer. At the same time, average tenure has dropped, with most employees working for multiple companies over the course of their work lives. A significant percentage of the workforce is made up of contingent workers and contractors. Organizational structures are constantly in flux. Yet, despite these dramatic changes to the environment, leaders and employees alike continue to hold firmly to old visions of ‘career’ and what that ought to mean. Ask just about anyone to share the first word that comes to their mind when you say ‘career’, and I bet at least half of them will say ‘ladder.’ Losing the Ladder The reflex-like association between ‘career’ and ‘ladder’ is at the core of what’s fueling employee dissatisfaction in many organizations. Whereas in the past, employees could expect fairly regular opportunities to develop, move up, progress, and be promoted, the world simply doesn’t work like that today. Unfortunately too many organizations and leaders either don’t recognize this or don’t know how to respond. As a result, they continue to perpetuate deeply entrenched systems that drive out-of-date expectations. What’s in a Word? So, perhaps the first step is to re-think the very word ‘career’ and ask ourselves a couple of important questions. 1.  Are ‘careers’ even relevant to today’s employees? Millennial workers are looking to build skills and capacities. They are looking to amass a portfolio of experiences. The old images of ‘career’ don’t necessarily resonate with this portion of the population. Contractors and contingent workers (which make up an increasingly larger percentage of the workforce) don’t typically have any visibility or access to internal career paths.  Their evidence of success or progress is securing the next gig or contract. 2. And, if organizations can no longer ensure the former trappings of ‘career development’ (e.g. promotions, status, raises), what can and should they call what they offer instead? Increasingly, savvy leaders are realizing they must replace the old promise of promotion with the new promise of growth and development.  New roles and titles might not be available, but training, stretch assignments, mentorship and greater visibility generally are. Perhaps it’s time to replace the term ‘career’ with these things that organizations can really offer today. So, if Merriam and her friends deleted ‘career’ from the dictionary, leaders might be forced to find a new way to talk about the experience of one’s work-life over time. We might have to reframe the whole experience and in the process update our vocabulary in a way that reflects the reality in most organizations. This sort of honesty, clarity, and transparency could go a long way toward setting new and realistic expectations. And these expectations could be the basis for greater engagement, motivation, and job satisfaction. What do you think? Is ‘career’ dead? What terms might serve as effective replacements for ‘career’? Image: © Npologuy | Dreamstime.com - Tombstone 2 Photo and Liz Price The post Is it Time to Kill off ‘Career’? appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

All products mentioned in this post are not endorsements, nor are they paying me to say so! I was looking forward to last Thursday night.  It was going to be the first meet up for a new Meetup group for Melbourne learning professionals. As an introvert, organising something like this is a big deal for me.  There’s butterflies in my stomach and an unsettling feeling when you just want this to work out.  I’ve planned and managed many different events in the past and the feelings are always the same.  You want to create a relaxing, informal social environment where people feel comfortable to talk and conversation flows. For a first event, I was happy with the venue at the Royal Melbourne Hotel which has a colourful history. They had cordoned off an area for us with a mix of tables to sit down or stand with your drink. I had envisaged that people were going to mingle but instead, even better, we sat around a table with our drinks and made introductions as everyone came along.  We made our friendly introductions as everyone came over with their drink, made some room for them and started chatting.  I made sure that everyone was involved or involved in the conversations as I didn’t want anyone feeling like they missed out. It’s funny how you think things will turn out and how they really do. I introduced the concept of Third Place to everyone initially but then I let the conversation flow because really, I too, just wanted to chat socially and learn about other people. Where are they from? What are they doing? How did they get to where they are today? The conversation ended up being around the table, that is, with the 9 people there, it was a group discussion.  People found each other’s stories and work lives fascinating because they would be people we would normally not meet in our every day line of work. It also made us think about how we would have approached the learning solutions if we were in their industry.  So what we propose as a performance solution for one company may not be the right one for another one simply because of the many varying factors - and this was evident that even though we were in the same field of work, our applications were totally different. There were a couple of freelancers, a couple from universities, other private companies and public sector.  The range of roles was fabulous - from facilitators, eLearning Designers, freelancers, coaches, and a vendor! We sat enthralled as one guy (who was humorous to boot) as he told the line of work he’s in. He trains employees in the software that is used for anti-corruption, fraud and security.  We listened intently with our jaws agape as he told us the intricate nature of how they scour hard drives and USBs for data in criminal cases and how people don’t realise that imprints are left in our technological devices. You could hear a penny drop.  I’m sure everyone’s minds were ticking over with what personal or secure information is sitting on our devices and how easily it would be to access. "And no, simply deleting them won’t get rid of it", he added much to our surprise. There was a collective "Awww, oh well…" around the table. There were other stories too but the other thing that connected us were that we were all recently affected by some organisational restructure or a redundancy. This was the norm. Discussions were varied but I got to talking to the vendor who I was surprised to be there. It’s a start up company called Coffee Who.  Originally when I checked out their website, I couldn’t see the value in its service offering.  How was it different to something like Meetup or simply connecting with someone through Yammer or setting up an appointment in Outlook calendar? He explained that his software connects people across the organisation.  Say for example, one business unit knows that they don’t have networks or relationships in another part of the business (in the same company).  This software can automatically send coffee meeting notifications out connecting people of those two businesses.  They can then accept the meeting and go for a coffee.  Usually what happens is that they start conversing - a bit about themselves, their work, their business and voila, a connection is made.  After the coffee meeting, the tool generates a few post event questions about the value of that connection.  You can set up as many coffee meetings as you want.  It then provides a visualisation map of the networks created within the organisation - and who has the most networks made.  It can be used for identifying those individuals who have extensive networks and relationships in the business - the "connectors". It’s like "business online dating" (My words, not his). Frankly, I thought the idea was brilliant because sometimes we need a ‘push’ and as an introvert, I wouldn’t know who I need to speak to in the organisation and how to make the connection.  If the tool can support me to do this, I can do the rest simply by face-to-face connection and from there, it gets easier and confidence builds. I also learned about a couple community learning initiatives.  The first was SkillShare and the second was Melbourne’s Laneway Learning.  This latter initiative is a great idea where if you have something to teach, you share it with others - in a short class that is cheap and fun.  Have a look at what they do… Why can’t organisational learning be like this? MOOCs was a big part of the conversation. Many around the table had heard of them but didn’t know what they were.  The concept seemed nebulous to them. Some people had completed them and had their own stories to tell about how effective they found them to be. Luckily we had Jeevan Joshi from The Learning Cafe Australia there who provided heaps of information and tips. You can listen to his recent webinar on MOOCs for Employee Learning: A Practitioners View below. It’s funny how sometimes you imagine the meetup to be and how it transpires.  One of the things I noticed is that no one took out and used their mobile device throughout the meetup.  Instead, people seemed to be deep in conversation that didn’t necessitate breaking the focus with using their phone.  As such, I felt awkward to be the first so the phone stayed in my bag throughout the event. Reflecting on this though, I saw it as a good thing as it was a measure of engagement in the conversation with real people there in the moment. Our next event will be another after work drinks at Platform 28 in the Docklands on Thursday 14 November from 5:30pm-7:00pm. Hope to see you there!      Filed under: Uncategorized

