Learning Leader

Learning in the Cloud

Last week I was leading our Change Management Practitioner course (which I love to do). We had a great group of people and I made a little experiment: I created for the delegates a shared notebook on Evernote, one of the free storage systems. Delegates were able to set up a free account, if they didn't already have one, and access notes that I posted there during the week.

Evernote's mission is to store the world's memory, and I must say it does a pretty good job.

Delegates were invited by me before the course to access the free notebook (pictured). As we went through the week, I captured photos from the course of flipcharts, table and floor layouts, and added notes on relevant resources, including an updated Change Management further reading list.

It was easy to set up and operate. Now we are considering creating streams for our graduates by topic on our Facebook page.

I suppose this is what people mean in part by 'Learning 2.0': use Web 2.0 technologies, cloud services like Evernote, to gather and share learning materials.

Right now, I'm enthusiastic, but I'm not sure we've yet landed on the best tool and process. I'd be interested in any views or advice on this, particular from people in management training.

A Leader's View of Change

Today I was interviewed by Penny Pullan for www.basummit.com a Virtual Summit for the business analysis community. My interview topic was "A Leader's View of Change".

Penny is a great host and we covered quite a few subjects from "How do you convince board level people that they also need to change?" to "How do you deal with cultures that are resistant to change?" I found it stimulating.

The recording will be available at the Summit on 25th November. You can register now to hear our interview and others througout that week.

Change or Die

Five years ago Alan Deutschman published a cover article in Fast Company magazine by this title. At the time it caused quite a stir and much discussion on the web. Mr Deutschman later published a fuller analysis in a book two years later.

I have noticed since I began tracking blogs and so on that one of the tendencies of web-based discussions ('memes') is that some subjects aren't given the shelf-life they deserve. I believe this to be the case with Alan Deutschman's work here. It addresses the perrenial questions of human nature: why do we find it so hard to change? and how can we change in a prevailing successful way?

So I am delighted to be talking about this today to a group of scientists at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, here in the Science Vale of Oxfordshire, UK.

Here again are the graphics of my presentation:

Change or Die! on Prezi

Again, apologies for the pagination problem on this blog (I will sort it out!). Here is a simple link.

I'm being followed by a Web Shadow

Dear Reader, Please note that what you are about to read has been written by a father (me) about the first book of his eldest son (Antony Mayfield). I've tried my best to discount any family pride and bias, but you, dear reader, will need to be the judge of that.

Published last Monday, Me and My Web Shadow: How to Manage Your Reputation Online is an excellent book! I've been very conscious over the last few years of my attempts to define my own online privacy boundaries and etiquette in blogging, Twitter, Squidoo and the like. We all stumble over discussions of this on blogs throughout the web, I'm sure. But what Antony has done has been to pull a coherent argument together from the perspective of positively managing one's online (professional) reputation.

I like the accessible voice that Antony has written it in, with lots of useful asides and opinions from the author's personal experience. As well as being an easy read, it is a valuable one on two counts:

1. This is a central issue of the online world that has crept up on us all. To describe this as timely is an understatement. This book defines the problem of what follows us as a trail of activity on the web, and provides practical advice on how we can shape it to our advantage.

1. It is a useful reference. The later sections are deliberately intended as such. Although qualified with several qualifications about how rapidly it will date, nevertheless is an excellent practical guide on using the web with personal information and social networks in 2010. For example, Antony's arguments about SlideShare, Scribd, Delicious and LinkedIn in particular have prompted me to reappraise these and how I use the latter two. For example, I had not given much thought to using Delicious as a research tool; but  of course it is.

Rightly Antony makes the point that having and managing an online presence demands time. We must each make our own judgement on how much time online work deserves. He gives some useful checklist for an online management strategy as well as managing things like passwords. I liked the fact that he wasn't dogmatic about tools, although he is clearly a Mac, iPhone, GMail, Google and Wordpress fan. Tools are likely to be more ephemeral after all. It will be the basic principles of online publishing that will endure.

The book is nicely presented, too. It is is a slightly smaller size than the average paperback, which is something I like, and the typography/layout is clean and easy on the eye. The bibliophile in me was not once irritated.

