A hyper-connected world, part 3

As if shot out of a cannon this Sunday morning, a second article speaking to this topic by the maestro himself, Tom Friedman.  Another must read (tag thinking, initiative):

This is dangerous at a time when there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the last generation. Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever. Which is why the goal of education today, argues Wagner, should not be to make every child “college ready” but “innovation ready” — ready to add value to whatever they do.

That is a tall task. I tracked Wagner down and asked him to elaborate. “Today,” he said via e-mail, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to take initiative.’ ”
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/friedman-need-a-job-invent-it.html?_r=0

A hyper-connected world, part 2

An absolute must read from Forbes (captioned and linked below) detailing Why Your Kid Can't Get a Job and mentioning seemingly half of the flatteners Friedman (2005) introduced.

Indeed, there has been almost a perfect storm in the convergence of Globalization and the off-shoring of labor, productivity gains from information technology, the Great Recession (and the evaporation of millions of entry-level jobs), and the rise of impersonal “robo-hiring” via computer modeling and software filtering (where test scores and checked boxes count more than life experience).

 

 

 The key to becoming hirable may be an individual's ability to independently market his or her skills independently...

Freelancing is likely to be their future anyhow, so why not start and learn the skills (from DIY bookkeeping to marketing) of being an entrepreneur now?Young job hunters need to rethink their social media presence. Social proof is critical to employers. Ditch the frat party photos, avoid the drunken tweets. Turn your public social media presence into a showcase of your personal brand and portal of interests and skills. Connect the dots for the prospective hiring manager. The best way to combat a thin resume is with photos, video, endorsements. Be unusual and memorable: if, for example, you reached Level 60 on World of Warcraft, tell your future boss why that means you have monster leadership skills. And, show you have a big and growing network that comes with you when you get hired.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemalone/2013/03/29/why-your-kid-cant-get-a-job/print/

Reference

Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Picador.

A hyper-connected world

Obvious changes brought on by the advent of the Internet, access to the Internet, Freidman’s flatteners, Dixon’s eras of Knowledge Management, among other influences, can be illustrated by the cartoon below (at left), which Friedman (2005) made famous, and people working in home offices, running global meetings in their pajamas (at right).



Access to people power is no longer constrained by distance, physical workplaces or time zones.  Leadership must find a way to tap in to this new way of doing business.  Husband’s Wirearchy, which he described as “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology”,  posits that leaders must be “deeply aware of and mindful about the scope and reach of interconnected markets and flows of information”, and “be prepared to listen deeply, be responsible, be accountable and be transparent.”  The article is a great read because it provides reasonable guidelines not only for leaders, but also for managers, employees, and citizens.  It lists important ways to respond to the broad conditions of Wirearchy, for examples:  "Be aware of, and identify, the changes and prepare for more change on an ongoing basis. Learn to “go with the flow” of life; Set a direction for a desired future, and ensure that the desired future can be clearly articulated; Translate the details of that vision into goals; Learn how to fulfill the goals; Find and acquire the necessary resources, and take the necessary actions; and Be open to and operate in ongoing and constant feedback loops."

Gartner (2010) discussed swarming, a “work style characterized by a flurry of collective activity by anyone and everyone conceivably available and able to add value”, and its two main components, teaming as we generally understand teaming and the new-wave swarming.  As Gartner put it, swarms “form quickly, attacking a problem or opportunity and then quickly dissipating”.  I particularly like the idea (swarming) as “an agile response to an observed increase in ad hoc action requirements as ad hoc activities continue to displace structured, bureaucratic situations.” 

Gartner (2010) offered several ways that web-based tools can improve communication, work flow and productivity, including:

-Find ways to utilize the new playing field to leverage non-routinized work, which is what people do best if at all

-Swarm problems or opportunities quickly and economically

-Leverage individual networks to find “strong” and weak” links needed to solve a problem or opportunity

-Use and leverage the available “collective” (people with common interests or capabilities), even if outside of your control

-Be productive even though the design may only be a sketch-up, to meet a window of opportunity

-Perform spontaneous work; be reactive

-Simulate and experiment to better understand emerging trends

-Flex your supply chain to bend and stretch to meet changing boundaries

-Find a way to manage a workforce that is beyond your physical control (i.e., provide oversight beyond your ability to count belly-buttons).

