Newsletter Issue 234, May 2013

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 234, May 2013

Hi guys,

How many of us set out at the beginning of a new year, full of enthusiasm for change, only to peter out of steam by Easter. A couple of extra steps might help us all in achieving what we set out to achieve. Check out Building Change Capacity below.

Our changing English usage leads me to Advise you to Get Advice. 

Save Trees with GreenPrint   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.

 

Building Change Capacity

Change is a hard thing to effect in ourselves. It not only takes the courage to see ourselves clearly, but then the ability to strategise, break down large tasks into digestible pieces, and then the endurance to take action after action, and monitor our own progress.

Lots of us get to the strategising step. Not so many of us successfully sort out the tasks. But where most of us fail is with endurance.

Richard Boyatzis, a professor at Case Western in the US, developed a theory of Intentional Change. It was published in 2006 in the Journal of Management Development ("An overview of intentional change from a complexity perspective", Volume 25, issue 7, pp. 607-623), detailing a framework that we can all use to create a personal change plan. Richard's framework arose out of longitudinal studies of individual and organisational change. 

So, what should we do? 

According to Boyatzis (2006; MindTools, n.d.), there are five common-sense steps to follow to make a lasting personal change: 

1. Discover your ideal self. Think about and record your short, medium and long-term goals. Think about your goals in terms of personal development, work, recreation and dreams. Draw out what really gets you engaged: what grabs you. Don't discount things that you think are too far fetched: this is all aspirational work.
2. Discover your real self. Do lots of tests and quizzes, and ask someone who has completed leadership study for their workbooks so you have access to leadership development tools. Ask people around you - whom you trust - for what they think are your key skills and key opportunities to improve. Compile over time a personal SWOT analysis that pulls all this feedback together. 
3. Create your personal development plan. Compare your ideal self with reality: look for gaps. Think about what actions you need to take you from reality to ideal. Consider  resources you might need. Find someone to guide you (ie, a coach or mentor). Have a reality check: are some of these things going to be too hard? Are you better to achieve some smaller goals so you can build your change capacity? Once decided, schedule things in your diary. 
4. Experiment with and practice new habits. Set small goals that you can tick off. Do something every day to help build your change capacity muscles. Additionally, working on developing good habits in less important areas also helps you develop better muscles for the really big goals (Pinola, 2013).
5. Get support. Share what you are doing. Share your failures and your successes. Share your plan, and they will carry you in the tough times with their encouragement. 

Read more about intentional change at:

• Boyatzis, Richard E. (2006). An overview of intentional change from a complexity perspective. Journal of Management Development, 2006, Volume 25, issue 7 (pp. 607-623)
• MindTools (n.d.). Intentional Change Theory: Achieving Manageable, Meaningful Change. USA: Author. Retrieved 5 May 2013 from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/intentional-change-theory.htm#np 
• Pinola, Melanie (4 May 2013). Boost Your Willpower by Building Small, Unrelated Habits. USA: Lifehacker. Retrieved 5 May 2013 from http://lifehacker.com/boost-your-willpower-by-building-small-unrelated-habit-489227080?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews 

I Advise you to Get Advice

Oh, our tricky, tricky English language. No wonder so many travellers in our lands have such trouble determining which words to use.

I was emptying out my inbox the other day, and came across a note I had written, on a usage rule. 

There are three word pairs which are all quite similar: practice/practise, licence/license and advice/advise. Of the three, only advice and advise are pronounced differently. Each of the pair has one form that is a noun, and the other, a verb. The 'c' form is the noun; the 's' the verb; thus advice is a noun, advise is a verb.

To check which to use, replace either practice or licence with advice/advise. Whichever works - sounds correct - is the one you should use. But the real trick of this is that in NZ we now use practice and licence for all usages. 

Have you seen it used both ways recently? 

Save Trees with GreenPrint

There's a nifty little tool called GreenPrint. You can use it as your printer handling tool, and it will give you a page by page thumbnail preview which allows you to decide which pages to print, which images not to print, determine if you want your pages in black-and-white or colour, set for duplex printing (double-sided), or save the print job as a pdf.