Mark Woodward's blog post was featuredThe Ingredients for Supply Chain Success: Connection, Collaboration and InformationIt’s a fact that supply chains have become increasingly complex and globally distributed. At the same time, businesses are under pressure more than ever to keep up with growing demand. With expectations like these, there’s little to no margin for error. It’s easy to see how an issue in one part of a global supply chain, such as the recent port strike along the U.S. West Coast, can impact all of the other parts of the supply chain. To forge ahead through these unpredictable factors, flexibility and visibility are key. Every player along the supply chain needs the ability to plan and see across the network and work collaboratively with their partners to resolve the frequent disruptions that can hinder the achievement of customer service and margin goals.Even without these unplanned disruptions, the marketplace still moves at lightning speed, and brands are in constant pursuit of the right strategies to broaden their consumer bases. With changing markets, volatile demand, and a dependency on partners who can only be indirectly managed by contracts and influence, brand owners require constant access to timely, complete information. As an added layer of complexity, the enabling technologies for visibility, process management, and decision support in this environment have unfortunately not kept up with its rapid pace. As a result, supply chain professionals struggle to make their most important decisions based on information that is fragmented across their network of partners.With all of these challenges afoot, what’s the recipe for getting ahead? Successful supply chain management (SCM) is, in a way, like getting ready to host a dinner party. Lots of time and effort go on in the background before you get to the main event. But if everything doesn’t come together in a timely fashion, you could end up with cold food on the table.So, let’s take a look at a few of the key ingredients that are required to set the table for successful SCM:A Collaborative Business NetworkAt E2open, I’ve learned that supply chain professionals really want a single version of the truth so that they can make better, faster, and more informed decisions. This requires the right technology enablement to connect trading partners, to unify and manage multi-enterprise business processes, and to plan and make decisions—all in the network.The technology solution for the trading partner network is a business network, a collaborative platform that serves as this single version of the truth for the brand owner and all of their trading partners. Think of a business network as a supply chain control tower, a network of networks enabling a brand owner to orchestrate trading partners and manage change—to continually make course corrections—so, collectively, they can achieve their operational and financial plans.Effective Response ManagementThe best way to safeguard your trading network from disruption is by actively collaborating with your suppliers, distributors, and overall supply chain. Speed is of the essence, as a delay in making a decision can equate to lost revenue. Having multi-tier visibility into both your areas of weakness and your suppliers’ potential problem areas will help you formulate the most effective response, directing resources toward the areas of greatest risk and potential impact. Collaborating with your partners provides visibility into inventory levels, parts, capacity, availability, and alternate sources, as well as serves as a mechanism for group problem-solving.Using this functionality as a starting point, brand owners are able to access and share real-time information with their trading partners, making it possible to adjust plans as exceptions or disruptions arise. The ability to both access and view information from every part of the trading network in real time is critical for business continuity. Identifying disruptions as they occur and, ultimately, devising a range of options to execute in tandem with your trading partners in order to resolve them is key.Bigger, Faster DataBig Data is everywhere, and we deal with our fair share of it in today’s complex manufacturing environments. But what is perhaps more daunting is Fast Data—that is, the incessantly changing positions of forecasts, orders, shipments, and inventory. This challenge is complicated enough within the virtual enterprise, and becomes downright overwhelming in the context of global trading networks—with multiple tiers of partners trying to manage information changes across unique operating systems.In order to reap the benefits of Fast Data, all relevant participants—within the organization and across the global trading network—need to have access to a "shared version of the truth," plus the ability to act on this information in real time. Put differently, Fast Data must be collaboratively managed: shared; agreed upon in terms of source, authenticity, and timeliness; and correlated across relevant roles and processes. But most important of all, Fast Data must also be actionable—having all of this insight is incredibly valuable, but it’s meaningless unless you have the ability to actually act on it. This is where context is key. As the data is analyzed, it should be viewed through the lens of how it can be translated into actionable opportunities.Committing With Confidence"Commit with confidence" might not be a phrase that you hear every day, but it’s certainly in my vocabulary, and I use it every day in speaking with my team. At E2open, we’ve made it our promise to empower those across the supply chain to commit with confidence, including our entire customer base.Simply stating "I’ll get back to you later" is not going to cut it in today’s fast-paced world. By having a 360-degree view into your constrained supply in the network, and all of your customer demand translated into details by segments, profitability, promotions, and timeframes, you are able to "commit with confidence," thus making the customer experience exceptional. This sets the table for future growth and prosperity.Putting It All TogetherBy using the key ingredients I’ve mentioned above, businesses of all sizes can quickly increase revenue via profitable demand management, better manage assets with improved continuity of supply, and reduce working capital. This is all done while better meeting your customers’ demanding, and shifting, requirements. You do so by making your most important supply chain decisions with confidence.When done right, collaboration allows companies to respond more rapidly to possible inventory shortages and shipment delays. It also allows companies to ward off and deal with supply chain disruptions, create and share supply and demand signals, and coordinate with literally thousands of suppliers all at once. By aligning and collaborating with such a wide range of suppliers, supply chain managers gain the visibility they need to respond to any supply chain challenge that’s put in front of them in today’s highly competitive business environment.Mark Woodward is President and CEO of E2open.See More

This second week of the Exploring Personal Learning Networks cMOOC was about defining Personal Learning Networks - and let me just say, there were LOTS of definitions.  So much so that in all honesty, it confused me because I was getting bogged down in the details trying to grapple with everyone’s definitions, explanations and reflections.  Luckily, however Jeff Merrell then asked us: "How will you define Personal Learning Networks to your mother?" Phew. That’s what I needed. Someone to take my hand and pull me out of the murky depths and make it simple enough for me to understand. Then I had some anxieties. Crikey, I’d have to explain it in Greek for her to understand. But then, maybe that’s a positive for me as my Greek isn’t so good.  I’d have to really take it to the basic level of definition. This is how I think my definition would have transpired… All mirth aside I decided to use my PLE to solve a little problem that I came across this week at work. The intention was two fold: I wanted to get some ideas for the actual project (more creative ideas I would never have thought of myself; and lack of time to develop anything new from scratch - besides I don’t like to do work work on weekends and I had to have my brief to my manager in by 0830 Monday morning) I wanted to use this as an example of a "real life organisational problem and how the PLN added value" for the MOOC assignment where we have to pitch to the CEO.  (I needed real life examples, hard data, testimonials, figures, results…you know ‘tangibles’ ) I was tasked to provide some recommendations around an induction (onboarding) program at our work.  I was not involved in the original brief and the team who had created the induction program were not subject matter experts in learning design or development.  In fact, I got handed the whole induction pack and program and was told to "finish it off and get it out there as quickly as possible" by the client. The hairs on my arms stood on end when clients tell me this. I don’t like taking orders. Luckily my manager supported my view of that we critically review and assess their program and provide recommendations for how it could be improved. We could then seek their support and approval to redesign and develop it in the way that we saw best for the organisation and for the new employee. When the client describes their working environment and current induction as, "survival of the fittest" I don’t know about you but for me, alarm bells start to ring. She was desperate for this to change - why wouldn’t she be! But this got me thinking about induction stories and whether there were people in our organisation who had experienced a great onboarding program somewhere. What made their induction memorable? Why? So I posted the question on Twitter and got a few responses with some links and leads to companies who do it well.  (Thanks to Joyce Seitzinger for mentioning about iPads in induction as I threw an offhand remark about this idea in the meeting about this and they stopped short - you could see their minds thinking about it). I did a search on Google + and found the same question was asked by Harold Jarche in his post New Hire Practices back in 2011 and there were some great resources there that I could use.  Finally, I put the same question up on Yammer, our internal social networking tool expecting little or no response, but I got 11 responses within the first two days. One person helped me out even further (and he’s a member of my PLN no less) also did a Yammer tag search on #induction and come up with another 38 different responses when the question was asked two years ago by Simon Terry and posted it up on Yammer for me to see.  So within the space of 2 days, I had an abundance of personal stories, links to companies who do it well and some wonderful ideas to include in the induction program! Now if that’s not proof of a PLN working to solve a small issue or answer a question, I don’t know what is. There would be no way I could have got the same amount of responses any other way without doing some formal survey and taking a lot longer to design, develop, roll out and collate responses…and not as personal. This week I also asked a few members of my PLN to create short videos (less than 2 minutes) on how their Personal Learning Network helped them in their role and provide specific organisational examples.  I’ll collate these responses as part of the final assignment pitch and put it up on the blog at a later date.  They form part of the ‘testimonial’ side of the pitch to the CEO because let’s face it - I want to make it personal and social because it’s not always about the numbers and hard data anymore.Filed under: Development, Work Narration, XPLRPLN Tagged: 2013, October, October 2013, Personal Learning Networks, PLN, XPLRPLN

