Get Ready - It's All About to Change!

Amazing, exciting. Can't wait.

Lean Principles and Developing Instruction: Structuring Communications

One of the key principles of Lean is that communications should be structured. I wasn't really sure what this meant, exactly. So I asked my own person consultant in all things business process related (my daughter Nicole) what this was about.

What she said was pretty simple, actually. That a communications plan should be in place that specifies how and what communication is going to occur. At first I thought that there simply must be more to this than that -- but then I remembered something that happened to me a while back. 

I had attended a conference and saw a new technology that I found pretty exciting. It was software that provided a virtual desktop to computers. It would allow us to have only one desktop to maintain, not 15. It would ensure that every day a fresh instance of the standard desktop was present on the machine, so we didn't have settings being changed, software missing, etc etc etc. So I asked one of the team to install it and thought we would try it out and then I could report our wonderful success to the other department heads and we would be the toast of the University. 

And my teammate hopped to and installed the software. 

And then the nightmare began -- not for me, but for the people who were responsible for actually supporting users in the lab, people that I had completely neglected to either ask or inform of my grand plans. It was with great embarrassment that I heard about the extra work and headaches I had caused for my team. And then I asked my teammate to uninstall it and put things back the way they were.

After that experience, I find myself not only stopping and thinking, "Who needs to know this?" but also thinking, "And who ELSE needs to know? And who ELSE?" A plan for structured communications helps to prevent this sort of problem. 

Recently, when I was helping the team rolling out a new student information system by developing user training, I was able to see that my plan for every-other-day status updates did inform my teammates, stakeholders, and clients. They all knew what was going on. But more importantly, their sense of anxiety was lessened as well. They knew what was going on, and they knew  they were going to hear again from me. Their energy didn't have to go into being worried. It could go into getting the project finished.

Lean Principles and Developing Instruction - Making Tacit Knowledge Explicit

I recently read an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review on Lean and how it might apply to knowledge work. The article, from the October 2011 edition, is titled, Applying "Lean" Principles to Knowledge Work, by Bradley R Staats and David M. Upton.  I encourage you to check it out, and take a look at HBR while you are at it.

This post will be about the second of six things the authors suggest. "Strive to make tacit knowledge explicit," they say. I think most people think that the type of work that knowledge workers deal it is fundamentally tacit. That is, it's in one guy's head, and it's not going to be able to be seen by others. I don't agree with this view. It's not going to be easy, but we need to make tacit knowledge visible.

One place to start, when we are talking about the development of instruction, is to separate the repeatable parts of a process and codify them. Here's an example. Let's imagine that we are developing a course on how to conduct a meeting for an audience of first-time team leads. There are practically an infinite number of ways we could go on this. And a lot of these would be valid approaches. And casting about, trying to decide which of these approaches is the best, well, that takes a lot of time. And when whoever the person is that reviews it sees the course, they may or may not agree with the approach. And then there will be at least one, if not several, long discussions about that approach. And all those conversations mean time, and frustration too.

So instead of that, my team and I determined what the default approach was going to be on any and all courses. We agreed that whenever possible, content needed to mirror the work environment that our students would return to. That all information should be as much like real life as possible. And content should be presented in job order.

We also reviewed a number of courses, and realized that all of the tasks that these courses taught students to do had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Every job-based task fell into this pattern. So when we were discussing the outline of a course, we would start by dividing the white board into three sections: The first for all preliminary tasks, the middle section for the main tasks, and then the last section for any tasks that would take place after the main tasks. Sometimes we would have a fourth section for troubleshooting and problem solving. This dramatically sped up our planning, and it also made it possible for us to collaborate on determining what the tasks were in those categories.

Another thing we did was to agree on the types of content and the requirements for those types of content, were included in instruction. We loosely followed the work of Ruth Clarke and Robert Mayer on content typing. We found over time that we improved our original model. But having a place to start from was a huge leg up. We all understood what type of content to choose if we wanted our student to determine if something was a member of a group or not. And we all understood what that content type (a concept in this example) required. Codifying this gave us consistent results, and made it much easier to use multiple writers on a project.

