Gender Diversity on Boards

Wouldn't it be great if getting a better gender mix on boards was indeed critical? But it can't be so in the eyes of those who hold power, otherwise it would already be happening.

In recent years I have come to the conclusion that we will have to be pushed into change, otherwise it will not happen; or will only happen with glacial slowness. It would be great to be proved wrong, though!

Just like humankind being reluctant to leave behind our superstitions, I feel we won't change unless we have to. We will like the new place when we get there, but change is something we don't seek willingly.

Some of you may know that Norway set quotas for all its publicly listed organisations that by 2010 all boards would need to be gender diverse. This meant that boards must contain at least 40% women; or 40% men on female-dominated boards. Following the stock exchange rule change came into effect in 2010, apparently many companies decided that instead of compying, they would either move their head offices, or they would return to private ownership, rather than comply. What a fascinating response!

Norway has over 40% women on the boards of publicly listed companies. There are studies which have found that, since 2010, the financial reliability of publically listed organisations in Norway have increased. It sounds as though that improvement may also be bit of a Darwin Award; the idiots have apparently removed themselves from the gene pool.

So I wonder now how much of that fiscal improvement is due to diversity, and how much is due to philosophical alignment?

The actions of those companies who reverted to private ownership also beg a lot of questions: however, at least by their actions they appear to have improved the financial stability of the stock exchange.

Bonus.

• Reference:  Human Rights Commission (2012).  NZ Census of Women's Participation. Retrieved 25 August 2013 from http://live.isitesoftware.co.nz/neon/documents/HRC%20Womens%20Census_2012_WEB.pdf

Sam

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3M Command Hooks

I was reading Lifehacker today - always a great source of making life easier in the 21st Century - when I came across a little act of leadership. A tip on how 3M Command hooks an make your life easier.

Funnily enough, I have used command hooks of various kinds for years, from hanging up the glass scraper in the shower to hanging up my connector cables & memory sticks under my desk (see photo).

Like the Lifehacker article, I use what are known here in Kiwiland as 'bulldog' clips to hold cable coils in order to hang them on a hook (aka US binder clips).

They do make life easier, make things come to hand more quickly, and so help me to be better organised.

Little things like this smooth out the wrinkles in today's busy-busy world :-D

• Reference: Pinola, Melanie (20 September 2013). 15 Brilliant Things You Can Do with Command Hooks. USA: Lifehacker. Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://lifehacker.com/15-brilliant-things-you-can-do-with-command-hooks-1355369802

Sam

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Making Lasting Change

A LinkedIn compadré, Stephen Landry, reposted a great Deepak Chopra article on the Collaborative Career Conversations group over this past weekend.

I read the article, and found it contained a great six step process to help all of us with changing our unwanted behaviour. A simple list, which if we can remember, will help us better deal with everything that life throws at us.

So I tweaked Mr Chopra's list myself, to better suit what I say, and the things I am aware of; for example, that an adrenalin rush lasts 90 seconds. If you can hold tight for 90 seconds, you will be past the immediate emotion and you can then think straight again.

I also added a fabulous line from a friend of mine who is a bit of a buddhist and meditator and who regularly asks "how does this behaviour benefit me?"; a very powerful phrase indeed.

In today's world, journalling ideas is as likely to be sound recorded than written down, so I changed "write" and "note" to record.

The list is:

1. Notice what you're about to do.
2. Pause, close your eyes and wait 90 seconds until your adrenalin rush goes.
3. Ask yourself “how will this behaviour benefit me?”
4. Record how you feel.
5. Record when you make a better choice.
6. Appreciate your good choices and celebrate the fact that you made them.

Then I put it in a poster. And have posted this online for you to share with an image of the sky for so we can use it to inspire big, blue sky change thinking.

Feel free to download and share, but please acknowledge the author (reference below). (to download, click image, once open, right mouse, then 'save').

• Reference:Chopra, Deepak (28 September 2013). The Secret to Personal Change. USA: LinkedIn. Retrieved 30 September 2013 from http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130928001037-75054000-the-secret-to-personal-change?goback=.gde_4658233_member_277139634 (word edits & image by Sam Young)

Sam

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What does an ideal teaching moment look like?

I read an article by James Derounian in the Guardian on what his "idea of a (utopian) university" looked like recently.

In reading that article, I started thinking about what my ideal teaching moment looked like (of course, then I started thinking about what my ideal learning moment looked like, but I will postpone that thinking for a future post). For this time, I will think about what I need to see in my learners to know that my teaching has done what it should. That fabulous "Aha!" moment.

I want to see that learners have taken the course materials and explored beyond them. I want to see curiousity, exploration, risk, testing of new ideas, uncertainty, experimentation, over-turning of old ideas that don't make the grade and seeding of new ideas that will work for now. I want to see theories applied to known situations and used to test potential situations. I want to see independence of thought. I want learners to give me a map back to where they have got their new ideas from and honour those whose ideas are worthy of repitition. I want them to be passionate in their thirst for new learning. I want them to make learning a fire that burns within them, a Tonto that will ride shotgun with them on their knowledge quest for the rest of their lives.

I want their eyes to light up when they are challenged with something new, and understand that they can work through this new thing. To have the confidence and the grounding to know that, like Creighton Abrams said, this is just like eating an elephant... a bite at a time.

I want their learning behaviours to be really active, where, if I asked them what they were doing and how engaged they were with their material, they would say that they wrote their own study questions and answers; that they compared and contrasted; that they closed their notes and tested how much they remembered; that they asked themselves “How does this impact my life?”

Quite a big ask really, now I come to think of it!

• Reference: Derounian, James (20 September 2013). The idea of a (utopian) university. Retrieved 26 September 2013 from http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/sep/20/new-academic-year-university-utopia?j=50280&e=sam@samyoung.co.nz&l=351_HTML&u=2716443&mid=1059027&jb=9&CMP=&et_cid=50280&et_rid=4915806&Linkid=The+idea+of+a+%28utopian%29+university

Sam

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Humanity is building a machine

Don Tapscott talked on TED in 2012 about his 'four principles for an open world', leading off by saying that today's young people are "the first generation to be bathed in bits"; that they are digital natives rather that 'digital immigrants'. He said "humanity is building a machine".