Author Brock (2011) created a terrific Prezi presentation that illustrates where “we” are now in the information age.  Brock points out that the new component added to the basic functional economic component is Information (Processing).

 

He succinctly illustrates the ongoing transformation from Industrial Economies (capitalism, communism and socialism) to the current paradigm embodied by Information Economies, which he styles as “Self-regulating markets and scalar gift economies” – and concerning which, you and me are right in the middle, as I describe as between a rock and a digital place.


His presentation, linked here, concludes with a game-changing metrics-based definition of wealth, whereby systems/wealth are categorized into properties/sufficiency, performance/vitality, relationships/identity & connectivity and evolutionary capacity/comprehensibility.  Game changing because any definition of wealth other than the accumulation of same is on-its-head different than before.  I have told my kids since they could reason that one's quality of life is simply the sum total of good days one enjoys.  I.e. if a poor man has 29 good days a month and his rich brother 20....   

Finally, any conversation about the future should contain the future "fuel" of growth.  Beyond fossil fuels are solar and nuclear possibilities.  MIT Technology speculates about the future potential of both: 

The lowest carbon route could be making fuels from carbon dioxide and water using energy from land-based solar power or nuclear power plants. Eventually high temperature nuclear power plants now in development might be an even better option–their heat could be used to facilitate the necessary chemical reactions more efficiently than electricity could (see “A Better Way to Get Hydrogen from Water,” “Safer Nuclear, At Half the Price,” and “Developing Nations Put Nuclear on Fast-Forward”).

References

Brock, A. (2011, May 20). Prezi. Retrieved March 30, 2013, from New Economy, New Wealth: http://prezi.com/xmzld_-wayho/new-economy-new-wealth/

Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Picador.

Gartner Newsroom. (2010, August 4). Gartner Says the World of Work Will Witness 10 Changes During the Next 10 Years. Retrieved March 30, 2013, from Gartner: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1416513

Husband, J. (n.d.). What is Wirearchy. Retrieved March 30, 2013, from Wirearchy: http://wirearchy.com/what-is-wirearchy/

Links

Nancy Dixon’s Eras of Knowledge Management:
http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2009/05/where-knowledge-management-has-been-and-where-it-is-going-part-one.html

http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2009/05/knowledge-management-where-weve-been-and-where-were-going---part-two.html

 
http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2009/07/where-knowledge-management-has-been-and-where-it-is-going-part-three.html

MIT Technology Review:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/513066/we-need-nuclear-powered-airplanes-not-solar-powered-ones/



Pope Francis and a holy, humble break from tradition

From the Washington Post On Leadership blog:

...Taking part in a tradition of Christianity’s holy week that reenacts the humble gesture Jesus made toward his 12 disciples before the Last Supper, Francis washed the feet of 12 people. What was unusual, however, was that he did not wash the feet of priests or even lay men, as have his predecessors, and he did not do it within the hallowed walls of a Roman basilica. Rather, he washed the feet of 12 juvenile prisoners at the Casal del Marmo Penitentiary Institute for Minors. Two of the young people were women and one was a Muslim, marking the first time a pope had included either group in the ceremony. ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/pope-francis-and-a-holy-humble-break-from-tradition/2013/03/28/a9a5f2b4-981e-11e2-b68f-dc5c4b47e519_story.html?wprss=rss_national

What about Bob?

A developer farms out his work to China.  From the article:

Making things even more puzzling for the investigators was that the developer whose credentials were being used was sitting at his desk in the office when the live VPN connection from China was discovered. On further investigation, it was discovered that Bob had physically mailed his RSA key fob to China and had hired developers to do his work.

Bob was reportedly making several hundred thousand dollars per year while paying roughly $50,000 per year to the Chinese developers who were doing his work for him. Bob was spending his day watching cat videos, surfing Facebook, and messing around on eBay according to evidence the security researchers later found on his computer. Bob was also storing invoices from his Chinese developer on his work computer.

Link.  Hat tip to MC.

A "watch" war this way comes...

Looks like Samsung is about to start a major offensive against Apple, this time the delivery system is the wristwatch.