Not only do you get more print options, usually far more easily than you do with standard printer drivers, but you get to save ink, paper, and make a tiny contribution to saving the planet. For home use it costs a mere USD$19.

Check it out at http://www.printgreener.com/1/greenprint-world 

 

TLAs for SMEs

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

• APC, Academic Publishing Costs. Many top quality academic journals, which were once published by non-profit academic societies, are now owned by the three main profit-making publishers. They are Reed Elsevier, Springer Science+Business Media, and John Wiley & Sons. This top three account for 42% of articles published worldwide, and are responsible for the increased cost of journal articles (eg, one article may cost $90). In 1986, academic library budgets were consumed roughly 45% on books and 55% on journals; in 1998 around 25% and 75%. The percentage would be even higher for journals today.
  Because of this there is a groundswell of support for 'open access', where the person/organisation writing the article pays the publication costs, then makes the peer-reviewed final article freely accessible. If this becomes the norm, it will drive down academic library costs, and, as a result, higher education costs. 

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 all you can do with "End":

• Access, Excel, IE, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Windows, Word "Go to the last cell, field, item or line in the paragraph, row, object, cell, single-line field, end of the line in multi-line fields, Help topic, right edge of the page or select the first or last command on the menu or submenu" End 
• Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Windows, Word "Go to the end of a multiple-line field, text-box, text-frame, table, document, last item in a list, last field in the last record, last position in the current cell, last column in the input source window, lower-right corner of the page, end of the active field, last field in the last record, last position in the current cell or the last column in the active window, lower-right corner of the page, " Ctrl & End 
• Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word "Select from the insertion point to the end of the text box entry" Shift & End 
• Excel "Extend a selection to the end of a field or with scroll lock on, extend the selection to the cell in the lower-right corner of the window" Shift & End 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the cell in the lower-right corner of the window" Scroll Lock & Shift & End 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the last cell in the current row. This keystroke is unavailable if you selected the Transition navigation keys check box on the Transition tab (Tools menu, Options command) (with End mode on)" End & Shift & Enter 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the last cell used on the worksheet (lower-right corner) (with End mode on)" End & Shift & Home 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the last nonblank cell in the same column or row as the active cell (with End mode on)" End & Shift & Arrow Keys 
• Excel "Extend the selection to the last used cell on the worksheet (lower-right corner)" Ctrl & Shift & End 
• Excel "Move to the last cell to the right in the current row that is not blank; unavailable if you have selected the Transition navigation keys check box on the Transition tab (Tools menu, Options command) (with End mode on)" End & Enter 
• Frontpage "Go to the end of a line" Shift & End 
• Publisher "Extend the highlighting to the last character in a text box or go to the end of a line" Shift & End 
• Publisher "Go to the end of the text frame or table cell" Ctrl & Shift & End 
• Windows "Select the last item and additional items in an extended selection list box or the last item in the current list and additional items above it" Shift & End 
• Word "End of Row" Alt & Shift & End 
• Word "Go to end of row or row in a table" Alt & End 
• Word "Go to the end of a document" Ctrl & Shift & End 

Hot Linx

Making deliberate personal change sometimes requires some extra help to maintain progress. Richard Boyatzis developed Intentional Change Theory to help people through the process. Read about it at http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/intentional-change-theory.htm#np 

Those of you interested in career development might like to take a look at Careers NZ's Tertiary Career Development Benchmarks document, online at http://www.careers.govt.nz/fileadmin/docs/tertiary_career_development_benchmarks.pdf 

Randstad issues a C-suite gender wake-up call at http://www.randstad.com/press-room/randstad-workmonitor/randstad-workmonitor-women-in-leadership-still-a-tough-battle-march-2013.pdf. NZIM has a New Zealand summary at http://www.management.co.nz/executiveupdate.asp?eID=540&utm_campaign=MGTE&utm_medium=email&utm_source=66

Now, if you really want to be confused, check out the OED on ‘might’ and ‘may’ – this makes for fascinating reading! View online at http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/04/may-or-might-whats-the-difference/

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