Lean Principles and Developing Instruction - Rooting out Waste

I'd heard about "lean principles" in the context of a manufacturing environment, and one thing I can tell you is that developing instruction is not very much like manufacturing. So I didn't really think of how I could apply lean principles to the work of my department when I was considering how we might improve our productivity. But my instructional designer, Allison, pointed out an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review from October 2011 titled, Applying "Lean" Principles to Knowledge Work, by Bradley R Staats and David M. Upton.

I'm a huge, huge fan of the HBR. I've subscribed for years, and month in and month out there is something interesting in it that has helped me be a better manager, or has validated something I was doing instinctively. And this article couldn't have come at a better time.

Here's a definition of "lean" from Wikipedia:

Lean manufacturing, lean enterprise, or lean production, often simply, "Lean," is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, "value" is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for.

Staats and Upton start by acknowledging how difficult it might be to apply lean principles to knowledge work. They state, "Most in the business world believe that knowledge work doesn't lend itself to lean principals because, unlike car assembly, it is not repetitive and can't be unambiguously defined. ...The work involves expertise and judgement that depends heavily on tacit knowledge - knowledge locked inside the worker's head."

Indeed, this is true. Frequently, when I've developed business skills or design content, both of which rely on principal based content, I hear from subject matter experts that the content "can't be taught." My reply is that difficult to do is not the same as impossible.  And because I have figured out the parts that repeat, that don't involve judgement or expertise, I can use those as a framework for the other parts of the content. 

The article suggests six things to do to incorporate "lean" into knowledge work. In this post, I'll discuss the first: Rooting out waste.

The first item dealt with rooting out waste. There are seven sources of waste:

a.     Overproduction

b.     Unnecessary transportation

c.      Unnecessary inventory

d.     Unnecessary worker motion

e.     Defects

f.      Over-processing

g.     Waiting

When I read "overproduction" I think about content where everything but the kitchen sink has been included. I frequently see what amounts to a "brain dump" coming from subject matter experts. This is not good instruction, and it's not Lean either. Instead, if the project team has a well-crafted design document, where every item included contributes to the mission of the course (instead of just being in there because the SME happens to know it), the instruction is more targeted and no overproduction is taking place. 

"Unnecessary transportation" and "Unnecessary inventory" also seem like they would have much to do with developing training materials. But instead of thinking of transportation as shipping, instead think of it as how content is moved from one part of the process to the next. How does the editor and QA know it's time to get to work on a lesson? Is content in a centralized location? Or being moved about in emails?

"Inventory" could refer to out of date courses that no one has taken the time to delete from lists of offerings, so students have to scroll past them. It could refer to printing courses that could be delivered on screen or online. 

The point is, you will need to read the list with a open mind, thinking less literally, perhaps, and find the places where you can root out waste in your own process. And this is an ongoing process, not something that is done once and for all.

2.     

Five Things I Love Lynda.com and One Thing I Wish They'd Change

I've been asked to review e-learning and give feedback, and to be honest, I don't see much out there that is very good. The academic realm is the worst, by far. Many professors thing that e-learning = a video of them talking. Oh dear.

But even the professionally made materials can be pretty uninspiring. And then I found Lynda.com. Wow. Here are five things I love about Lynda.com:

1. The clips are the right size. A long one might be nine or ten minutes. They cover a topic in a single clip, and they don't have many clips that seem to be "orientation" or as someone I used to work with called it, "throat clearing."  I didn't buy the course files with my subscription, so the way I work with the material is to play the file, and stop at each step. Then I work on my own project, doing whatever was just taught. Then back to the clip. If the clips were longer, it would be much clunkier (is that a word?) to do this.

2. The content is task oriented. Because they aren't just running through menus (and yes, some people actually still train this way), I can switch back and forth from a real project to the clip. Because they are doing things I want to do. There will be a higher rate of retention for me too, because I am learning it like I will use it in the future. And I have already used the clips for "just in time" reminders of how to do something.

3. The navigation and interface is intuitive. I didn't have to have a lesson on how to use the interface. If you find yourself adding this to your project, know in your heart that there is a big fundamental problem with your interface. This isn't 1988.