Rick Howard's blog post was featuredWhen It Comes to Cybersecurity, Look Past Your EmployeesHardly a week goes by without media reports of a well-known business or agency having its data center hacked and sensitive information being stolen or damaged. When news of these attacks breaks, the cybersecurity industry does a lot of hand wringing and pontificating over what is to be done about the increasing frequency and sophistication of today’s cyberattacks.Many security professionals are quick to blame the user. I’ve been in many a conference hall or closed-room meeting when the speaker, while sharing a story about how a user opened an email they shouldn’t have, turns to the audience and says with a knowing smile, "You can’t fix stupid."This kind of thinking really chaps my hide.The Internet is an incredibly complex system of systems. Even individual computers are so enigmatic these days it’s tough even for experts to explain how everything works. I used to teach computer science back in my younger days (I think I still have the slide deck somewhere that explains how the CPU functions by adding 1s and 0s together really, really quickly).But even I have trouble getting my head around the fact that adding 1s and 0s together at high speeds allows me to play World of Warcraft -- complete with three-dimensional graphics and a head-set enabled communications system -- with my friends in Korea. Even I think that somewhere between the 1s and 0s in the CPU and the "Trip to a Dark Portal" quest in World of Warcraft, something magic happens.To expect that cybersecurity experts will know everything they need to know in order to stay safe on the Internet is debatable. To expect that from a normal user is laughable. Yet enterprise security teams continue to spend resources training employees to be security conscious; the idea being that if employees are the weakest link in the chain than that’s where we should spend a lot of time and effort in order to improve network security.I respectfully disagree. Expecting non-security professionals to be able to identify and stop the intrusion methodologies of today’s cyberadvesaries is unrealistic, costly and provides little benefit for the effort required.By no means am I saying that employees shouldn’t receive cybersecurity training. But that training should be focused on making them aware of the organization’s security policy and procedures, not training them to be cybersecurity experts.Users should know how to use the corporate VPN, where to store sensitive documents, how to construct a corporate approved password, how to authenticate, and who to call when they think they’ve done "something stupid." We should not be spending time trying to make employees experts at spotting phishing emails or determining which web sites are good or bad based on how the URL looks.Protecting the enterprise is the security team’s job. If one of your security team’s best security controls is relying on an enduser to stop the bad guy, then your program has some serious issues.Instead, the security community should be designing systems that protect their employees. This will take work from both the vendor community as well as internal security teams, but it is possible. Threat prevention is the key. Security teams will never be able to keep out every advanced adversary, but they can make it extremely difficult. Here are some best practices:Deploy security controls at each point in the Kill Chain.Realize that these security controls don’t work by themselves out of the box. They must be configured to function in the manner that you want them to. You have to bend them to your will.Regularly capture metrics for each deployed security control to confirm it’s doing what you originally wanted it to do.Regularly review your initial network security needs so you can make appropriate changes. When done, go back to the top of the list and start over.Threat prevention is an ongoing process; it’s not something that you do once and walk away. So stop spending time and money trying to make users security experts and start spending on improving your threat prevention program.Rick Howard is the Chief Security Officer for Palo Alto Networks. See More

Guest Post by Peter Moore I’m spending this week on a spring break adventure at the ocean with my family. So, it’s only fitting that Peter Moore, whom I recently met while speaking to the Pasadena Chapter of PIHRA, fill in for me with a story of his own vacation on the water… and the lessons it offered far beyond sailing. With great anticipation of the three-day weekend ahead, two friends and I headed off to a local river to begin our slow cruise in our small outboard- engine-powered boat. With a slight breeze blowing, blue skies (well, mostly/partly blue, this was England after all) above, and many much-anticipated hours ahead, we slid the boat off the trailer into the welcoming waters. The river section we chose flowed slowly — we weren’t white-knuckle white-waterers — so we’d be meandering throughout the weekend.  That was 30-some years ago; many specifics of the weekend are now beyond recall, but the insights and learnings we gained are still clear enough to write about today. Despite its peaceful, calm surface, the river also held hidden traps. I knew drifting too near the bulrushes’ roots or sailing into a submerged sandbank could snarl up the engine and scupper the vacation.  I’d been thinking about a strategy to address these possibilities and came up with a plan to focus on a particular tree at the end of each river curve, then arm-lock the tiller.  It made sense, I thought, to pick out the tree as the goal to head for and aim the boat at it; turns out mine wasn’t the best plan. Of course, corrections I navigated the first few bends trouble-free, firmly focused on the chosen trees.  But, on the next stretch an imperceptible side-current slowly eased me off course. Slow enough, fortunately, that I could make the necessary corrections.  However, it took me more time and effort than expected to redirect the boat back to the safe middle course.  In my attempt, I initially over-corrected, giving myself even more of a problem.  From then on I realized, regardless of the surroundings I had to continually change focus. Every minute I had to be ready to nudge the tiller all the while gauging the currents and the distance to each bank. This alertness kept things under control when stronger-than-expected side currents suddenly welled up and started to push me off course yet again, more quickly and strongly than before. Learning to adapt quickly (eventually successfully) greatly added to my satisfaction that weekend.  And becoming skillful at finessing my course corrections — how much and when to steer to the right or the left - gave me self-confidence in handling those major as well as minor forces. Similarly, on the voyage of our professional lives we often can and will experience times of potential or veritable shipwreck - the cause being ours or others. Consider the following questions as they relate to your professional life: What "overcorrecting" situations have you experienced and gained from? What have you learned from having to finesse a situation (or survive a wild pendulum swing)? What times of having your finger windward have helped steady the ship? Conversely, have times when managers haven’t been alert caused a veritable mutiny due to their being unprepared for those inevitable issues, personal and professional? Ways to control, if not conquer, the wayward currents How can those lessons from that time on the river also apply to business and interpersonal relationships? Develop peripheral vision. For me it meant keeping a 180 degree perspective - a visual finger to the wind; for the business world it means taking in all that’s going on around you. It could be thought of as "pre-listening": gauging the climate/sensing the crew’s mood.  This will prime you before the time of your next one-on-one listening occasion. (Which might be sooner than you think -or want!) Determine to connect more intimately with people. Especially at a time of needed focused listening. I constantly must ask myself: do I really listen to - not just hear - someone who’s talking to me? Life’s successes greatly hinge on being known as someone who listens to people — much will follow: mutually needed respect, understanding, relationships and results.  A good site for a reality check of your listening habits is listeningimpact.com. Don’t put it off! There was a Guinness ad: "I don’t like it because I’ve never tried it." We really only have now (today) to "try it." So make the most of each moment: reflect on what happened. learn from course corrections (good and bad). imagine challenges (plan for but don’t obsess over worst case scenarios) and how you’d prepare for and handle them, then move on. "Leadership involves remembering past mistakes, an analysis of today’s achievements, and a well-grounded imagination in visualizing the problem of the future." -Stanley C. Allyn In life, as on the river, the currents are ever-changing; yet such lessons allow us to prepare for what we can and respond to the rest as they occur as we go with the flow of the river of life. Bon voyage! The post River of Much Return: Life lessons from a time at the tiller appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