Don is the Chief Executive of Canadian company, New Paradigm Learning Corporation, and has written a few books on the Net Generation, as he calls the digital natives.

The four principles that Don talks about in his TED talk are collaboration (we have the ability to work together), transparency (wikileaks etc is ensuring that organisations are now naked), sharing (embracing the commons - if we share and don't protect IP we will be in a better place) and empowerment (the distribution of knowledge and power).

The first idea that Don led off with was a story about his neighbour. His neighbour is an investor/gold prospector who had hired geologists who were unable to find the gold that Mr Neighbour felt he had. So Mr Neighbour ran a competition promising that the person who came up with a way for Mr Neighbour to find his gold would get a half a million dollars. Mr Neighbour got several billion dollars return on his $0.5m spend.

There is lots of rhetoric in Don's story that sounds easy, but to me still feels like lean and lucan capitalism in sheep's clothing. I am still not quite sure why.

When I read a bit further, I found some really interesting comments on Don's TED talk, left by some of the watchers. It started off supportively, but the most recent comments were more damning. Such as "I've just read Don Tapscott's take on MOOCs in the Globe and Mail and thought I'd watch this talk. I'm wondering why the G & M [the Globe and Mail] sent *him*. It's nice to be optimistic about the changes that technology can bring, but there's an over-confidence in his article and here in this video that is cloying and hard to take. I'm having a hard time believing he's a prof at U[niveristy] of T[oronto]" from Irene Ogrizek.

CC David said "The gold mining exec is the perfect example of how wealthy white guys are exploiting the 'open world'. Having a 'contest' when people spend their time developing ideas or proposals, then submitting them for review, only to be paid if someone likes them is insanity---and no way to sustain a business. It's what has happened in too many of the creative fields (via 'crowdsourcing' sites like the one in Chicago): companies having 'contests' for logos designs, only paying for the one design they like, and often at a *fraction* of what a professional would charge. And he thinks that's a fine way to treat engineers? Imagine lawyers or doctors getting that 'opportunity'. But hey, his neighbor made billions".

Nik M had a very good point about a concern of mine: who benefits from global openness, "With all its greatness and benefits the Open Era brings humanity, Im worried about one issue. This openness is a concept realized as a result of the efforts of the free world. The openness and free access to knowledge and technology is however being used by and benefiting countries and forces that are actively working against openness and democracy".

So yes, what Don says can all sound really good, slick and well packaged, but I am not so convinced that we aren't going to have a great deal of pain in adapting to this disruptive change that Don is talking about. I think that big companies are going to get a whole lot bigger, greedier and smoother at their own PR, so they make more money.  Individuals are likely to not be so empowered; at least, not for a long time.

I love the possibility that technology can bring, but I doubt that it will be universally beneficent. I suspect that the machine might eat many of us, and spit out the bones.

References

• Tapscott, Don (June 2012). Don Tapscott: Four principles for the open world. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_the_open_world_1.html
• Perplexity (n.d.). Freedom from Don Tapscott's words. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://ec-media.soundcloud.com/rADAwcDe7vhG?ff61182e3c2ecefa438cd0210ad0e38569b9775ddc9e06b3c362ab84389b5de308a406ada20d068d4545f4b3751183f7391235cb387f0664845336cbd2&AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ4IAZE5EOI7PA7VQ&Expires=1380084181&Signature=R1sw9xHqKMgf4KLiqG5c4OkOCRw%3D

Sam

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Three Awesome Job Interview Questions

What if there were three simple questions that you could ask over and over to get to the core of someone's work ethic, motivation and values? Would you ask them when you were interviewing someone?

By crikey, I bet you would. I know I would. However, usually when you read promises like that, they don't deliver. It is like following the 'one weird tip' to lose 500kgs in two minutes: all talk and no trousers.

So when I followed a LinkedIn post link promising just that, I wasn't hopeful. However, I was wrong. John Younger, founder of US cloud recruiting firm Accolo, has indeed created a formula of three questions that work to give you real insight into an applicant's reasons for their actions. The questions are:

1. How did you find out about the job?
2. What did you like about the job before you started?
3. Why did you leave?

In one fell swoop you find out how good the candidate is at networking, how accurate their foresight is and what makes them disconnect. You find out whether they use referrals, if they listen to their instincts, how they tackle problems and how well they know themselves.

Pretty powerful stuff.

• Reference: Haden, Jeff (18 July 2012). 3 Interview Questions That Reveal Everything. Retrieved 22 September 2013 from http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/3-interview-questions-that-reveal-everything.html?goback=%2Egde_136850_member_274814631#%21

Sam

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Acts of Terrestrial and Extra-terrestrial Leadership

'Sustainability' arose from the concept of 'sustained yield' in the 1980s which describes agriculture and forestry practices which can be continued indefinitely. This idea has since been applied in many areas, and with less precise meaning, and has been adopted by political leaders to describe job creation goals, population increases, energy consumption and resource increases. Dr Albert Bartlett (pictured) teased out several flaws in our Western approach to growth from the 1970s to the 1990s. He first suggests that we start by putting a time frame around sustainability of 'an unspecified long period of time'.

That makes sense - if we really want something to be sustainable, it really does need to come back to that idea of long-term sustained yield.

But then Dr Bartlett faces us with a second, and far more difficult idea to swallow. Thinking about the mathematics around growth, we can get some very big increases in some fairly modest lengths of time. When considering fixed growth percentages, a "population of 10,000 people growing at 7% per year will become a population of 10,000,000 people in just 100 years" (Bartlett, 1978, as cited by Keiner, 2006).