4. The content is captioned. You didn't think I was going to ignore that, did you? I'm shocked at how much in the world is NOT accessible. Again, this isn't 1988. Because the content was captioned, I could buy subscriptions for my 14 team mates. Some of whom are deaf.

5. The tone of the instructors is great. They have a friendly, easy to follow approach that I liked. The instructors also come across like they actually use the software they are teaching. They seem like they are a trusted friend, someone who knows what they are doing, and they are giving you the inside scoop on the software.

One thing I do wish Lynda.com would change is their purchase options. I wanted to buy 14 licenses for my team -- one each. This should be easy, right? Just give them a list of email addresses, type in my credit card info and bang, you are done. Right? No. The level of service Lynda.com wants me to purchase, since I was purchasing for a group,  was more than I wanted to buy. Instead I was forced to give the team "gift cards" for the subscription. Please, Lynda, make it easier before I have to renew all those subscriptions!

Check out Lynda.com. I think you will like it as much as I do!

The Deadly Webinar: Three Things You Can Do to Keep From Boring Your Students To Death!

I'm sure this has happened to you: You get an email about a webinar. The topic sounds just like something you have thought about/wondered about. Oh, look! It's free! And on your lunch hour! What a great opportunity to do a little professional development and munch your sandwich. What could be better?

When the appointed hour arrives, you are settled at your desk, sandwich in hand. You log into the webinar site, and the technology works fine. The presenter begins and, after a few minutes, you begin to zone out. Between your instant messages, signing a few expense reports and vacation requests, and checking email, you suddenly realize that 20 minutes have passed and you have heard nothing. You have not a clue what they are talking about now. Oh well, they will make the slides available to download at the end. Maybe you can listen to the recorded version too. Only you never do.

Sound familiar? Yeah, me too. And here's the worst part: that's how most of your participants are behaving during YOUR webinar. Here are three really simple things that you can do to make your webinars more engaging.

First, don't be afraid to give your participants pre-work to accomplish. Even if your students haven't completed the assignment, you don't have to begin from zero. A little of the information will prime your audience, and you won't have to wasted as much precious time reviewing the basics. It also sends a subtle but clear message that the participants are going to be actively involved in this engagement, and not be able to just sit there, like blobs, munching sandwiches and zoning out. 

Second, to draw your student in, tell a story, and focus on the why. I actually heard a great webinar yesterday, given by Ray Jimenez on story telling and training. Ray did a great job, and his webinar was the inspiration for this post. Ray gave several examples of how a good story really grabs your learner and makes them tune in. He used a Mercedes commercial to illustrate this. This commercial really grabbed me. I was ready to go out and buy one after watching it, and I never respond to ads like that! If only the car wasn't $100,000+! Telling stories like this is really establishing the "why" that Simon Sinek talks about.  (You can read my post about that here.)

Third, engage your students by asking them questions as you move along through your talk, and - here's the important part - respond to their comments by name. When Ray read my response to one of his questions and said, "Clare, great point," I was hooked! I was no longer just an anonymous participant. I was Clare, with the great point. I wanted to be recognized again, so I listened hard and tried to make good replies to his questions. Ray didn't do this once or twice, he did his all the way through his talk. It was very energizing and engaging, and contributed to the success of the talk.

I'm sure that there are more things/different things you could do to make your webinars engaging. But nothing works like involving your audience. Give these a try and let me know what you think!

Segmenting, Signaling, and Weeding: Improving Learning from Educational Video

It's always exciting to find out that something I have believed to be true actually is true, and there is research to support it! Today I read a wonderful journal article by Mohamed Ibrahim and Pavlo D Antoneko, both affiliated with Oaklahoma State University. The paper is titled, Effects of Segmenting, Signaling, and Weeding on Learning from Educational Video. The study used hearing students and focused on dual channel processing of video and the cognitive load problems that arise, particularly for novice learners without domain knowledge. I believe there are many good take-aways for content that is being developed for deaf learners.

Ibrahim and Antonenko tested three strategies that seem to improve knowledge retention: segmenting, signaling, and weeding.  Breaking the content into smaller pieces allows students' working memory to  Signaling means that the students are notified when a piece of content is important. Weeding refers to removing all superfluous content. 