This week we had our People Day. Over 400 people across Australia in the Human Resource function travelled to Melbourne to gather and hear our Leadership Team talk about the challenges of the future and how we can work together to face them.  Although I will not go into detail here about what was covered, suffice to say that the key messages were all related to what we read about on the internet everyday.  That is, the impact and speed of which technology has changed the way we work and how we can work with it.  The underlying theme was that change is the new norm and that we don’t have a hefty manual to tell us what and how to do things anymore. While sitting in the big plenary room, I glanced around me and saw that no one had their devices out. No iPads, no phones, no tablets.  Sure we had paper and pens and some people were scribbling notes but I felt awkward to have my tablet out sketch noting presentations and taking photos.  People looked at me with curiosity wondering why I was bothering taking photos. Some time ago, I had written a note on Yammer, our organisation’s social networking site on the power of the backchannel and how we could use groups and hashtags to capture internal events and conferences and share these out across our organisation.  Of course, it’s one thing to write about it and another to do it. I had been thinking about using the hashtag #PeopleDay and sharing my notes on Yammer but as no one was doing the same, an awkwardness overcame me as the ‘odd person out’ and had thoughts such as, "Maybe this isn’t the done thing? Maybe they don’t want this to be shared? Maybe I’m doing the wrong thing by sharing to Yammer? Maybe there are different rules for internal conferences and external conferences?"  During the morning break, my colleague Paul came to me and asked me if I was going to share my notes on Yammer.  When I told him my concerns, he was feeling the same way. He was the only one on his table, like me, taking notes on his tablet and having strange looks come his way. I’m sure people thought that we were being rude with our heads down madly tapping at our tablets. We decided at that point to just ‘do it’. Just post our notes, photos, sketchnotes on Yammer to our team group with the hashtag #PeopleDay and see what transpired. What did we have to lose? Besides, the leadership team was espousing knowledge sharing and collaboration.  This was our go ahead to try something different and apply it immediately. So we started uploading our photos, notes and sketch notes and over the course of the day, we saw that a few others had seen the posts and started commenting on it.  Then, we saw photos being uploaded and amazingly, all tagged with the hashtag! I was chuffed.  This was a real win for us because it immediately broadened the scope of how Yammer was being used in our division. Paul and I demonstrated the power of the backchannel by being the first two to start the ‘movement’ and the rest followed. The next day, we had our Capability Day (our department’s team day) which was much more hands-on, interactive and a lot of fun.  By this stage, people were accepting of us using our tablets to capture what was going on around in the room.  Some people had asked what we were doing and when we told them, they too, contributed their own posts and photos. However the power of what we had done didn’t reach us until the next day when we were back at our desks. The head of our department had heard what Paul and I were doing and asked me to send her an email about it as she was keen to learn more.  I wrote the email and explained what a back channel was, how a hashtag is used and how Yammer has helped create a storyline of events, information and posts that would be beneficial for those people who were absent on the day.  I explained the value comes when people contribute their thoughts and reflections past the event and that it is ‘kept alive’ as people are talking about it online. At the same time, I was glancing at the Yammer page and watching the traffic of people viewing documents and photos in our Group, the stream was too quick. It showed me that people were on Yammer interacting and engaging with the content that was uploaded. I shot a quick message to Paul to check the traffic in Yammer.  Both of us were like excited little kids because this was a real win for us. Although we didn’t have the volume of people participating and contributing to the online conversation, we did see that many people viewed the content.  There is a level of ‘fear’ of the use of Yammer and as many people have an online profile, many of them also don’t post anything related to their thoughts or their own work.  We still have a way to go in this sense but at least we have made a step in the right direction.  Once we have our senior leaders also contributing and responding in this tool, then I believe things will change. In the meantime, I’m still counting this as a win. We received congratulations from our head of department and our team members…. And now we can say that people know what a back channel is and how it can be used to capture and share information…. As a result of this action, yesterday afternoon, I was approached by the Culture team to work with them and look at how we can use Yammer in sharing our work and yes, the word ‘networks’ was mentioned. YES! Score! Fist pump! It looks like people in our team are now curious and want to know more. Curiosity leads to questioning why we do the things we do. Questions lead to experimenting with a new way. Experimentation leads to learning something new. Learning is then shared. Networks are created. … We’re on the right path. Filed under: Development, Work Narration Tagged: 2013, October, October 2013, People Day, Yammer

Jason Hand's blog post was featuredThe IT Culture War: The Struggle to Adopt DevOpsAt the surface, DevOps might be easier defined by looking at what DevOps is not. DevOps isn’t tools or services that you download from the cloud, the title you give a newly hired engineer, or something you can purchase or find on a balance sheet. I can go on and on about what DevOps is not, but the three statements above are common myths and misconceptions, so it’s important to point them out early when trying to help others understand DevOps.DevOps is better defined as an ideology, a culture of collaboration and sharing aimed at bringing the software development and operations teams together to help eliminate constraints and decrease time-to-market. But, there’s a clash happening inside of organizations today that is preventing the full adoption of this culture to be realized.In the following article, I will look at a shift taking place within companies -- a change that impacts IT. The culture of IT is moving in lock step with the changes happening in the larger workplace, but the discussions around this change are harder to find than those discussions about the overall transformation of the modern worker. The culture within IT is shifting dramatically, positively, and that has everything to do with DevOps.Historically, lines of business (e.g. marketing, IT, operations, etc.) were siloed, not interacting with other business units until absolutely necessary. This separation was typically created by perceived responsibilities and the lack of a desire to work outside of these drawn lines. As a result, there have been naturally formed groups of people that don’t talk to each other yet are working toward the same goal - delivering a better product, creating value in their market, solving problems for people.This is the culture in many businesses and it becomes even more noticeable when you start looking closely at IT departments. Traditionally, IT was an isolated group. Engineers write code and build the product and "throw it over the wall" to a different set of engineers for quality and testing, then it makes it’s way to a production environment managed by a team that has little-to-no knowledge about the code residing on their infrastructure. Marketing and sales then take over and start the promotion and selling side of the equation. Rarely do the groups collaborate with full transparency and respect for each other’s roles. They certainly interact, but it’s the collaboration piece that is often much more difficult.We are now seeing the internal structure of businesses evolving. There are traditionalists happily working within boundaries of responsibilities and modernists that want to be plugged into what everyone is doing. Another way to look at this is generational -- Gen Xers or Baby Boomers historically like well defined roles and responsibilities while millennials traditionally seek out roles that have more loosely defined responsibilities.We are hearing more about DevOps because of this evolution. DevOps shifts the tradition of how IT is organized, how engineers interact. It brings a set of best practices that guides how engineers and IT works that is markedly different than a traditional set of principles. It’s a culture of automating, measuring, and sharing in the name of increased efficiencies throughout the software development life cycle.One of the primary principles of DevOps is empathy. Empathy from developers toward the system administrators (i.e. Operations), Operations for the developers, and even empathy across non-technical teams of the company. In most organizations the mandate of a developer is merely to produce a piece of software that works -- if it worked within an engineer’s development environment, then someone else must be able to make it work in production, right? Ideally, developers must care how secure their apps are, how hard they are to deploy, how hard they are to keep running, because our colleagues on the Ops side are typically paying the price for issues once the product is released to the public, not the developers who built it.Having more empathy for each other’s role in delivering better products and solving problems is the destination DevOps is driving forward for organizations. Until that point, DevOps adoption faces real challenges. A cultural war of sorts.DevOps represents cultural change. Whether it’s the change of resistant engineers that don’t want to be on-call or the change of Operations teams to have more empathy towards their counterparts writing code, to the willingness of executives to embrace a culture of automation, measurement and sharing. Organizations must overcome the culture war to be able to approach the agility and productivity that organizations following a DevOps model gain. The faster they can get there, the faster these organizations can take the competitive edge away from traditional enterprises.Jason Hand is a DevOps Evangelist at VictorOps, organizer of DevOpsDays - Rockies, and author of "ChatOps for Dummies."See More