Our New Zealand government is talking about 4% growth in New Zealand as attractive. How on earth do we sustain even that? The 'rule of 72' is R x T = 72, where R is the rate of growth, and T is time (WikiHow, n.d.). So a 4% growth rate is 4 x T = 72, with T being 18 years. For example, if you bought a house this year for $500,000, by 2031 it would be worth $1m. Wages will also have to more than double in that time, else the gap between rich and poor will continue to increase, as will poverty, the cost of health care and crime.

This means that we need to keep increasing what we each consume each year, we need to keep spending more, keep borrowing more and keep producing more. It is all feeling a bit like a rat race. It certainly makes me want to go bush.

The idea of sustainable growth implies that we can keep endlessly increasing, and that we have infinite space and ability to grow. However, there's a flaw in this idea. It looks more and more like we have a finite amount of resources, ecosystems and there's certainly a finite amount of planet. Thus, Dr Bartlett's first law states that population growth coupled with resource consumption growth are not sustainable.

But there's another glitch. Our 'population response time' or 'population momentum' is the length of an average human life; circa 70 years (Bartlett & Lytwak, 1995, as cited by Tverberg, 2009). This means that the turnaround speed for us to do anything constructive about growth and real sustainability is 70 years.

That is a seriously long time for the planetary population to harmonise on what we are going to do about sustainability, and to then stay focused ondoing the right thing for our environment. I seriously doubt our global political will, and I think our fragmentation will hamstring us.

But we might not have to worry. It is starting to look like life on earth may well have been seeded from space (Mendelsohn, 2013). If we muck it all up here and trash the planet, there will be more life along in a few billion years - a mere eyeblink in the universal cycle. Hopefully the next tenants of Sol #3 will get it right.

References:

• Bartlett, Albert A. (1978). Reflections On Sustainability, Population Growth and the Environment in Marco Keiner (Editor), The Future Of Sustainability, 2006, The Netherlands. Retrieved 22 September 2013 from http://www.theoildrum.com/files/20060800,%20Sustainability,%20from%20Anthology.pdf   
• Mendelsohn, Tom (19 September 2013). The truth IS out there: British scientists claim to have found proof of alien life. UK: The Independent. Retrieved from
  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-truth-is-out-there-british-scientists-claim-to-have-found-proof-of-alien-life-8826690.html
• Tverberg, Gayle (2009). Dr Albert Bartlett's 'Laws of Sustainability'. Retrieved 22 September 2013 from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5925
• WikiHow (n.d.). How to Use the Rule of 72. Retrieved 22 September 2013 from http://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-Rule-of-72  

Sam

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Idioms & Whakataukī

 

So what are these magic things called idioms, and why do we use them?

The Oxford English Dictionary says that idioms are "a figure of speech where the ‘meaning [is] not deducible from those of the individual words".

Some Kiwi examples that I particularly like include 'he went bush' (he left town for the back country and is entirely out of contact), 'on ya' ("good on ya, mate" or well done), 'a feed of greasies' (fish and chips), 'I was hooning along' (driving very fast or rushing to get somewhere), 'it's pukarooed' (it is broken), 'up at sparrow fart' (had to get up very early in the morning).

I have no idea how many words and phrases there are for being drunk, for things being broken or to describe accidents. But until I sat down to think about it, I had no idea just how creative - and lazy - we are with language; and how incomprehensible our version of English must seem from the outside.

Kiwis love idioms.  Like our partner in our bicultural partnership here in Enzed - the English culture that Kiwiland partly springs from - our world is chock full of sayings, illustrators, proverbs and metaphor. But the suggestion that Kiwis love of illustrators comes purely from English roots would be doing Māori culture and Whakataukī a huge injustice.

Māori culture equally uses sayings and metaphor to enrichen Māori language and our broader New Zealand culture. Many of the South Pacific travelling peoples have a narrative tradition relying on the spoken word to convey the essence of storytelling and nuance; far more than European nations.

For me, Māori Whakataukī are eloquent moral tales: for example, "Nā tō rourou, nā taku rourou ka ora ai te iwi"; with your food basket and my food basket, our people will flourish. These few words relate a story of what comes from true, selfless collaboration: our culture, our descendents and the collective 'we' benefit. "Te amorangi ki mua, te hapai o ki muri"; the leader at the front and the workers behind the scenes. Marae protocol demands that the Kaumātua hosts guests at the front of the Wharenui (meeting house), while workers are in the background, ensuring everything is prepared, things run smoothly and that all people are well looked after. This Whakataukī  is saying that both roles are essential; that without one of them, everything would fail. The image I have included with this article tells yet another great story; "He waka eke noa" or the canoe we are ALL on together. This means there are no exceptions on this waka journey - your loyalty to the greater cause is expected, your endurance will be drawn upon, and you must contribute as much as you possibly can, because you too will equally be affected by the outcome.

What really fascintates me is we have ended up with two levels of metaphor in New Zealand: Whakataukī for more solemn, deep meaning, and idiom for daily seasoning.

That's gotta be worth a chocolate fish :-)

References:

• Campbell, lan & Campbell, Helen (n.d.). Kiwi - Words & Phrases. Retrieved 21 September 2013 from http://www.chemistry.co.nz/kiwi.htm
• OxfordWords blog (September 2013). Extra sausages, tap-dancing bears, and idiomatic tomatoes. Retrieved 21 September 2013 from http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/09/german-idioms/
• Woodward, Rob (n.d.). Maori Proverbs Whakataukī. Retrieved 21 September 2013 from http://www.maori.cl/Proverbs.htm

Sam

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Managing Meaning

Culture, or "how we do things around here" (Deal & Kennedy, 1982), is the art of managing meaning in our organisations, according to Jackson and Parry (2011). Jackson and Parry, along with Edgar Schein (1985), all think that managing meaning is one of the key things that leaders do.

If we, or the leaders around us, manage meaning well, then we all feel happy, fulfilled, and necessary in our work. We know we add value, and that our contribution assists the collective whole. Knowing we are a net contributor seems to be a relatively innate human need.