The core problem is that when novice learners encounter video instruction, it tends to be delivered all in one big piece. It has to be swallowed whole, or not at all. In addition, if the student is a novice, without domain knowledge, then he has to try to figure out what is important and should be remembered, and then where that knowledge should be remembered. So, Ii the content is too long, for example an hour instead of 5 minutes, the student's working memory can't manage it. By contrast, when a student encounters a difficult text, the student can usually stop it, or think about it.

Segmenting is the practice of chunking the video. When the 5 minute video ends, the student must do something to get the next piece. Just this is enough to give his brain the time to consider and store the content.

Signally adresses a problem that novice learners have. Without domain knowledge, the student has to determine what is important, and what is not, and where each part of the knowledge fits, locically. Signaling notifies the student when something important is happening in the video. Not having to make this determination for themselves, when they don't yet have experience reduces the cognitive load on the student, and results in bettter retenion and learning.

Closely related is the problem of weeding. Weeding removes all superfluous material so again the student is able to understand what is important and what is not. Removing this material also reduces the cognitive load for the student.

The concepts of segmenting, signalling, weeding are critical to the instructional design model I'm assembling for teaching business skills, particularly concept and principle content types, to deaf professionals.

Prezi about My Team's Work

EDR at NTID on Prezi

New Tools

Last week I had the opportunity to visit Philadelphia and attend the Educause 2011 conference. Educause is perhaps the biggest conference for higher education and technology, both in terms of quantity of presentations and also quality. While there, I attended an excellent half-day session on Instructional Design presented by Ed Bowen. Here are some new tools that came up during that session:

Glogster – This is a tool for making interactive posters. Think collage meets Web2.0. I think this could be very interesting for elementary school teachers to use with their students.

PassTheNotes.com–  “PassTheNotes.com is a SAAS (software as a service) for educators, students, and developers to create, manage, distribute, and monitor interactive themes and content.  We are passionate about revolutionizing education through our platform and realize there’s lots of work to be done.  We’ve created the foundation and now we’re opening it up for the world to start working together to make it great.”

Splashtop –  “Travel light and have full access to the computing power of your main PC or Mac. Access your files and multimedia content on a remote computer with exceptional audio, video, and real-time interactivity all from a Mac.
FEATURES:
• Connect from anywhere via local network or across the Internet
• Access important files or photos on another computer without worrying about syncing, converting, or compatibility issues
• Use MS Office, Silverlight, and other Windows software without having to install it on a Mac
• Play HD movies and music from your central media libraries without the hassle of transferring files
• Run graphic-intensive PC games on a powerful machine and play them from a portable Mac
• Save energy with Wake-on-LAN”


Wall wisher – “Wall Wisher is a web tool that allows you to have an interactive cork board. Imagine the ability to post notes with reminders about class trips, even the PDF file for the permission slip, as well as photos and other great items for your peers and students. Wallwisher is simple to use and can be shared or kept private. It is an easy way to share a workspace either with students or colleagues.”

Poll Everywhere –    “Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere. It can help you to raise money by letting people pledge via text messaging. And because it works internationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.”

Lead with the Why

I've wondered why I do so well when I interview for a job. I'm not good looking, only average smart, have had only average experiences. I am hard working, and creative, but so are a ton of other people. But somehow, if I interview for a job, I get an offer about 80% of the time, and almost 100% of the time if I actually ask for the job. Why is that?

Today I found out why. I saw an 18 minute TED video by Simon Senek. Simon Senek presents a very simple idea that he calls The Golden Circle. It's a simple idea -- three concentric circles. The outside circle is "What".  The next circle in is "How". The inner circle is "Why". Simon Senek says the what are the features of your product, or perhaps the facts of your resume.  Everyone in the company knows What the company does. Most of the people know How the company does it. But maybe very few know the most important thing, the Why.

Simon Senek says that the conventional way to sell something is to start with the what and move in. So we describe the features of the product. But the exceptional people start with the Why and go from there. People are attracted to the why.