Earlier this year, Emily Esfahani Smith wrote an article in The Atlantic titled, "There’s More to Life Than Being Happy."  Now, I’m not ready to throw in the towel on my pursuit of happily ever after… but it’s hard not to take note of the frequent mention of ‘meaning’ in articles, books, and other works of thought leaders. Gary Hamel counsels managers to see themselves as "entrepreneurs of meaning."  In Good Business, Csikszentmihalyi dedicates significant energy to the "making of meaning." AndMcKinsey Quarterly ran an article last month dedicated to "Increasing the Meaning Quotient of Work." According to psychiatrist/neurologist/Nazi concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl, "Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in life." Given the central role of work in modern-day existence, it makes sense that the search for meaning plays out on the job. Does Meaning Really Matter at Work? If you don’t buy the whole ‘primary motivation in life’ argument, perhaps you’ll be swayed by Richard J Davidson, PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to Dr. Davidson, "The positive emotions accompanying thoughts that are directed toward meaningful goals is one of the most enduring components of well-being." And Daniel Pink confirms that having a sense of purpose and contributing to a greater good improves performance, motivation, and personal satisfaction. So, meaning clearly matters… perhaps to the point that wise leaders may want to consider elevating it to the same level of attention that job satisfaction, culture, and employee engagement currently enjoy in many organizations. But I’m Just a… Let’s be honest. We’re not all researchers dedicated to finding cures for debilitating diseases. Or inventors of new technologies and solutions for worldwide threats. Most of us do something considerably less dramatic and more mundane. Yet, there is meaning in all of the work that is done each day… if we choose to seek it out and honor it. Is Meaning Playing Hide and Seek with You? Are you wondering where the meaning might be in your work? Consider one or more of the following strategies to root out the significance and importance of your 9-5 existence. Identify and consciously use your unique strengths, talents, and gifts. No one else can do quite what you can. Understanding that underscores a purpose that only you can fulfill - at work and in life. Put values into action. Intentionally living a set of values elevates all that you do. Bringing integrity, respect, or positivity to all that you do profoundly affects others and your outcomes. Connect your contribution with the big picture. Understand and remind yourself of how your work feeds into and supports a greater whole. You’re not a cog in a wheel, but rather an essential component whose absence would leave things incomplete. Serve others. Helping others meet their needs and achieve their goals creates lasting meaning. When others flourish as a result of your efforts, you succeed as well. Influence the organizations to do good. You’re in a powerful position to magnify your meaning as you help your organization take action that contributes to a better world - whether it’s through company-sponsored volunteerism or simply influencing constructive decisions. Take time to reflect on actions, successes, and learning. Take a pause to let the results of your activity and effort sink it. Through reflection, you can make sense and find meaning in all that you experience. Seek out challenges that make a difference. Stretch yourself deliberately and in directions that yield improvements. You’ll find meaning in your own development as well as the outcomes that it can yield. In the workplace, meaning will likely not come knocking on your office doors or cubicle walls every day. We need to search it out, consciously and actively finding the significance behind the sometimes mundane tasks that we perform. And leaders need to help others find meaning in their work by modeling and teaching these strategies. What could it mean to operate in an environment committed to everyone finding meaning at work? I’m not sure… but I’d sure like to find out. This post originally appeared at Lead Change Group. Image: © Marekuliasz | Dreamstime.com - What Gives You Meaning ? Photo The post Meaning Matters appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Two nights ago after work,  I wandered over to the State Library of Victoria, a place I hadn’t visited for some years.  It was looking a bit worse for wear in my opinion or maybe I was just becoming a grumpy old woman for noticing the dirt and rubbish that side of town. Photo Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vic_State_Library_Facade_Pano,19.07.06_edit1.jpg It was early evening and Melbourne workers were scrambling to get home while students sat on the steps outside the library munching on fast food before they went back in to continue their studies. A lone seagull desperately flew around the head of one of the statues trying to land on its head. I was here to attend a Melbourne Knowledge Week panel of people who created start-ups around community learning events called Learning In the City. In its fourth year, Melbourne Knowledge Week has various programs and events around the city.  Our city is home to infrastructure and key organisations which are thought to characterise a knowledge city.  You can find out more about it on the website here. The panel consisted of community learning providers who were all start ups and have been providing learning in some form or another. We Teach Me I have had the pleasure of connecting with We Teach Me through my work to see if their product can have some corporate application for peer-to-peer learning programs.  The platform allows anyone who has a subject matter expertise to plan, co-ordinate and conduct courses on any topic.  Teachers can use this product to easily create, manage and promote courses.  Similarly, learners can enrol, connect and create their own curriculum of learning based on their own personal needs. In fact, last night, I did my first We Teach Me Course on Evernote 101 run by Megan Ilema (@Megsamanda) so I guess I not only learned about Evernote but I got to trial We Teach Me dashboard on a real event. At the Evernote 101 Workshop playing with Skitch The Creative Performance eXchange Peter Spence talked about the events they offer at the Creative Performance eXchange. It’s an inter-generational forum where people talk and share ideas.  Although I hadn’t been to any of these forums, I understood these to be a gathering of people from all walks of life, of all experiences, from a wide industry and background who get together to talk and in so doing, learn from each other.  On the panel, Peter talked about how left brain we all are nowadays and how we have a lot to learn from children, women and the arts.  My understanding of his message that in today’s society we are simply too busy, too structured and focused and as a result we have lost our humanness, creativity and connections. Laneway Learning  I chatted with Mark who was one of the founders of Laneway Learning and found that we had a connection over organic chemistry.  We regaled stories of white lab coats, beakers and morphine derivative compounds (Please, no Breaking Bad jokes).  Studying towards a PhD and doing this on top of their studies, they founded this group that runs short after-work classes in Melbourne that are cheap, accessible and by the looks of it, fun. Although I haven’t done a workshop yet, it’s on my list to do one of these - or even bring along a group of work colleagues one night.  Rather than go for a drink after work at a bar, why not go and do a fun class together? I complained that I couldn’t get on a 3D printing class online on Twitter and thankfully, they offered another suggestion with The Robots Are Coming. I was sold on the name. What a brilliant name for the business AND they have a night where you can print Dr Who themed artwork!   I quickly shot an email to my brother, the left brained electrical engineer as something like this would appeal to his nature so now we’re talking about doing a class together! (The last time we were in school together would have been in primary and high school but I reckon these classes would be a lot more fun than our childhood school days). School of Life School of Life "Good Ideas for Everyday Life" is based on Alain de Bottom’s School of Life where you learn how to deal with the hard hitting questions in life.  This scared me admittedly but I know it’s something I will need to face. Questions like, "How to Have a Better Conversations", "How to Be Confident",  "How to Face Death"…yeichs. School of Life reminds me of the conversations that we have around our family dinner table. They say that one must never talk about sex, politics or religion at the dinner table but it seems that for Greeks this is certainly not the case. Everything is up for grabs and it makes for exciting dinner conversation where people yell, complain, cajole, argue, laugh, cry, moan about these topics over a moussaka and plenty of retsina.  However, somehow I don’t think the School of Life presents their information in such as robust and loud way as I have been accustomed to.  Regardless, they provide a place where people can be comfortable discussing these heavy subjects. Overall, my main take on this panel and my experience of community learning events is that they provide a great way for people from all backgrounds to get together and learn something new and from each other.  Courses aren’t long, expensive or convoluted. There is no accreditation, certification or qualification.   The factors that made these events popular was that people were learning from each other, they were actually ‘doing something’ and the teachers were passionate. Stephen Heppell had written about what makes the Best Learning Moments and it seems that community learning events follow these. Last of all, another start up was mentioned  and they were Smiling Mind . As someone who loves to meditate (simply as a way to calm my mind), we chatted about their product and service which provides mindfulness meditation. I went home, downloaded their app,  listened to their meditation and promptly fell asleep. Clearly, a real winner for me. Just so you know, I’m not being paid to mention these products and services - just like to share because they may be of interest to you.Filed under: Development