So why then do so many people NOT feel happy, fulfilled and necessary? How do we manage to miss the boat so much on creating, directing, sustaining and monitoring healthy cultures in our workplaces?

I recently was directed to an article in the New Zealand Listener via a Careers and LinkedIn colleague, Mike Dooley, on 'bullshit jobs'. The article suggested that we had moved from having rubbish roles in manufacturing to having rubbish admin jobs that were just as pointless, and that the people doing those roles found them - or should find them - soul-destroying. This article was a mash-up of a few others which I also followed through (listed below).

The really interesting thing for me is that, if the culture is right, we will know exactly how we add value. If the culture is poor, then we will not understand that connection. It is leadership's key role to guide us to this meaning, and if it doesn't happen, then I feel it is a leadership failure, not a failure of the job.

What do you think?

References:

• Burkeman, Oliver (7 September 2013). This column will change your life: how to tell whether you have a bullshit job. UK: The Guardian. Retrieved 19 September 2013 from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/sep/07/column-change-life-bullshit-job
• Deal, Terrence E. & Kennedy, Allan A. (1982). Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. UK: Penguin Books
• Editor (17 August 2013). On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. UK: Strike Magazine. Retrieved 19 September 2013 http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
• Jackson, B. & Parry, K. (2011). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Leadership (2nd Edition). NZ: Sage Publishing Ltd.
• Manhire, Toby (18 September 2013). The triumph of bullshit jobs. NZ: The Listener. Retrieved 19 September 2013 from http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/the-internaut/the-triumph-of-bullshit-jobs/#!
• R.A. (21 August 2013). On "bullshit jobs". UK: The Economist. Retrieved 19 September 2013 from http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-markets-0
• Schein, E.H. (1985). Organizational Culture & Leadership (3rd Edition). USA: Jossey-Bass

Sam

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Fake it Until You Become it

If you have haven't Amy Cuddy before, she is a US Social Psychologist who teaches at Harvard and researches body language. She developed the Stereotype Content Model along with Susan Fiske and Peter Glick, which uses dimensions of warmth and competence to evaluate behaviours.

In 2012 Amy did a TED talk in Scotland on what we can learn and draw from using powerful body language. With fellow researcher Dana Carney, Amy found that the body language we use can increase our resilience to stress by lowering cortisol, and increase our confidence by increasing our natural amounts of testosterone. This happens all through using power poses which affect those hormones - testosterone and cortisol - for only two minutes before we go into evaluations, stressful meetings, situations where we are nervous, or confrontation. When our body moves in a certain way, hormones are released, and we react to the hormones by feeling more positive in those situations.

What is very interesting about her research results is that this means that we can all improve our self-image and our likely self-confidence just by how we hold ourselves. We can all improve our self-leadership potential, and make our own acts of leadership more likely just by deliberately moving our body to a more powerful pose.

That old phrase "gird your loins" never had more meaning.

Listen to Amy's TED talk "Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are".

Embrace Amy's message. You will benefit from it!

Sam

References:

Cuddy, A. (2012). Your body language shapes who you are [video]. Scotland: TED. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc

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Political Leadership and Diversity

I just read a very interesting repost by Lesley Whyte on LinkedIn of "Things That Have More Women In Them Than Tony Abbott’s Cabinet" by Steph Harmon.

What really surprised me was the number of people - or groups - whom we assume significantly lack diversity, yet who are actually more diverse than we expect. One group which took me quite by surprise in Steph's list was the writers of Madd Men. Seven of the nine writers of that show are women.

So how does this relate to leadership, or to acts of leadership?

Well I think it comes back to where we are on the 'openness to experience' spectrum. At one end we can surround ourselves with those who challenge, change and encourage us to explore new ways of doing things; at the other we can surround ourselves with people who think and act just like us. 

One end is uncomfortable, where we have to be able to cope with flux and transformation. The other end is comfortable, seductive and static. 

One end equates to diversity, of ideas, approach and possibilities. The other end is for us to keep doing the same thing.

I don't know enough about Tony Abbott to say that he is closed-minded. But his cabinet and ministers appear to be to be the 'same old same old' group of cronies, who feel very similar to their leader. So it seems to me that Mr Abbott is working more at the static, comfortable end of the spectrum.

Because of this, I suspect that Tony Abbott has surrounded himself with a load of 'yes' men. It will be interesting to see how long the agreement lasts.


Sam

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Disruptive Technologies and the MOOC

As Clayton Christensen has written, education delivery and structure is in a period of distuption; he feels that education as we know it will change. Why? Because of MOOCs. Massive, Open, Online Courses. Many expect MOOCs to 'overturn education as we know it'.

I too think we are about to see huge disruption in the education industry. Technology I feel will drive dramatic change - and with a sinking heart, I feel it is on a par with the revolution of horse and carriage versus the horseless carriage.

Only it is likely to happen more quickly.

Technology is great: I use technology extensively to add value for my face to face students. All my lectures are recorded and available in 5 minute bites online, as are all the course resources, readings and extension materials. Students can get the technical skills quickly from the online technical skills bank. 

What students don't necessarily get online is good thinking and contextual skills: application, analysis, evaluation and creation. These are the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy: the levels of learning where we really learn deeply, actively and 'stickily'.

Talking to my students gives me some hope for the continuation of the known academic model, for a while at least. I get nearly a 100% attendance rate in my lectures (though I use a largely flipped classroom model, and lectures are really workshops). I ask students why they come, when everything is accessible online, and they say because I am there and because the in-class discussions have huge value for them. In class they learn application, analysis, evaluation and creation. They hear the views of others, the applications and creation of others, and it broadens their own perspective.