I know this is true from my own experience.

When I interview for a job, I have naturally focused on the Why I do what I do. At this point in my life, that seems to be the most important part, maybe the only important part.  I don't care so much about the money. I don't care so much about the fame or the power-- but I do care a whole lot about what the Buddhists call "ending suffering" -- my mission. And that's what I talk about. I figure at this point that if the company and I don't share the same mission, then there is no point in me working with them at all.
Think about your own Why and when you are interviewing or selling or leading. Start with the Why and see if you don't experience greater success. I know you will.

Don't You Wish You Had This?

Here's something amazing: A shared Google spreadsheet of all the TED talks!  

Happy New Project Year!

My department's new project year actually begins October 1, but we like to get things rolling a little before that. So recently we have be soliciting new project ideas from the staff and faculty at NTID. Our projects can be requested by anyone, and if it either supports learning and teaching, or if it promotes NTID, we can accept it. Projects are assigned a budget up to $5000 and the use of my entire team's skills: video, programming, instructional design, graphic design, photography, web development.

This year looks exciting. Although we haven't completed the selection process (a collaborative process that the entire team participates in), here is a sneak peek at some of the technologies and concepts we will be working with:

• QR codes, both for instruction and for administrative use
• Iphone and Android development
• Xbox development ("You are the controller!"
• Using Drupal sites to encourage collaboration
• "Fake" 3D
• Use of emotion in instruction
• Rapid curriculum planning strategies
• Business skills for D/deaf professionals
• More collaboration with student workers and co-ops

Looks like it is going to be an exciting year. I'll let you know how things progress!

Scatter/Gather: Where Have You Been All My Life?

It's so exciting to me to find a site/book/person who says what I have been thinking but so clearly and fluently. 

What if you could text a one-dollar donation for every story you heard on NPR that really fascinated, moved, or taught you something?  It would be extremely easy to do, and probably at least as likely to bring in $50 a year (the threshold for station membership) as the twice-yearly membership drives where NPR implores listeners to remember the importance of those same programs.  Added to the usual membership option, the text-a-dollar possibility would provide an instantaneous reward for them and, however surprisingly, for you.  That’s because the incentive isn’t a random prize; it’s an emotionally affirming action, tied to an experience you’ve already decided is important to you.

From my most favorite site I just discovered: Scatter/Gather. The entire article is here.  

Five Critical Skills for New Employees

I am asked occasionally to act as an interviewer so our students can have some realistic experience to prepare for their job search. Our students are generally very well prepared when it comes to using particular technologies. They are ready to enter today's job market.

But are we doing an equally good job preparing them for tomorrow's? Here are my five top skills students need to possess to be successful in the future:

1.Ability to collaborate and communicate digitally.
2.Solve problems.
3.Both be able to tell a compelling story using multimedia tools, and maybe even more importantly, be able to deconstruct and interpret a compelling story using multimedia tools.
4.Validate a proposed solution.
5.Negotiate.

Ability to collaborate and communicate digitally.

The "cloud" or whatever you want to call the digital realm, is no doubt, the meeting room of the very near future. Our students need to be comfortable both with the technology and the gestalt of these spaces. They also need to be able to collaborate there...to be able to present their own ideas, build on the ideas of others, abandon their own ideas if better ones are presented. Our students will be called upon to create new knowledge and productize it. The most efficient way to do this is through collaboration, and in a global economy, collaboration is digital.

Solve problems.

More than once I have assigned a task with a team member, only to find later that s/he got stuck at some point, and was not able to move ahead. His/her response? To just wait, either for me to come back or for a miracle to occur that would unstick them. The current generation seems to be extremely unprepared to solve problems. I look for individuals who can correctly define the problem, who can break it down into parts. I also want to know how others have solved similar problems. And sometimes similar problems are in a totally different field. Once the problem is defined, solutions must be proposed. Note I said solutions, plural. And a solution must be planned and implemented.

Both be able to tell a compelling story using multimedia tools, and maybe even more importantly, be able to deconstruct and interpret a compelling story using multimedia tools.