 

 

 

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/15/samsung-confirms-smart-watch/

Friedman's Triple Convergence, Dixon's Eras of Knowledge Management, and Leadership

The purpose of this blog post is to discuss the relation between Friedman’s Triple Convergence and Dixon’s Knowledge Management Evolution, followed by my reflection on the role leadership plays with respect to knowledge management.

Tom Friedman’s Triple Convergence is the coming together of three transformations at the same time, from the 1990’s through the mid 2000’s.  One sphere of influence were the ten “flatteners” he described as enabling the world community to come together, including flatteners such as uploading, outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing, in-forming, etc.  The second sphere of influence was a sea change in the way people interacted and did business.  A good example is Friedman’s discussion of Southwest Airlines’ availing of the check-in process online.  The third sphere of influence in the Triple Convergence are the addition of billions of people in China, India, Russia and elsewhere filling the vacuum created by the flatteners and new processes.

 

 

Nancy Dixon introduced the evolution of Knowledge Management (KM) that occurred during the same general period described in Friedman’s Triple Convergence.  She described knowledge as “what it is” and “how we know it”.  She says that the first era of KM was the leveraging of explicit knowledge such as documents and stable specific/analytical data.  The second era was the leveraging of experiential knowledge.  This knowledge concerned content specific, dynamic data that was produced real-time as a result of understanding, i.e. know how.  An important point about this era is that front-line workers now had the capability to understand and reflect on their own processes and the tools to make real-time adjustments to enhance their productivity.  The third era in the KM evolution is the leveraging of collective knowledge, whereby “meaning is created, not discovered”.  Whereas subject matter experts and frontline workers, respectively, were predominant in the prior eras, in this era a diverse cross-section of people, organizations, customers and suppliers are involved.  And, for the first time, data is transparent and not controllable.

Friedman’s Triple Convergence and Dixon’s KM Evolution are related in two predominant ways, in my opinion.  First, Friedman’s baseline product was knowledge, the access to, manipulation of and utilization of knowledge.  Each KM era availed data in lockstep with the advancements made during the Triple Conversion time period.  Second, the by-product of the use and production of knowledge within the Triple Convergence was creativity, which created an infinite do-loop of knowledge availing creativity availing knowledge availing creativity, and so on.  The social learning created by the Triple Convergence in turn availed sharing of data not so well during the explicit KM era, better during the experiential era, and best now during the collective era.

So, what is incumbent upon leaders with respect to the sharing of knowledge?  Dixon offers that leaders must build “knowledge repositories”, support “communities of practice”, and design “meetings, retreats, or conferences, based on principles of collective knowledge.”  Customers, suppliers, partners and others outside if your organization should be brought into the conversation.  Leaders should embrace the new technologies and foster an environment of support for social collaboration.  Leaders should build their organization to expect and embrace change, for it is coming quickly and will be unstoppable.

I also believe that leaders have a moral obligation to consider the social good in the sharing of data, where matters such as privacy and sensitivity are protected – it only makes for good business.  Leaders should use knowledge to create meaning, and the meaning should be grounded in Charisms that produce not only societal benefits but also profits.  For one without the other is not sustaining in the long run, or at the least, not a worthwhile endeavor.

References

Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Picador.

http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2009/05/where-knowledge-management-has-been-and-where-it-is-going-part-one.html

http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2009/05/knowledge-management-where-weve-been-and-where-were-going---part-two.html

http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2009/07/where-knowledge-management-has-been-and-where-it-is-going-part-three.html

Carpe diem: Wirearchy

If you are not familiar with the term Wirearchy (defined below), Harold Jarge has a great Wirearchy 101 blog, linked here.

Wirearchy – “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.” - Jon Husband

Source: jarche.com

Hat tip to Dr. Britt Watwood (his blog is Learning in a Flat World).

Normative Leadership Theory: Remember the Titans

Below are a matrix and capsules of my assessment of the main characters with respect to their depiction of normative leadership traits (transformational, authentic and servant).  

My character normative leadership style assessment:

Coach Boone – As categorized by Johnson (2012), Coach Boone was the prototypical transformational leader.  He had a history of building championship teams and was a major positive influence, including:

- Establishing the team’s mission and priorities

- Fostering moral maturity

- Creating a climate of fairness and sacrifice for the team

- Promoting cooperation and harmony

- Applying tried and true coaching techniques

- Persuading young players based on reason

- Appealing to the higher calling of teamwork and selflessness, and

- Allowing each player to choose his destiny.  He also fostered competitiveness in the team. 