However, I mentioned having a sinking heart earlier. Education in New Zealand is government-funded. I can already see NZ governmental decisions trimming the sector so that fewer of us are needed to 'serve' many more people. Educators are paid less, are paid on contract not tenure, have to accept tighter hours and have more responsibility. This in turn pushes our institutions to cut costs forcing content online, with higher teacher to student ratios and driving so poor response times from over-stretched course leaders. I suspect that education is more likely to become increasingly commoditised. The axing of classrooms, institutions, educators and programmes will continue and the whole industry will continue to shrink. And around, and around it goes. I am hearing that this is happening worldwide.

I would like to be able to say that there will be a global correction at some point in the future.

Perhaps there will be, perhaps not.

I suspect 'not', mostly. Why? Consider vinyl records; music journalists have been saying there is a resurgence in vinyl; they neglect to say that this 'resurgence' represents less than 1% of all music sales. We have made the shift to download and iPods are now the norm. Customers want convenience, choice, portability, and flexibility.

So I feel we stand at a cusp in education. The change is coming, and we 'old fashioned' educators are the horse and carriage. MOOCs are the car, offering convenience, choice, portability and flexibility. Many of we carriage drivers will learn to drive cars, in the scary new and streamlined way, with fewer people and different resources. And once more, each of us will apply technology to increase and leverage what one person can produce.

Those who pay will drive it, both government funders, the employers and education consumers. We must embrace the change, hard though it is, because I feel there is no going back.

Sam
 
References:

• Armstrong, Lloyd (24 January 2014). What did we learn about MOOCs in 2013? LinkedIn Higher Education Teaching and Learning Group. Retrieved 28 January 2014 from http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=2774663&type=member&item=5832211875772788740&commentID=5833743003977539584&report.success=8ULbKyXO6NDvmoK7o030UNOYGZKrvdhBhypZ_w8EpQrrQI-BBjkmxwkEOwBjLE28YyDIxcyEO7_TA_giuRN#commentID_5833743003977539584 
• Christensen, Clayton (2011). Disrupting Class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns. USA: McGraw-Hill
• Forehand, Mary (2010). Bloom's Taxonomy: From Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching and Technology. USA: University of Georgia. Retrieved 26 November 2012 from http://www.roe11.k12.il.us/GES%20Stuff/Day%204/Process/Blooms/Mary%20Forehand%20discussion-Bloom%27s%20Taxonomy.pdf

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Acts of Leadership: Volunteering

How do we get more people to volunteer for our community organisations?

In New Zealand, we have a population of 4 million, and we have half a million (500,000) volunteers. In Australia, a culture which you would think to be not that dissimilar to New Zealand, there is a population of 20 million and 200,000 volunteers.

How is it that a few thousand miles of ocean could make the difference between a 13% volunteer-base and a 1% base?

Unfortunately, here in New Zealand it appears that volunteer numbers are falling, and it feels like in fairly short order we could be moving more towards the Australian model.

It is certainly getting more and more difficult to get people to put their hands up to help out. One organisation which has been quite robust for a number of years is starting to look shaky, and I don't know quite why or where things have changed.

I feel like I have taken my eye off the ball for a bit too long, and now I have glanced back, the ball has not just left the court, the whole field of play has changed.

I certainly hear a lot of things: there are so many organisations who need volunteers, so everyone is spread too thin; people really are feeling time poor and have enough on their plate without adding something else; volunteer organisations operate at such a manual level potential volunteers are turned off by the pure volume of work it would take to get the organisation up to speed; people change jobs so often that they are always learning new roles, so don't have the spare resource to tackle a volunteer role as well; the requirements of the Incorporated Societies Act mean that the risks outweigh the benefits; volunteer orgs have too much infighting and too little common culture for any change that a single volunteer brings to stick. And there's more where that came from. But to me, it all adds up to excuses.

I am wondering why so many people are making excuses. What has changed in our society for us to do this? I would be very interested to hear what you think.

Sam

read more "Acts of Leadership: Volunteering"

Spaceship Earth

Richard Heap, creator of the documentary, "Consumed" tells us that "By the age of 20, the average westerner has seen one million commercial messages". Ouch. Tell me that doesn't affect who we are and how we think.

My husband and I have no TV, avoid non-public service radio (getting our news from New Zealand's public service radio station, National Radio), have "no junk mail" on our PO Box, yet I know we still see a LOT of ads. If I am watching a TV programme online, it will be broken up into segments and I will have to endure the ads in order to see it. When I am on any webpage, I will see ads. We watch movies full of product placements, we see Billboards when driving, see liveried cars, uniforms and shop signage. Everywhere we go we will see brands, often with human beings as mobile billboards showing those brands off. Including my own car, I might add!!

Our advertising-oriented society is driving us to consume: we are subliminally bombarded with messages telling us that we will be bigger, higher, stronger when we buy product X.

Now we all know that product X will only be a fleeting fix (if X works at all). But we humans seem almost lemming-like in frantically following this buy-buy-buy mantra. New clothes, new electronics, new, new, new...


My husband and I try to be realistic in limiting our consumption. We try to make better choices; we read ebooks and ezines instead of printed copies, and buy paper books second-hand (and I actually prefer electronic books these days); grow veges and herbs; bottle our surpluses and in-season produce; recycle; generate our own power and hot water; drink our rainwater. We are lucky enough to have the space to grow our own trees for firewood, to warm us in the winter.

I am also lucky enough to work from home three days a week. My husband isn't and has to commute 30ks to and from work each day. On my two lecturing days I drive 45ks to and from work. While my husband and I share the ride on my lecturing days, and all the shopping and 'town' jobs are done then, there is a fair bit of consumption in the fuel consumed in those journeys. My husband rides his motorbike in summer to keep the fuel consumption down, but realistically the bike uses only a little less than my wee "Nana" car (Diahatsu Sirion 1300).

As well, I have an archilles heel. I love new tech stuff. While I do try to make each thing last as long as possible, and upgrade only when forced to (because of failure; or because the old technology will no longer work with the new and sell the old ones on when I upgrade), I get a new PC every three years or so. I have a Kindle, an iPod, and memory sticks and external harddrives for Africa. In some areas I am fairly restrained: I have only had three laptops since 1997, and my current one was only bought this year (and it is LOVELY - an Acer Aspire S7).