Multimedia tools are no longer the property of one group of individuals, namely graphic designers. Everyone must be facile with these tools. But telling the story is perhaps the easy part. Students must also be able to deconstruct and interpret the compelling stories others tell. If students are unable to do this, their perspective and understanding will be dictated wholly by the storytellers.

Validate a proposed solution.

This skill is closely related to both problem solving and interpreting stories. But I call it out because it is so critical. If students are unable to validate solutions, they will choose the easiest, least expensive solution. Or the one fronted by the most compelling storyteller. And frequently, the best solution is neither the cheapest, easiest, or compelling.

Negotiate.

Finally, our students must be adept at finding a reasonable middle ground that preserves the most important attributes, features, or qualities of both sides. Today's world is woefully short on negotiating skills as anyone who reads the daily paper can see. My experience has been that my youngest employees are particularly poor at this. They frequently adopt an all or nothing position that frustrates and puzzles their co-workers.

It is our responsibility to prepare our students to improve the human condition, and giving students vital practice in these five critical skills would be an important first step.

Professional Development for Deaf Professionals

I'm really interested in developing some kind of materials for professional development for NTID grads. I saw some statistics that say our students enter the job market at the same pay rate as their hearing colleagues, but when they have been in the market for a while, they stop making the same sort of gains in position and salary. My thought is that our students aren't being promoted to management positions at the same rate as their hearing colleagues. I think that there may be five reasons for this:

1. Weak written English skills
2. Lack of opportunities to be mentored
3. They don't "overhear", so soft skills information isn't being passed to them in that way
4. Lack of appropriate professional development opportunities. (I don't believe simply providing an interpreter at a workshop is enough. And I am not sure that employers are actually making these programs available due to the additional cost of interpreters.)
5. Unwillingness by Deaf professionals to move around, due to the difficulty of training hearing co-workers how to communicate. Once Deaf professionals get things worked out, they may be reluctant to repeat the process. 

Here are the topics I believe would be useful:

• Personal goal setting
• Time management
• Conducting a meeting
• Project management
• Some kind of negotiation skills training 
• Focused business writing: emails, meeting minutes, meeting agendas, status reports
• Presentation skills
• Self-branding and planning your career

I saw some e-learning that was developed at Cornell. The "class" has some material that the student does on his own, and then some webinar sessions where the students are "together". I want the self-pace material to be developed in a way that takes advantages of ASL features. I am planning to work on a prototype of one of these as a "Major Design Project." 

Translating Ideas to Practice in the Classroom

"Teachers will not take up ideas that sound attractive, no matter how extensive the research base, if the ideas are presented as general principles that leave the task of translating them into everyday practice entirely up to the teachers... What teachers need is a variety of living exapmples of implementation, as practiced by teachers with whom they can identify and from whom the can derive the confidence that they can do better. They need to see examples of what doing better means in practice." (Black and Williams, 2008)

Truer words were never written.

Divergent and Convergent Thinking and Why You Care

 I was trolling the Internet for interesting information and ideas and came across this old school site called Divergent Thinking.

"The goal of divergent thinking is to generate many different ideas about a topic in a short period of time. It involves breaking a topic down into its various component parts in order to gain insight about the various aspects of the topic. Divergent thinking typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing manner, such that the ideas are generated in a random, unorganized fashion. Following divergent thinking, the ideas and information will be organized using convergent thinking; i.e., putting the various ideas back together in some organized, structured way."

 Divergent thinking is probably something we should be teaching our students. It is one of the fundamental building blocks of creativity. Being able to generate a number of ideas and then put them back together in some new and original way is essential. Creation of new knowledge is what our students will be required to do, if they want to be successful.

This divergent thinking - convergent thinking cycle is the part of my job that I enjoy the most. Things I do almost every day (every GOOD day!) are:

• Taking time to think about something -- almost anything will do. But it is important to just stop and think.
• Meditate. Meditation is to thinking as practicing scales is to playing the piano. It will help you to nudge your mind in the right direction.
• Writing. I use my blogs (I write three now!) as the place where I put ideas back together in new and original (at least for me) ways. Sometimes an idea will will present itself and I will use my writing as a way to explore it. Sometimes I will take two subjects and then challenge myself to think of ways that they can go together. 