Tim Porter, Larry Heller, Andy Wojewodka and 7 more joined Innovation Insights

Guest Post By Sharon Jordan-Evans and Beverly Kaye I’m delighted to host this guest post from my co-author, Beverly Kaye, as she and Sharon Jordan-Evans launch their latest book, Hello Stay Interview, Goodbye Talent Loss. With retention of key talent a challenge for most organizations, this book is literally the ‘manager’s playbook’ on how to keep employees engaged… and how to keep them period!  What prevents you from asking your talented people what will keep them engaged and on your team?  Are you afraid you will be unable to deliver on their requests?  Try using these four steps the next time they ask for something you may not be able to give:  Acknowledge the requests and restate how much you value your employees. Tell the truth about the obstacles you face in granting their requests. Care enough to look into their requests and to stand up for them. Ask "What else?" — and keep asking. You’ll eventually get something you can work with! Managers have told us they have other worries, too, and that some of those concerns prevent them from conducting stay interviews. Check out these what ifs. Do any of them feel familiar? What if You Ask What They Want and They Say, "I Don’t Know"? Remember that this is not an interrogation . . . it’s a conversation, and hopefully one in an ongoing series of conversations. It’s okay not to know. Some people will be surprised by your questions and need some time to think about it. Let them think, schedule another meeting, and set the stage for an ongoing dialogue about your employees’ wants, needs, and career goals. What if You Fear Putting Ideas into Employees’ Heads? Seriously? As if they never thought about leaving on their own? What if They Question Your Motivation? Be honest. If you’re not in the habit of having dialogues like these, it could feel strange—for you and perhaps for them. If they smile and ask, "What book have you just read?," tell them that yes, you did read a book or attend a course, and you did it because they matter to you. What if It’s Just Not Your Style to Ask? Banker: [From the audience] If I asked my employees questions like this, they’d fall over in a dead faint. I don’t even say hi in the hallway. Us: Well—you might want to ease into this, then. Maybe start with hi in the hallway. What if You Actually Hope They Will Go? Manager: [At a leadership conference] I have a very poor performer on my team. I’m trying to imagine telling him how important he is to me and to the team—and then asking what will keep him here. It seems disingenuous. How am I supposed to have a stay interview with him? Us: You definitely need to have a chat with him—but it’s a performance chat, not a stay interview. Us: [Qualifying a bit] On the other hand, maybe he’s not performing because you’ve never held a stay interview with him. Might he perform better in a different role, with different tasks or teammates—or with a different boss? What if Cultural Differences Make You Nervous about Asking? How do cultural differences play out in this crucial, foundational engagement strategy—the stay interview? We asked colleagues and clients around the globe, and the majority said that it works just as well in their regions as in the United States. However, asking questions may not always be encouraged, especially in more hierarchical cultures. If you manage others in a culture where asking is not accepted or recommended, you’ll need to find a work-around. Some managers have used anonymous surveys or tasked someone else with the "asking." However you seek to learn about what your talented employees really want, it is crucial that you do gain that information. What if They Are Younger (Older), Introverted (Extroverted), or Smarter than You? This is about all those other differences we worry about. Stop worrying and start exploring the preferences and unique characteristics of each of your treasured people. Get to know them better and customize your approach to each individual. What if It Really Is All about the Money? If employees see compensation as noncompetitive, unfair, or simply insufficient to sustain life, their dissatisfaction levels will go up. They will become vulnerable to talent theft or will begin looking around for something better, especially in a favorable job market. But here’s the rub: although inadequate pay can be a huge source of dissatisfaction, even fair pay won’t retain people who are unhappy in other key areas. If your talented people do not feel challenged or developed or cared about, a big paycheck will not keep them for long. It is true that some people are motivated primarily by money. If that’s the case, you might honestly have trouble hanging on to some of them. One senior leader said he’d learned that it is pointless to try to hang on to talent with money alone, because there is always a higher bidder. Pay fairly and competitively and then focus on the stay factors you can influence. Some managers have said they lost sleep over holding stay interviews with their talented people. Then they did it; they held the conversation and it worked out great. Their employees thanked them for taking the time and caring enough to ask what would keep them engaged and on the team. *Content adapted from Beverly and Sharon’s new book, Hello Stay Interviews, Goodbye Talent Loss, Berrett-Koehler, 2015. BEVERLY KAYE is the founder of Career Systems International (www.CareerSystemsIntl.com), a global leader in delivering innovative talent management solutions. SHARON JORDAN-EVANS (sharon@jeg.org) is a sought-after executive coach and popular keynote speaker for Fortune 500 companies. They are the authors of five editions of Love ’Em or Lose ’Em, as well as Love It, Don’t Leave It. The post What If? - Reasons Managers Don’t Have "Stay Interviews" appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