He was also a negative influence in terms of being overly impressed with his position as coach and was not always willing to listen to reason, particularly from Coach Yoast and the team captains.

Coach Yoast – The prototypical authentic leader also with a history of building championship teams.  Major positive influences include working closely to the players to find out how to obtain their best performance, coaching his specialty area (defense) with a master level of expertise, espousing community standards that were contrary to many in the community, staying true to his convictions and dedication to the game and what is right (even if it meant he would lose a Hall of Fame bid), listening and watching the team development and analyzing what to do next, and developing a strong sense of loyalty to the team and coaches.  Was also a negative influence in terms of overstating “what we have always done” when change was called for.

Big Ju – Strong team leader with servant leader attributes; looked up to and listened to (ultimately by all players), committed, built teamwork, healed when necessary, trusted the coaches and his instincts, and had the awareness to use his leadership position to motivate his team.

Bertier – Strong team leader with transformational leader attributes; looked up to and listened to (ultimately) by all, but was transformative by his position on the team.  When he flipped (meaning was on board with the program) the whole team pivoted and the Titans began to click as a unified team.  By his actions, including coaching and mentoring, he got his teammates to look beyond their self interests and toward the common good; he got his teammates to want to win; and he set an example of the proper morality his community needed to follow.   

Rev – This was an interesting character.  His leadership style was muted by rock-solid when needed.  I saw him as a servant leader due to empathy (with Petey), integrity and honesty (assessing when he should be taken out), agreeableness and encouragement.

Board Member – A stereotypical negative transformational leader influence, as Johnson (2012) described it: “Foment greed, envy, hate, and deception” (p. 197).

White Asst. Coach – Another stereotypical negative transformational leader influence; your basic Southern cracker: See description for Board Member.

Black Asst. Coach – A servant leader, he provided characteristics such as empathy, service, trust, agreeableness, wisdom and organizational stewardship.

Coach Boone’s Wife – A servant leader, she displayed honesty, listening, trust, emotional healing and encouragement.

In conclusion, this movie is up there with Gettysburg and Twelve O’clock High as textbook cases for leadership.  I enjoyed it more approaching the movie analytically than I did in the movie theater.  I thought the Boone and Yoast characters were very well developed and perceptive case studies in transformational and authentic leadership styles, respectively.  My take as a former high school and college athlete is that the high school would not have been successful without the transformational traits demonstrated by Coach Boone, and Coach Boone would not have been successful with the authentic traits demonstrated by Coach Yoast.  Together both raised most everyone involved, coaches, players, parents and community alike.

References

Johnson, C. E. (2012). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting lights or shadows. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Can old dogs change?

Challenged leadership can be modified according to HBR:

Those who believe that leopards, particularly senior management leopards, can't change their spots may be surprised to find that 71 of those 96 leaders were able to improve those flaws enough show a statistically significant improvement in their overall leadership effectiveness on their subsequent 360 evaluations. That is, roughly 75% of these leaders were able to change their behavior enough that their colleagues, subordinates, direct reports, and bosses (who had judged them so harshly before) could readily see improvement.

Common areas of weakness in challenged leaders:


http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/good_news_poor_leaders_can_cha.html

Broadsides continue against Yahoo CEO Mayer

The latest is her hiring slowdown process...Article linked below points to the following complaints:

• Mayer requires teams of at least four people to interview every single new candidate.
• Then each interviewer fills out a series of forms.
• Then HR compiles each form into one master form.
• This form then goes to Mayer's office, "to sit from between six weeks to two months before she gets around to approving it. This is not [the] wait [time] for the whole process, which takes longer, naturally, it's just the Mayer-approval wait."
• Then there is more waiting.

On its face, it seems sluggish.  Will be looking for more detail to post.

 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayers-slow-bureaucratic-hiring-process-is-driving-some-people-nuts-2013-3#ixzz2O3DIDJVS

 

 

Wow! A Jesuit Pope!

Argentina's Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, S.J., is Pope Francis I.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer may be right about telecommuting...