Putting things together in new and novel ways is not a "nice to have" any more -- it is an essential.  How will/do you practice divergent and convergent thinking?

Figuring out What's Next Big Trend and Why Maybe You Don't Want to Know

That title -- "Figuring Out What's Next Big Trend and Why Maybe You Don't Want to Know" sounds kinda ominous, doesn't it?  Well, I didn't mean it like that. I'm not afraid of the future. Not a bit.

I think the main trends that we are going to be dealing with are all about the crowd. Crowd everything: crowd financing, crowd sourcing are going to be very big. If you haven't already, check out Kickstarter.com. Kickstarter gives creative people -- or at least people with an idea -- a place to make a pitch, and then let other people support them financially. I've supported:

• TickTock, a wristband that transforms a Ipod Nano (the new, square ones) into the coolest watch ever.
• Lumina, an eye mask that wakes you up by gradually getting brighter, like the sun rising.
• The Stork, "... a game/social experiment which encourages people to perform brave acts of kindness."
• The Manual, "a new limited-run print magazine that takes a fresh look at design on the web."
• The Shape of Design, a book that combines one person's thinging about "design and thinking about the topics that orbit the practice: storytelling, concept, craft, and improvisation."

 These projects,  and others that haven't been succussful in their bid to be funded, are novel and interesting and cool. In the old, 3 years before now world, I would only be a part of these projects if I was actually a part of the project. I most likely wouldn't have had the opportunity to know these people in the first place. And my puny little $10 or $25 or $100 contribution wouldn't be very useful. When my tiny contribution combined with other people who also think these projects are cool, it has the power to make dreams come true.

Crowd financing and micro financing aren't  extremely new, although I think the way that idea has been blended with social networking at the Kickstarter site is novel. Another related idea, though, really is new. That's the idea of a Network of Strangers That Have Something in Common.

Right now we have some pretty robust networks on the net -- Facebook and LinkedIn are two that I participate in daily. But these networks are networks of people I know or have some direct connection with. LinkedIn, in fact, actually actively discourages me from linking to people I don't know. And I get why they feel that way. But what if I could search a network for people that share common interests or want to do something that I want to also do? If there was some sort of rating on my reputation, like rating systmes used on Yelp or Ebay, where people who had worked with me could rate the quality of my participation, then you wouldn't necessarily need to "know" me to want to team with me. So Network of Strangers -- you heard it here first!

Which leads me to my next trend -- Influencer Identification. Just like back in High School, there was that one kid who led the pack and set the styles, in groups there are individuals or groups of them, that are driving the bus. In the past we ordinary mortals didn't have enough data presented in such a way that we could see what what was happening. But we do now, and visual information analytics is becoming more sophisticated and more available, every day. This technology can also be used to determine where innovation is happening, and how that innovation is being funded. Quid is one of those tools. Bloomberg.com quoted Bob Goodson, one of Quid's founders as saying, "The idea is to pinpoint where innovation is happening, what trends are emerging and who is funding them." Bob Goodson uses Quid to mine YouNoodle, a site that introduces entrepreneurs to people who want to fund them.

So with all this wonderfulness going on, why did I say, "Why Maybe You Don't Want to Know" in my title? Because if your aim is to increase your ability to monetize yourself, perhaps you don't want people to know so much about you because with the decrease in uncertainty, comes a decrease in the volatility associated with you. The Harvard Business Review (March 2011) in it's article "Experts are More Persuasive When They're Less Certian," says, ""People value potential more than achievement. Given identical stats for a veteran pro athlete's first five years of performance and a rookie's predicted five-year performance, study subjects choose to pay the rookie nearly  $1 million more in year six."
In other words, because we don't know just how wonderful the rookie is, we are will to pay more money for him. Because he might be fantastic. And the veteran, even the best, most wonderful veteran, is a know quantity. You've probably noticed this effect at work, where the person who is hired off the street starts at a sometimes significantly higher salary than the person who is already employeed by the company. So if you are on the rookie side of that equation, perhaps you don't want the company to know TOO much about you! Only enough to be sure that you are indeed wonderful! It would be very interesting to to see how the fees paid to people who have community ratings relate to the people who don't have those ratings. Or how people's fees in networks where you "know" folks relate to those in networks of strangers.