After four weeks of participating in the Exploring Personal Learning Networks cMOOC, it has come to this. Our pitch to the CEO on the value of personal learning networks.  In fact, through the various readings, discussion and activities of the previous three weeks, we have been building up to this point to undertake the following activity: Your CEO (or equivalent organizational leader) just heard about PLNs at a cocktail party and is excited about gaining a competitive advantage (or improving impact on mission) by leveraging PLNs for the organization’s success. But, she/he knows little about PLNs or what to do with them to support organizational success and strategy. Is the organization set up to benefit from and support PLNs, so it is more than just an individual thing? She/he is going away on vacation for one week, and upon return wants you to explain what PLNs are and to provide guidance for what to do. You have a one-hour meeting to facilitate a conversation. First Thoughts My first thoughts when I read this paragraph was that this is going to be a simple task. When you believe in something, it’s not hard to influence others to see what you’re seeing. Or is it? My second thought was that we have a full hour with the CEO.  Usually it takes a long time to get into their diary and set up a meeting so with a full hour with them, it indicates that they’ve taken this topic seriously and really want to hear what you have to say. My Worlds Collide While participating in this cMOOC, there were things happening in my real life at work that linked the theory of what we were learning to the real life practicalities of working in a corporate environment.  For example, I was invited to be a part of a working group to inspire more users of our division onto Yammer (I think mainly inspired because of what I did at the People Day event) and secondly, every day I would have requests from people to "ask your networks what I knew about x and y" or "what do your networks say about a, b and c". That is, word was getting out there that I was someone who was connected.  I can get answers for the questions they were asking quickly. Something didn’t sit right with me with that. All of a sudden what was my PERSONAL learning network, the network that I built, created, maintained, nurtured and trusted could be up for exploitation by others who don’t have any. So this assignment wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. If PLNs were going to be used in the organisation like this, why would I want to share mine with others? Now I was considering doing a runner. Go on. You knew there would have been a BitStrips cartoon in my blog post somewhere. A Supportive PLN and G+ Community Understood The Dilemma We discussed this concept with a small group of participants on the Explorer Personal Learning Networks MOOC. You can see it here. The group debated the following questions: Why does the CEO in our problem want to leverage PLNs? Why does he/she think PLNs will help with company success? Why do we think we need to place a structure on PLNs? Why are some organizations successful with internal PLNs? Why do other organizations fail? What transpired was robust conversation to structure our thinking and make a logical case (whether for or against) on the value of personal learning networks. So What Did I Do? I came to the conclusion that I had to look at the organisation and its leaders and see how ready it was for social learning.  That is, it was obvious that the CEO may have thought that this was either going to be another fad or simply, a technological solution that needed to be implemented to get people to be social. My aim was to dispel these myths and tackle the organisational culture first.   So in effect, I’m not presenting a case either FOR or AGAINST personal learning networks, simply pointing to the current organisational culture and inspiring a dialogue so that they can see for themselves whether they are ready or not for this cultural shift. I saw my role as someone who presented the facts that got them thinking and reflecting. I wanted them to see what they had to do for themselves. Maybe I could guide them through the process but they had to make the hard decisions for themselves because I wanted them to see that they had a major role to play. This was not something that they could mandate. I created a fictional corporation called Personal Banking Corporation (and no, it’s nothing like the organisation I’m working for) and decided present slides to the CEO and the Leadership Team with the themes: Where we are today Where we want to be tomorrow Define Peer Networks View a Personal Learning Networks video View a personal story of how a peer network helped colleagues in their lines of work Use an example of a business problem and how we could solve it if we used a peer network and without (and present data and findings). This is where I used my recent example of how I asked my PLN to provide me with any sources on onboarding and induction programs for my job. Talk them through Harold Jarche’s post on the Knowledge Sharing Paradox and Seek, Sense, Share Model Spend some time looking at why peer networks will have its challenges with the current organisational structure - note how my first dot point is that "knowledge sharing is explicitly stated as a core enterprise behaviour" (I wanted to call this slide: "Why Peer Networks Will Fail at PBC" but thought it was too hard-hitting as it was self evident from these points that they’d have other things to address first) Open discussion on slides presented so that CEO and leadership team can see for themselves that it’s not as simple as they thought.   The Value of Personal Learning Networks - The CEO Pitch from Helen Blunden What Are The Tactics I Used? First of all, I decided to call them "Peer Networks" - I removed the word "learning" as my intention was to remove any preconceived ideas about learning.  I wanted to create a sense that it was just "part of the way we do business - in the workflow". Calling it out may have put negative connotations into their minds.  I also didn’t want it to have any connection with the Learning & Development department for fear of them having the concept packaged into a programmed event, formalised, structured, implemented, measured and evaluated. Also, my assumption was that I was speaking to a CEO and a Leadership Team who were "Cautious Testers", people who are "pessimistic but understand the need to collaborate because they can see the benefits of involving a greater circle of people.  These people don’t have much hands-on experience with social technologies, but they have some - enough to see the advantages of open leadership, but not quite enough to abandon their command-and-control practices" (1) Secondly, I decided to use personal stories of people in my PLN.  I asked both Jasmine Malki (@JMalki) and Costas Sotidis (@LearnKotch) to video their personal experiences of how a PLN helped them in their respective role.  I thought personal stories of people outside the organisation would be believable and make them see that this is happening everywhere. Costas, in particular focusses on the need to nurture, respect and share in order to maintain and retain a personal learning network because in doing so, we help with different ideas and alternative options in our new roles as knowledge workers.  He makes it clear that PLNs are something that we all have - not just the few. How PLN has helped your role by Jasmine Malki (@JMalki) How PLN has helped your role by Con Sotidis (@LearnKotch)  Thirdly I decided to use a real business problem to explain how peer networks may help in solving them.  In particularly, I used my current role as a developer of Induction programs.  I am in the process of designing a new Induction Program for Store Managers and I asked the question to my PLN on whether they had an good sources of on-boarding and induction programs.  I wrote about it in my blog post Exploring Personal Learning Networks To Help Me in My Job. I wanted to demonstrate two methods of gaining responses and information.  In the traditional way, we may have generated a survey, collated responses, measured the data and written reports that may have been costly and taken time to develop.  However with social media, we get instant feedback, personal stories, real life examples, people offering other connections, resources and networks - the interaction is richer and provides dialogue and conversations to occur that generate new and alternative ideas that we may not have considered for our induction problem. In effect, as Maureen Crawford said in her blog, "the strength of a PLN is that nonlinear interactions and engagement results in emergent competence that is distributed across the network". (2) Fourthly, I wanted to add the current organisational cultural challenges into the mix so that they could see that there was a disconnect between a networked organisation and an organisation that did not value sharing and collaboration and provided examples such as: Knowledge sharing isn’t explicitly stated as an enterprise behaviour Senior leaders don’t use Yammer Technology does not allow access to external social media sites High turnover of staff in many areas raises questions of why would anyone want to share when they know they’ll be leaving? The aim of these challenges is to get the CEO to think that there’s a disconnect and that he/she needs to address organisational culture first before becoming a networked organisation. And it starts with the CEO. Lastly, I added the last slide because I envisaged that the hour would have bamboozled the CEO and the Leadership Team with a quiet realisation like the one I had at the start of this assignment, "it’s not as easy as I thought". The intention was to generate discussion and come up with some ideas to work on the organisational culture first, to discuss what they themselves were prepared to give up or not - and to question their role in the entire process. Where To From Here? Although this MOOC has still one week to go before it finishes, I have found it to be valuable and worthwhile in my learning because I could directly apply it to my daily work. Connectivist MOOCs have been one the most instrumental and critical personal development activities I’ve ever completed but I think it’s because I’m a self-directed and willing learner. If people in organisations could be more like this, we wouldn’t be answering the question, "what’s the value of personal learning networks." Recently, it seems my online and real life worlds are colliding. I sit in a role of "Design Consultant Induction Programs" but I’m being called upon to use my other skills in the social learning space to teach others in the organisation how to use the technology to create and build learning networks. Many of these requests are coming from outside my own Learning and Development function because I’m active on Yammer. Last week, I applied for an internal role in our organisation called "Future Skills Strategy Capability".  I saw it as an opportunity to be in a role that could shape the skills and capabilities needed for a workforce to face the future. I guess in the new world of organisational change, I’m trying to see where I ‘best fit’ - maybe there is no fit anymore? The problem is I don’t have experience in this nor have I shaped strategy in previous organisations.  All I had to go by is my own application, experience and actions I have done in the last few years around performance consultancy. So I needed to make an impact.  I needed to get creative. I used our company’s recent More Give and Less Take Marketing Campaign to structure an animated video with voice over using photos from our campaign to create "What Do We Need More and Less Of"  and included that in my job application using the application Shadow Puppet to create it. My gut tells me I won’t get the job but that’s okay because I’m seeing signs that we’re on the right track. Why? Because we are not like the fictitious company in my MOOC assignment. If you haven’t already seen the RSA Animate Video on The Power of Networks: Thank you to my PLN: Thank you to both Jasmine and Con for their support and assistance when I asked them to do these videos for me. It’s hard to believe that over a year ago, our paths had not crossed but with Twitter and by sharing our learning, showing our work and talking about our passion for what we do and how we can inspire others, what started as being part of our own PLN, I can count them as my friends now.  Thank you. Thank you also to the Google+ community, in particularly our small group in the Explorer Personal Learning Networks cMOOC who bantered, discussed and deliberated ideas for how we would approach our respective CEOs.   References: (1)   Christensen, Karen (2012): Open Leadership: A New Paradigm Emerges and Interview with Charlene Li Available at http://hbr.org/product/open-leadership-a-new-paradigm-emerges/an/ROT156-PDF-ENG (2)  Crawford, Maureen:  Non-Ownership, Outcomes and Competencies Available at http://xplrpln.blogspot.ca/2013/10/non-ownership-outcomes-and-competencies.html (3)    "Online Jam Spreads Information Mix", Financial Business Review, 17 April 2013 Available at: http://www.afr.com/p/national/work_space/online_jam_spreads_information_mix_7lcYBbjvqZlH6W8Zydj22I (4) Kamerer, Eric: Introducing Personal Knowledge Management to a Corporate Audience Learning Solutions Magazine, 30 October 2013.  Available At https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1296/introducing-personal-knowledge-management-pkm-to-a-corporate-audience (5) Hart, Jane: How Do We Deal with Unwilling Corporate Learners? Available at: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2013/09/22/how-do-we-deal-with-unwilling-corporate-learners/Filed under: Development, XPLRPLN Tagged: 2013, CEO Pitch, Exploring Personal Learning Networks, November, November 2013, XPLRPLN

Bradley McCredie, Tim Porter, Larry Heller and 8 more joined Innovation Insights

  Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/missrogue/142628346/   Well the time has come for me to have my own domain name and I will transfer this WordPress site to a WordPress.Org site (let’s see how that goes) on www.activatelearning.com.au over the coming days. Please feel free to follow me there.  Thank you for reading my blog! HelenFiled under: Uncategorized Tagged: Final Post, November 2013