So why am I talking about all this? Why is this worrying me? The Canadian philosopher and futurist, Marshall McLuhan, said "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew" (McLuhan, 1965, in reference to Fuller's 1963 "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth", as cited by Vallero, 2005, p. 367).

If we keep consuming as we are in the west, and as the eastern and developing nations want "what she's having" at what feels like an increasingly frenetic pace, I worry that our closed system is going to overload.

What acts of leadership are necessary to correct that?

References:

• Heap, Richard (2011). Consumed. UK: Journeyman Pictures & Slackjaw Film.
• Vallero, Daniel A. (2005). Paradigms Lost: Learning from Environmental Mistakes, Mishaps and Misdeeds. UK: Elsevier

Sam

read more "Spaceship Earth"

The Five Minute Favour

Adam Grant wrote a book called "Give and Take: A revolutionary approach to success" which was published this year by Penguin. This book was pointed out to me by a LinkedIn colleague, Stephen Landry, in a recent post about Adam's book, reposting links from some interviews with Adam.

The book explores what Adam considers to be three personality types: givers, matchers and takers at roughly a population split of 15 - 70 - 15. However, it is written by an academic who is the youngest and most popular professor at the Wharton School, who is consulted regularly by Google, and actually seems to deliver on organisational behaviour promises.

Adam thinks that organisations are most effective when everyone is generous to each other, particularly in a society more trimmed towards service. He cites Bill Gates in talking about the two great forces of humanity: "self-interest, and caring for others" (Grant, May 2013, p. 97; Grant, 2013, p. 157), but feels that thoughtful management can link these two forces together to achieve the needs of the most ambitious people amongst us by showing them there can be benefits in doing favours for others (Grant, May 2013; Grant, 2013).

Adam says “giving doesn’t require becoming Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi" (Grant, 2013, p. 5). He draws on the 'Five Minute Favour' concept created by Adam Rifkin, who says "You should be be willing to do something that will take you five minutes or less for anybody" (Grant, 2013, p. 55). Adam Rifkin does these mini favours in the spirit of "cast your bread upon the waters" (Ecclesiastes, 11:1) with no anticipation of a direct return; but an indirect return to humankind. Each of these mini favours is at a fairly low cost personally to Adam, but can have a big impact on those who received them. Adam Rifkin's reasons for doing these mini favours is to add value to others, although he sometimes asks for a return favour - on behalf of others, not himself.

This is a powerful act of leadership. With an investment of only five minutes any of us could:

• Introduce two people to create an opportunity with a brief email 
• Pass on that idea that you had for someone to them
• Review a product, service or abstract and give concise feedback
• Write a recommendation for a product or service
• Refer someone or be someone's referee
• Share, comment or repost something on LinkedIn, Google+ or Facebook.

And what is more, you could easily do one a day. Or you could get ambitious and set aside 20 minutes first thing in the morning and do four. Build the habit of kindness into your day to set the tone.

The funny thing is, when I was reading this, I was thinking: that's what I do. I felt briefly cool!

References:

• Anderson, Kare (17 July 2013).  Pay It Forward With The Five-Minute Favor. USA: Forbes. Retrieved 9 September 2013 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/kareanderson/2013/07/17/pay-it-forward-with-the-five-minute-favor/
• Burg, Bob (11 April 2013). Give and Take - An interview with Adam Grant. Retrieved 9 September 2013 from http://www.burg.com/2013/04/give-and-take-an-interview-with-adam-grant/
• Dominus, Susan (27 March 2013). Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead? USA: New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 9 September 2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/is-giving-the-secret-to-getting-ahead.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 
• Grant, Adam (2013). Give and Take: A revolutionary approach to success. USA: Penguin
• Grant, Adam (May 2013). In the company of givers and takers. Harvard Business Review, April 2013, Volume 91, issue 4 (pp. 90-97).

You can also see Adam Grant on YouTube telling one of the stories in the book at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1baNQmnRCVw#!

Sam

read more "The Five Minute Favour"

Groceries without Packaging

Acts of Leadership are not simply about work. We also benefit from taking a leadership role on how much rubbish we each generate.

Trendwatching report that two new format supermarkets have popped up recently: Unpackaged in London and in.gredients in Texas, USA. Like the Bin Inn chain in New Zealand, but on a far trendier format, these shops allow you to purchase bulk items directly into your own containers. You can even drop off your grocery list and your empty containers in the morning, and pick them up refilled in the afternoon. Great customer service!

However, this style of shopping is something we should return to: shop where we can buy items that come with less packaging. Yes, it is a bit less convenient - we need to remember to take our bulk flour bin into town with us - but hopefully you all have recyclable grocery bags in with you anyway, so adding the containers for refilling is just one additional step in household planning!

While it is not that much cheaper for us to shop this way in purely financial terms, in terms of footprint, landfill and consumption, it is very much cheaper. It also has a much lower social costs and higher sustainability factors. It is one small strip we can peel away from of our enormous Western global footprint.

And for Kiwis; remember that Bin Inn is 100% New Zealand owned and operated. Go to http://www.bininn.co.nz/locations to see where shops are near you.

• Reference: Trendwatching (2013). September 2013 Trend Briefing: Demanding Brands. Retrieved 5 September 2013 from http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/demandingbrands

Sam

read more "Groceries without Packaging"

The Psychological Contract

OK. So who has heard of the psychological contract?

What I mean by psychological contract is our informal emotional connection with our work: those reciprocal obligations & commitments that help us to define our employee and organisational relationships. Our psychological contract is an emotional bond that binds us and our organisations in a healthy way. This bond helps us sustains our employment relationship over time.

A good psychological contract will mean we see a balance between our effort & what the organisation returns to us; in our eyes. This is an exchange relationship, based on our perception as an employee (so our employer may not agree with our view). It is also unusual in that it is our 'own' power in the workplace: the psychological contract is driven by each of us, as employees.