I'm fascinated by the way the future is unfolding. Let's see if I'm right about these tends.

What Do the Best Companies Have That You Don't Have?

I read an interesting page on the Hay Group's site. Here's what the Hay Group says about the "best" companies -- companies that can "surface, identify, and use great ideas."

90% of the Best Companies expect employees to lead, regardless if they have a formal position of authority.

All of the Best Companies manage a pool of successors for mission-critical roles.

90% of the Best collect leadership development best practices from subsidiaries and share them

Cultural diversity means 95% of the Best can respond to the challenges of competing in a global economy

95% of the Best Companies have a ‘family friendly’ corporate culture to support employees raising children.

100% of the Best have programs to develop leaders who can bring together resources across the organization

The Best give all employees the opportunity to develop and practice the capabilities needed to lead.

100% of the Best pay male and female employees the same rate.

95% of the Best Companies have programs to help expats deal with the local culture.

100% of the Best get local leaders to participate in decisions made at HQ to share ideas and best practices

For more information about the Hay Group, click here.

The Wisdom of Crowds and the Changing Nature of Leadership

The Center for Creative Leadership has published a research white paper on the changing nature of leadership. They interviewed 389 individuals about leadership and organizations, and I found the results to be very interesting.

According to the research, 84% of respondents believe that the definition of what is effective leadership has changed in the past five years. 60% believe that leaders face challenges that go beyond their individual capabilities, and 58% believe that interdependence work is the foundation of effective leadership. To me this means that the concept of a leader as the person out front, singularly leading the troops to some semi-distant goal is no longer accurate. Perhaps either because of the growing complexity of problems, or the flood of data, more and more of what identifies true leaders is their ability to effectively team with others.

A second area of study seems to reinforce this conclusion. CCL asked about the three core competencies that they use to define leadership: setting direction, gaining commitment, and creating alignment. According to the study, only 50% agreed that leadership in their organizations sets direction effectively. Only 46% said leadership gains commitment effectively. And perhaps most telling, only 40% felt that leadership exhibited the the competency that seems to be the most connected to working with others, creating alignment effectively.

The notion of the wisdom of crowds isn't a fad or the latest business buzz term with no substance behind it. It actually represents a fundamental change in the way people view reality. The challenge will be to lead people with this changed worldview, especially since the manager who strives to lead them attained his/her position by successfully manipulating the old paradigm!

The whit epaper also reports on activities that are rewarded by companies, comparing what is happening currently with what the crowd felt should be rewarded. While behaviors like "making the numbers" and individual performance are currently what is rewarded, the crowd thought that teamwork, collaboration, long-term objectives and working across boundaries should be rewarded. The paper didn't discuss how this fundamental disconnect between what the organization is doing and what the crowd feels is the more appropriate action tends to undermine leadership. Perhaps this is why leadership can't create alignment effectively.

The worker bees of the organization do understand the trade off between "making the numbers" -- an activity with monthly or quarterly horizons -- and long-term objectives, which ultimately will create a more stable environment, foster innovation, and invest in quality. Some time ago, I worked for a company that was purchased by another company. Immediately before the sale, we were pushed hard to "make the numbers", so our balance sheet wotul be as attractive as possible to potential suitors. This caused our management to attempt to make as much salable product as possible, with little thought to quality. After the new company made the purchase, we had a period of relative calm. But eventually, the new ownership began to exert that pressure again. There was no desire to listen to the wisdom of the crowd, and ultimately many excellent people left the organization. Until management is rewarded for having a longer view and encouraging collaboration and innovation, the organization is going to be in conflict with the current values of it's workers. Not only does it miss out on all that wisdom, and make suboptimal decisions, but it is going to loose the best workers, who simply will not stay where they can't participate in a meaningful way. And this is going to happen even in a sub par economy.

The Changing Nature of Leadership, by Andre Martin for the Center for Creative Leadership, can be found here.