Leadership at Yahoo: Is CEO Mayer right to reign in telecommuting?  As I telecommute today, I still agree with her in principle.  Where it makes sense to come in, make 'em come in to work. 

An excerpt from the New Yorker article linked below: "The fundamental point is that much of the value that gets created in a company comes from the ways in which workers teach and learn from each other. If telecommuters do less of that, the organization will be weaker. On top of this, there’s evidence that telecommuting can make it hard to foster trust and solidarity—an issue that matters a lot to Yahoo right now."

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/03/18/130318ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz2NRYJTbwB

Review of Techsmith's Snagit

On the TechSmith website, www.techsmith.com, Snagit is billed as The Ultimate Screen Capture Tool.  And, in my opinion, after years of non-stop use, it really is.  Using Snagit, you can quickly “create images and videos to give feedback, solve a problem, or show off something cool”.  Snagit empowers you to “communicate efficiently with visuals that give your ideas clarity and help you explain any subject”.  From image, text, and video capture to editing, sharing and organizing graphics, Snagit is peerless, extremely user-friendly and priced to sell, usually less than $40.00 USD.

What Snagit does, Snagit does very well.  My favorite use for Snagit is grabbing, copying and pasting graphics of any source, resolution and shape into PowerPoint presentations.  I prepare data driven spreadsheets, charts, and other graphics from MS Excel, MS Access, MS Word, among other applications.  What I use Snagit for is to grab a part of any digital document and paste the resulting high-resolution image directly onto PowerPoint slides, all in 3-5 clicks of a mouse.  You can also easily make annotations to the the image:

 

Snagit enables you to visually communicate ideas and make your content more engaging, as below (excerpted from http://www.techsmith.com/snagit-customer-stories.html):

Education:

o   Video lessons - easily record and share video lessons with students
o   Research - Save websites or longer web documents with Snagit's scrolling screen capture, snag graphs and images and save the source website, and organize your research by keyword so it's easy to find later.
o   Collaboration - Annotate assignments using Snagit's drawing tools, stamps and callouts, provide video feedback on projects, and use screen captures to create more vibrant presentations.
o   Training - Create easy-to-follow, visual help guides for teachers and students with Snagit's screen capture and annotation tools, or create a video to demonstrate more complex processes.

Business:

o   Communication and collaboration - Snagit is quickest and easiest way to create the images and videos you need and instantly share them with anyone, anywhere. Snagit’s flexibility allows you to customize features to fit the specific needs of your organization and deploy Snagit on a large scale. With Snagit, you can instantly share content across your entire team or with your customer base.

o   Research and record keeping - Capture anything on the screen including online articles, entire web pages, segments of a resource, images, and videos. Highlight and take notes within the captured resource, organize research by keyword, and hide sensitive information with Snagit's blur tool.

o   Training - Show them exactly what you do, and how you do it! Create step-by-step video tutorials or how-to documents for internal and external training. Snagit makes it easy to roll out on-demand videos that can be reviewed by anyone, at any time.

o   Documentation - Looking to add some excitement to you’re documentation? Snagit gives you a wide variety of tools that makes it fast and easy to create engaging, polished content that can be sent directly to Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint.

 

Home:

o   Communication - Whether you're trying to communicate driving directions (see video on left) or wanting to grab a screenshot to share on Facebook or on your blog, Snagit makes it easy to capture and edit images or record a video to better explain an idea. And with your Snagit library, you can quickly find and reuse content you've already created and shared.

o   Research - Looking online for a new home, job, or maybe diving into your family history and genealogy? Snagit makes it easy to keep track of online research. Capture images and videos, annotate with notes, and store and organize content in your Snagit Library. Snagit also works with images from your digital camera or smart phone.

o   Record keeping - In today's digital world, many transactions happen online, and keeping track of receipts and records can be challenging. With Snagit, you can organize your taxes, manage online receipts, and keep account histories in order.

 

If you are in need of manipulating meta data such as graphics, text, and links, Snagit provides an industry leading tool that requires little to no training and at a price affordable to all.  If you have ever been confounded by copying and pasting, Snagit is the ultimate solution.  Plus, Snagit lets you set a profile that enables repeat screen grabs with like results.  You can Snagit images to Camtasia, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social collaboration sites, not to mention to blogs such as WordPress and mind analysis applications such as MindManager.  Bottom line, Snagit is well worth the price for its functionality with PowerPoint alone.