Max Lytvyn's blog post was featuredThe Doomed Donkey Versus the Ever-Hungry Pac-ManEntrepreneur and author Gary Vaynerchuk has a simple trick to keep himself motivated. He tells himself that he’s failing, even when he’s at his most successful. This counterintuitive mind-hack is meant to discourage complacency."I play a trigger game with myself to make me believe that I’m losing," says Vaynerchuk. "I’m at my worst even though I’m at my best."For a while—longer than I’d like to admit, actually—I bought into this philosophy. If I kept myself hungry, I reasoned, then I’d keep pushing myself to perform better and reach even greater heights of achievement and success. There was only one problem: I was absolutely miserable.Despite a number of successes in both my personal and professional life, including launching Grammarly, I constantly felt like a failure. I worked diligently to convince myself that I was falling short of the mark, and the effort wore me out. Even when others patted me on the back, I kicked myself for not doing better, more, and faster.The problem with negative motivation is that it doesn’t work in the long run. If you force your brain to move in circles—to chase a carrot that is perpetually out of reach—your brain catches on to the trick and stops responding in the way you want it to. As soon as you come up with an idea, you’ll also devise reasons why the idea isn’t good enough and will never work. You will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.If you believe that you’ll never achieve your goals, then you won’t. So I decided to change my thinking.I began looking to progress and achievement to motivate me. To get rid of the baggage I created with the "failing" trick, I started setting my goals higher. I stopped focusing on thinking about what I should do and focused more on what I could do. Now, my philosophy is to shoot for the moon every time. Even if I fall short, I’ve still gone farther than I would have ever dared dream in my doom-and-gloom days of negative motivation.Instead of plodding along like the proverbial donkey, "wearily in a circle round a gin" (D.H. Lawrence), always chasing that carrot that is just out of reach, I decided to be more like Pac-Man. Both the donkey and Pac-Man make progress, but Pac-Man gets bursts of small rewards along the way. Those rewards encourage him—and me—to work faster, harder, and smarter. That’s the essence of gamification."A good gamelike experience measures and rewards small accomplishments in addition to big ones," says Business Tech Expert Robert Strohymer. "When you reward people for making incremental progress toward larger goals, you encourage them to keep going."If you aim so high that a relative failure is the most likely outcome by all standards, failing and negative pressure become irrelevant. All that’s left is rush of excitement from those moments when you actually hit the moon—or at least, like Pac-Man, eat all the pellets in your path.Max Lytvyn is co-founder and head of product strategy for Grammarly.See More

Career development consistently appears at the bottom of most organizations’ climate and engagement surveys. Employees routinely express their displeasure with the options, possibilities, and moves available to them… as well as the organization’s overall commitment to their growth. And managers are no happier. They lament the time they must find - generally deep into their nights and weekends - to support the development of those who report to them. If you find yourself in either camp, it’s likely that a large source of the problem - and your unhappiness with career development - traces back to one of the pernicious 4 Ps. These Ps have inserted themselves in our work lives and psyches. They masquerade as development and play games with our minds. They shift our attention and expectations in ways that can only lead to disappointment and frustration. And we let them do it. So, it may finally be time to shed some much-needed light on this pervasive workplace problem… and in the process, elevate the engagement and growth of employees and managers alike. Processes, paperwork, programs, and promotions are not career development. Over the years, we’ve let these 4Ps confuse us. We’ve developed complex processes and systems to ensure that each employee received career development attention and that the organization had the data for manpower, succession and other planning. Yet these processes have taken on a life of their own, voraciously devouring precious time and delivering disproportionate value for the investment made. Then there’s paperwork, processes’ second-cousin.  It was originally invented to simply memorialize conversations - to overshadow people-work. Too frequently we think that once the boxes have been checked, the forms have been completed and submit has been clicked, development is done. And nothing could be farther from the truth. Documenting is not developing. And training programs have also added to the confusion around career development. How many times have you looked at an individual development plan that looked a lot like a course catalogue. Training is important, but too frequently we over-simplify development.  An employee can attend every course available and still not be growing and developing. It takes more. It takes: Attending the right courses Receiving feedback Engaging in appropriate development activities Ongoing coaching Collaboratively unpacking learning and refining development plans over time Mentoring, networking, and job shadowing The fourth P may be the hardest to address and banish. Promotions have become synonymous with career development… despite the reality that organizations are meaner, leaner and more delayered than ever before. Changing business realities and demographics have conspired to result in dramatically fewer promotional opportunities. Yet our expectations have remained unchanged: If we’re not moving up, then we report on the survey that career development is not happening. Just naming these 4Ps is the first step toward beginning to diminish their power. Framing processes and paperwork as artifacts of development - tools that support our ability to do it with some level of consistency across the organization - helps enormously. Helping managers and employees alike think more creatively about how they can develop the skills and capacities they need will help put programs in their place. And actively exploring lateral and in-role development opportunities can demote promotions and introduce viable possibilities for vibrant development. So, if we want to promote more career development - and more satisfaction with it - it’s time to actively wage war on these pernicious 4Ps. What about you? Which Ps are undermining career development satisfaction in your organization? The post The Pernicious 4Ps that Undermine Career Development Satisfaction appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Anthea Stratigos's blog post was featuredA Missing Link in Innovation?I was thinking the other day about the difference between innovation and entrepreneurialism and was reminded of some important differences when I looked them up online. Innovation is the process of innovating. Hmmm. Ok, well that didn’t get me too far, but a look further pointed to the process of innovating as change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, transformation, metamorphosis, or breakthrough. That sounds more like what’s going on in Crimea, or the Arab Spring, but not innovation. So I persevered in my search.I looked further and my trusty online dictionary said innovation is the introduction of something new, a new idea, method, or device. It is the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices or methods. Ok, I buy it but why are so many companies bad at innovation or chasing it like a dream? Books are written on the topic and leaders, clients I work with every day, want more innovation in their businesses and cultures. Why is it so hard? Maybe there is a clue in the second word, entrepreneur.Definitions of entrepreneur come in many different "flavors." For instance, an entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risk in order to do so. He/she is also a person who starts a business and is willing to incur loss in order to make money. Forbes describes it as anyone who can identify any need and fill it. It's a ‘seeking and solving breed who can define, invest, build, and repeat.It struck me that the reason many companies are not good at innovating is because they are unwilling to be entrepreneurial. They either can’t invest, or won’t invest because of the need to deliver short-term profit and please Wall Street, or they don’t have the financial bandwidth to invest unless there is no risk. Or they are hiring people who can execute well but don’t have a stable full of those who are risk takers, or both.There are large companies who can innovate and take risks, but it seems they are getting fewer and farther between: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, or maybe IBM--but even their R&D feels decidedly more yesterday than what’s going on here in the western US. Is Salesforce continuing to innovate or are they more so executing? Uber? Definitely an innovator. But I wonder, can innovation occur outside of an entrepreneurial environment?Maybe so but only if another word kicks in - enterprising-- which is having or showing initiative and resourcefulness and being energetic in carrying out an undertaking characterized by great initiative. I like that.The Valley is chock full of entrepreneurs, some of whose ideas aren’t all that innovative. In fact they might not even be big risk-takers because they are using other people’s money. Many companies have a hard time innovating because they can’t entrepreneur. The individuals and enterprises that fill the gap are the hard core who can do more with less, can identify a market need and fill it on a shoestring budget, don’t blink at risk and can truly turn out something - a new idea, device, or method that is breakthrough.What do you think? I’d love to hear other ideas and experiences on this topic.Anthea C. Stratigos is co-founder and CEO of Outsell.See More

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 10,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. Click here to see the complete report.Filed under: Uncategorized