Now, like so many other things in our working environments, you can't see, touch or taste the psychological contract. It is implicit and covert; it is intangible. Because of its very nature, unless you are aware of its existence, it can be easily damaged. Small things can erode it, like allowing people to operate using unsafe practices ("they don't care about us here").

It is also very informal. It counterbalances the formal - and legal - Individual Employment Agreement (IEA or employment contract). Where the IEA is written, if we actually worked on a clause by clause basis, you could see that our working relationships would very quickly disintegrate. Relying solely on our legal obligations would not create healthy or trusting relationships in the workplace.

The psychological contract in some ways is the individual compadré of the collective organisational culture. They both have similar intangible aspects, and are both essential for good environments. Ignore both at your peril!

Over time, our psychological contract gets a bit battered through the wear and tear in the relationship. It is unusual these days for staff to continue with one company all the way to retirement, and to have a healthy psychological contract at the end of their employment.

So what happens when our psychological contract gets damaged? When we feel that the balance has swung too far to the employer's side and we start to feel used?

Remember that the employer is unlikely to agree with our view; or be able to see the breaches of our psychological contract from their perspective. Repeated breaches will mean we trust our employer less, our job satisfaction will erode and our performance will fall. This can then become a vicious cycle, where both parties end up relying clause by clause on the IEA.

Gottschalk (2013) feels that when this happens, it is important to look at "the underlying dynamic[s]" of the situation. She suggests that we - the employee and the employer - need to evaluate:

• The valence (value) of the rewards from the employee's perspective
• The health of the communication channels to discuss the psychological contract. If there are no mechanisms for psychological contract conversations, create them
• Inter-party trust levels on "career support, behavioral consistency and integrity"
• The expertise in creating employment relationship transparency
• Performance feedback systems for both organisational and individual goals
• If staff are encouraged to work to their strengths

It is rare that breaches are purposely caused or are driven by malice. It is usually created by the employer being unable to put themselves in the shoes of the employee; and from there it is fuelled by a lack - and sometimes a wilful lack - of shared understanding of each other's position.

If organisations can make employment a conversation with employees, everyone benefits. And each of us must remember that our own acts of leadership impact on our own and others' psychological wellbeing.

References:

• Gottschalk, Dr. Marla (15 August 2013). Mending the Psychological Contract. Retrieved 16 August 2013 from http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130815133307-128811924-mending-the-psychological-contract-at-work
• Maguire, H. (2003). The changing psychological contract: challenges and implications for HRM, organisations and employees. In R. Wiesner & B. Millett (Eds.), Human Resource Management: Challenges and Future Directions (pp. 87-103). John Wiley & Sons.

Sam

read more "The Psychological Contract"

Newsletter Issue 240, September 2013

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 240, September 2013

Hi guys,

What happens when our workplace happiness is eroded? Check out The Psychological Contract, and what we can do to repair it, below.

Who says we can't have it all? They obviously haven't read Collins & Porras on The Genius of the 'And'. 

Excel Cell Colour Filtering   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

 

The Psychological Contract

OK. So who has heard of the psychological contract? 

What I mean by psychological contract is our informal emotional connection with our work: those reciprocal obligations & commitments that help us to define our employee and organisational relationships. Our psychological contract is an emotional bond that binds us to our organisations in a healthy way. This bond helps us sustains our employment relationship over time.

A good psychological contract will mean we see a balance between our effort & what the organisation returns to us; in our eyes. This is an exchange relationship, based on our own perception (so our employer may not agree with our view). It is also unusual in that it is our own power in the workplace: the psychological contract is driven by us, as the employee.

Now, like so many other things in our working environments, you can't see, touch or taste the psychological contract. It is implicit and covert; it is intangible. Because of its very nature, unless you are aware of its existence, it can be easily damaged. Small things can erode it, like allowing people to operate using unsafe practices ("they don't care about us here").

It is also very informal. It counterbalances the formal - and legal - Individual Employment Agreement (IEA or employment contract). Where the IEA is written, if we actually worked on a clause by clause basis, you could see that our working relationships would very quickly disintegrate. Relying solely on our legal obligations would not create healthy or trusting relationships in the workplace.

The psychological contract in some ways is the individual compadré of the collective organisational culture. They both have similar intangible aspects, and are both essential for good environments. Ignore both at your peril!

Over time, our psychological contract gets a bit battered through the wear and tear in the relationship. It is unusual these days for staff to continue with one company all the way to retirement, and to have a healthy psychological contract at the end of their employment.

So what happens when our psychological contract gets damaged? When we feel that the balance has swung too far to the employer's side and we start to feel used?

Remember that the employer is unlikely to agree with our view; or be able to see the breaches of our psychological contract from their perspective. Repeated breaches will mean we trust our employer less, our job satisfaction will erode and our performance will fall. This can then become a vicious cycle, where both parties end up relying clause by clause on the IEA.

Gottschalk (2013) feels that when this happens, it is important to look at "the underlying dynamic[s]" of the situation. She suggests that we - the employee and the employer - need to evaluate:

• The valence (value) of the rewards from the employee's perspective 
• The health of the communication channels to discuss the psychological contract. If there are no mechanisms for psychological contract conversations, create them 
• Inter-party trust levels on "career support, behavioral consistency and integrity" 
• The expertise in creating employment relationship transparency 
• Performance feedback systems for both organisational and individual goals 
• If staff are encouraged to work to their strengths

It is rare that breaches are purposely caused or are driven by malice. It is usually created by the employer being unable to put themselves in the shoes of the employee; and from there it is fuelled by a lack - and sometimes a wilful lack - of shared understanding of each other's position. 

If organisations can make employment a conversation with employees, everyone benefits.