Virtues

Factors I consider when determining my loyalty to an organization:  The factors that most resonate with me in determining my loyalty to an organization are courage (leaders and followers), an optimistic and positive workforce, and a high level of integrity from the CEO to the lowest paid temps.  Working together, courageous leaders and courageous followers make for a strong and symbiotic relationship that produces a cohesive team likely to act morally and exert moral influence (Johnson, 2012).  Optimism (related closely to one of my Gallup (2012) StrengthsFinder Strengths – Positivity) that is matched with courage produces stability and confidence, necessary ingredients for a productive workforce (Johnson, 2012).  Integrity begets trust and completeness.  Integrity enhances performance, teamwork, cooperation and risk-taking (Johnson, 2012).

The light and shadow sides of information:  Being an information technology consultant for the largest defense contractor, I have great interest in the light and shadow sides of information mismanagement.  From Enron to WorldCom to Russian spies to Martha Stewart to SGT Bradley Manning, leaders (or their assigns or agents) have access to mission-critical information and sometimes abuse that trust.  Abuse of this access can produce catastrophic damage to an organization.  The issue may be less with the information itself than with the calculated release of the information – the patterns of deception and distortion – that produces the ethical quandary (Johnson, 2012).  One light that a leader can brandish with respect to information is context.  Context eases the burden of when and what information to release by transferring the fulcrum from sender to receiver. 

Critical virtues (of a leader’s character) necessary for leading in an interdisciplinary organization:  Johnson (2012) describes several virtues of character: Courage, integrity, prudence, optimism, humility, reverence, compassion, and justice.  These virtues are critically important not only because each alone is a universal force of light, but also because they are tightly interwoven.  One virtue interacts with another to produce a dynamic result that sometimes is hard to predict or contain, i.e. because of sometimes unknowable second and third order effects.  Power is a product of social hierarchy and tied to these virtues.  Keltner, Langner and Logli (2006) said that through the permission and complicity of others “people enact their social identities” (p. 186), which is how they gain their power.  It would seem logical then that more virtuous followers would grant power to more virtuous leaders.

References

Gallup (2012). Strengths insight report. Retrieved from Gallup StrengthsFinder, http://www.strengthsquest.com

Johnson, C. E. (2012). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow. (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Keltner, D., Langner, C. A.,  & Logli, A. M., (2006). Power and moral leadership. In D. L. Rhode (Ed), Moral Leadership: The Theory and Practice of Power, Judgment and Policy (pp. 95-110). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Interesting leadership link / Graphic by Snag-IT

Here'a a link to an interesting leadership site, Big Dog and Little Dog's Performance Juxtaposition, which describes itself as the Art and Science of Leadership, a comprehensive collection of researched articles and activities for improving leadership, managerial and supervising skills.

The below graphic is a SnagIT area grab from the website.  SnagIT is the tool I will be reviewing for ILD 831 later this week.

Friedman, Florida & What's Next

Friedman (2005) was one of the first to articulate the three major globalization movements in history.  His take on Globalization 1 and 2 describing the flattening of countries and companies, respectively, was insightful in the way that it framed the issues covering Globalization 3, the current post 2000 period of history, and its effect on the individual.  Friedman’s The World is Flat describes ten “flatteners” that bring individuals around the world together into one world economy.  He described flatteners such as:

Outsourcing - A company’s ability to split tasks or functions that are then farmed out to another company for completion

Offshoring - The relocation of a company’s manufacturing or production facility to a foreign land, where labor rates (usually) are significantly less

Supply-chaining - Horizontal collaboration among suppliers, retailers and customers, to create value and utilize technology to streamline sales, distribution and shipping operations

Insourcing - Horizontal collaboration where one company worked with other companies to take them global but make them feel local.

Informing - Friedman said that there is no bigger flattener than making the world’s knowledge available to everyone, anytime and anywhere.  He believed that the ability for anyone to use a search engine such as Google to instantly obtain information of any kind is a strategic equalizer, whereby individuals no longer had to rely on libraries, TV, or movies to get the information or end-product they wanted.  To understand the scale, Google is known to process upwards of a billion searches each day.  The major impact is that information is no longer limited by geography, access to repositories of information (universities, for example), or time.  This availability of information transforms individuals into his or her own-supply chain (peddling things such as music, videos and photos).

The Steroids - Friedman anticipated a merging of these flatteners into a flattener on steroids, where the resulting synergy would be transformative, abundant and unpredictable.  Friedman provided very little empirical evidence to support suppositions, intriguing though they are.

Florida (2005) in his The World is Spiky article in the October 2005 Atlantic Monthly concurred with Friedman in general that there was a worldwide coming together of the masses.  However, Florida contended that the masses were coming together in urban centers, or spikes, all around the world.  The reason, he posited, was due to economics and the close proximity of like creative professionals. He supported this contention by illustrating the demographic distribution of intellectual property applications, among other indicators.

New web-based technologies involving smart phones, widgets, gadgets, applications, wikis, social platforms, and other forms of data manipulation and management seem to be the rage now.  How they will affect the world economy in ten years is, if history holds, unknowable.

Applications now are almost always either web-based or web-enabled.  Technologies that were recently created to connect individuals are now being applied, albeit more methodically, to enable government and corporations to reach individuals.

The brilliant Yale Professor David Gelernter anticipates that coming new technologies will form around social data aggregation, life-logging, quantified-self, and digital preservation.  For a graphic example, see below:

References

Florida, R. (2005). The World is Spiky. The Atlantic Monthly, October, 48-51.

Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Picador.

Globaloney? More from Pankaj...

Very interesting video from Prof. Pankaj:

http://www.ted.com/talks/pankaj_ghemawat_actually_the_world_isn_t_flat.html

More on World is Flat/Spiky/Not Flat

 

 

Friedman, Thomas L. 2006 The World Is Flat

---

Florida, Richard 2005 "The World is Spiky,"

The Atlantic Monthly, Oct p. 48-51 (4 pgs)

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Pankaj, Ghemawat (2007), "Why the World Isn’t Flat,"

Foreign Policy 54:159 (4 pgs)

World is Flat or Spiky?

Having read both Friedman's The World is Flat and Florida's The World is Spiky, I tend to agree more with Florida's worldview.  More to follow.  Two good book reviews:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/may/21/highereducation.news

http://techonomy.com/2012/09/friedman-vs-florida-or-how-to-thrive-in-a-world-both-flat-and-spiky/

Info on the Ed.D. program at Creighton

For those interested in more info on Creighton's Ed.D. program, see below link.

The Interdisciplinary Doctorate of Education Program in Leadership is a major new development at Creighton University. The program is a flexible, online, interdisciplinary program which is intended to be a terminal degree program designed to provide graduates with understanding of the leadership practice, theory, research and policy necessary to develop organizations and people for a changing world.  In the tradition of a Catholic, Jesuit institution, students dialogue in an interdisciplinary environment designed to increase their understanding of how to work with, develop, and motivate others. 

The concept of leaders as stewards of an organization is emphasized during each course and promoted through interactive online learning experiences.  Self reflection is encouraged and incorporated into each course and eventually integrated into a personal statement of one’s leadership vision. The program culminates in a final dissertation. Because the Ed D. is considered to be a “practice degree,” students in the program are encouraged to consider their workplaces as laboratories for the educational experiences they encounter in the program. 

http://www.creighton.edu/gradschool/edd/

Come about! Hard alee!: Hello world! The is the beginning post of my blog...

Come about! Hard alee!: Hello world!  The is the beginning post of my blog...: Hello world!  The is the beginning post of my blog to chronicle reflections and items of interest having to do with my doctoral studies in l...

Hard alee!?

Hard Alee - the command given to inform the crew that the helm is being turned quickly to leeward, turning the boat windward. 

I remember as a kid learning to crew on Flying Scots on Bay St. Louis...I would zone out, mezmorized by the water and spray, when the skipper would yell, "Come about!"...all would get ready for the boom to swing across...then "Hard alee!" and swoosh, it would fly by as the boat turned windward. 

So, when I thought of a title for this blog on leadership, I immediately remembered the command and timing of my old sailboat instructor, who I think looking back, looked like Pamela Anderson...

Startex

Hello world!  The is the beginning post of my blog to chronicle reflections and items of interest having to do with my doctoral studies in leadership at Creighton University.