References: 

• Gottschalk, Dr. Marla (15 August 2013). Mending the Psychological Contract. Retrieved 16 August 2013 from http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130815133307-128811924-mending-the-psychological-contract-at-work 
• Maguire, H. (2003). The changing psychological contract: challenges and implications for HRM, organisations and employees. In R. Wiesner & B. Millett (Eds) Human Resource Management: Challenges and Future Directions. Australia: John Wiley & Sons (pp.87-103)

The Genius of the 'And'

Jim Collins wrote about "The Genius of the And" in his 1994 book, co-authored with Jerry Porras, "Built to Last: Successful habits of visionary companies". 

Jim and Jerry talked about having a visionary mentality, and not buying into the fact that our choices are largely binary. In other words, not taking an 'you can ONLY have this or that' choice. Perhaps the idea of being a little greedy is not a bad way of thinking about the choices in front of us. 

I am reconsidering this concept of Jim and Jerry's in light of the wee piece I posted earlier in the week about an OpenPolytechnic advert which has segued its strapline from "leave your buts behind" into the message of the 'and'. "I can do this AND that". 

The binary idea is that “you can have low cost or high quality”. The AND is both: you can have low cost AND high quality (we only have to think of China's growing powerhouse of manufacturing to see that this future is entirely true). 

To quote Jim and Jerry "embrace both extremes" at the same time; figure out a way to have both - or many - choices (1994, p. 44). Visionary companies find ways to do well in both the short-term and long-term, rather than sacrifice one for the other. Jim and Jerry note that they are not talking about balance, but rather, they are seeking behaviours that seek to acquire both choices to the maximum possible. 

So, just like life is not full of simple, binary choices, neither should it necessarily be full of moderate applications of those choices. Why not try to cram as much as possible in? 

References: 

• Collins, Jim & Porras, Jerry (1994). Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. USA: Collins Business Essentials 
• OpenPolytechnic (2013). Open Polytechnic TV Commercial - And and But. Retrieved 3 September 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aDIqxqLBck 

Excel Cell Colour Filtering

Cool - did you know that you can set conditional formatting to show certain cells in a certain colour if they are - eg - greater than a particular number; that you can sum just those items that show in a certain colour?

TechRepublic's Susan Harkins has posted a great tip on just how to do this, using standard Excel functions and tools. To have all your numbers over a certain level show in a different colour and sum:

• Highlight your data range
• Ribbon: Home tab | Styles Group | Conditional Formatting | Highlight Cells Rules | Greater Than
• Enter your chosen number in the dialogue box (NB: you can change the "Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text" by clicking the drop down list)
• Click OK
• Highlight your data range
• Ribbon: Data tab | Filter

Now you can select Filter by cell colour or by font colour from the filter drop down. So, so easy.

Check out Susan's original post at http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/conditional-formatting-tricks-sum-values-in-excel-by-cell-color/?ftag=TREe331754&s_cid=e064&tag=nl.e064&ttag=e064  

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) for you:

• LMAO, laughing my a*** off (variant, LMFAO). Texting shortcuts. Often found in those iPhone autocorrect funnies (eg at http://keep0smiling.blogspot.co.nz/2013/08/even-more-very-funny-autocorrect-fails.html)

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

In this newsletter, we look at shortcuts for print preview:

• IE "Close Print Preview. " Alt & C 
• Outlook "Close print preview or Accept when responding to an E-Mail schedule request" Alt & C
• Outlook "Open Print Preview & display the Print Preview properties box" Ctrl & F2 Then Alt & S or Alt & U 
• Outlook "Open print preview" Ctrl & F2
• Word "Display the Print Preview dialog box" Ctrl & F2
• Word "Switch to Print Preview; use when working" Alt & Ctrl & I

Hot Linx

Adam Pacitti developed a fantastic pull strategy to find work. Read on at http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/08/06/unemployed-man-got-60-job-offers/

Hmm. Why does a bookseller buy a newspaper? Let's think magnitude here: Amazon buys the Washington Post. Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/business/expecting-the-unexpected-from-jeff-bezos.html?pagewanted=all&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews&_r=0

Have you ever written your own recommendation letter? The "You write it, I'll sign it" style of letter? Do you think this is a legit way to get such letters written? Check out http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130716230619-17970806-why-mbas-are-writing-their-own-recs

Martin Ellis puts his projections on the line about the future of recruiting in a decade’s time at http://corporatehandyman.co.uk/for-candidates/how-will-recruiting-look-10-years-from-now?goback=.gde_4658233_member_261810036

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 240, September 2013"

The Genius of the 'And'

Jim Collins wrote about "The Genius of the And" in his 1994 book, co-authored with Jerry Porras, "Built to Last: Successful habits of visionary companies".

Jim and Jerry talked about having a visionary mentality, and not buying into the fact that our choices are largely binary. In other words, not taking an 'you can ONLY have this or that' choice.

Perhaps the idea of being a little greedy is not a bad way of thinking about the choices in front of us.

I am reconsidering this concept of Jim and Jerry's in light of the wee piece I posted earlier in the week about an OpenPolytechnic advert which has segued its strapline from "leave your buts behind" into the message of the 'and'. "I can do this AND that".

The binary idea is that “you can have low cost or high quality”. The AND is both: you can have low cost AND high quality (we only have to think of China's growing powerhouse of manufacturing to see that this future is entirely true).

To quote Jim and Jerry "embrace both extremes" at the same time; figure out a way to have both - or many - choices (1994, p. 44). Visionary companies find ways to do well in both the short-term and long-term, rather than sacrifice one for the other. Jim and Jerry note that they are not talking about balance, but rather, they are seeking behaviours that seek to acquire both choices to the maximum possible.

So, just like life is not full of simple, binary choices, neither should it necessarily be full of moderate applications of those choices. Why not try to cram as much as possible in?

References: 

• Collins, Jim & Porras, Jerry (1994). Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. USA: Collins Business Essentials
• OpenPolytechnic (2013). Open Polytechnic TV Commercial - And and But. Retrieved 3 September 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aDIqxqLBck

 Sam

read more "The Genius of the 'And'"