You will allow a father, though, a couple of smallish criticisms, though:
   * I'm not sure I agree at all times about the 'thick skin' approach to exchange of views. I prefer a more appreciative, sensitive approach. But then Antony's intention was to raise an objective discussion and he has achieved this for me.
   * So continuing in my sensitive, appreciative style, not once does my son acknowledge that I blogged some time before he did! In fact, I taught him all I know (but then he went on from that paragraph of wisdom to develop his expertise into at least this volume).

Seriously though, for me this book will survive its first cover-to-cover reading and be an important reference source of mine for the foreseeable future.

All I need now is for my son to sign my damn copy!

Wii Playback

This morning, after completing my gruelling exercise regime on my Wii using EA Sports Active, I noticed that I could now download a version of the BBC iPlayer to my Wii.

Now this has the added value to iPlayer functionality of being able to watch missed programmes in the comfort of the Lounge on a TV, rather than on a PC.

So I did this there and then ... for free.

For an ageing baby boomer like me, this is cutting edge stuff. Now I'm just hoping the other main Freeview TV broadcasters follow suit.

Bubble trouble on our web site

Recently we began work on restructuring our course catalogue on our website. Part of this was to design a revised graphic navigation for the courses page. Using our mind map approach we publish the diagram shown here, where the use can click on the arrow in each branch bubble and get the list of course hyperlinks to that page. 

This morning at our management team meeting we received comments from the office team that the writing in the bubbles was crude and fuzzy; they didn't like it.

We listen carefully to our colleagues, but they are not the most important group - you are. Do let me know what you views of this are by leaving a comment below. I'd really appreciate that.

A Web 2.0 Birthday

I've done very well for my birthday this year, thanks in part to Flickr and the Wish List facility on Amazon.

First, one of my sons sent me Alchemy - Dire Straits Live - Two CD Set - called off my Wish List. What a delight after losing my old cassette version several years ago. More than that, he then recorded a video and posted me the Flickr link of he and his family gathering around the web cam to wish me a Happy Birthday - wonderful! My very own YouTube.

Then, my dear colleagues in the office clubbed together and bought me a copy of Lynda Gratton's The Democratic Enterprise: Liberating your Business with Freedom, Flexibility and Commitment , which I'm very much looking forward to reading - again from my Amazon Wish List - this time the Business version. (Is there a hint there in what they want me to read, I wonder?)

But it didn't end there, my daughter sent me slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations , by Nancy Duarte, again called off my Wish List. I've only browsed through this book so far, but I really warm to this attractively presented work. I'll review this in a later post.

Finally, my eldest son straggled home to send me a copy of Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina, again on my Wish List, where my appetite has be whetted by the buzz on blogs I have come to value.

So, as an ever-aging parent living reasonably remotely from my children, I really appreciate how the internet can make events such as my birthday so rich, connecting me with my loved ones and helping them choose ways of delighted their old dad. There may be a lot wrong with this world but I really appreciate being alive in the age of the Internet. Don't you?

Links to pearcemayfield Squidoo Resources

In a recent post I announced a new resource site for those clients who had attended out EYPS (Engaging Your Project Stakeholders) 1-day workshop. If you are interested in additional resources like this, I have published a number of other lens as well:

• This page will give you access to all of them.
• Power Presenting is a lens created to support our new Power Presentation Skills  2-day course. Our aim is to equip you to make your project presentations compelling and engaging, getting the result you want.
• MSP - Managing Successful Programmes is where we will be pulling together sites, resources and links that have a contribution to helping our MSP Practitioner graduates. Programme management draws on a broad canvas, overlapping into several other areas of business thinking.
• Creativity and Problem Solving, like Power Presenting, supports another new course of ours, that we are very excited about, addressing an area where most people find they can improve their skills significantly. We provide some simple guidelines and techniques that can stimulate those breakthrough ideas.
• Shaping Change is a lens to support people new to the field of Change Management, such our delegates on Shaping Change in the Organisation and the Principles of Change Management. Again, like programme management - and both subjects stray into each other - this is a wide field.
• Finally, feeding the geeky side of my nature, I've published a lens on the Outcome Relationship Model, again with links to related resources. This is the first stab at something that I intend to take further.

All of these lens have a Guest Book at the end. Do take a look and leave your comments there, particularly if you know of a link or resource that you feel we should include.

Thanks.

[This is the fifth (!) attempt at publishing this post, where I have found a glitch that hangs some browsers. Sorry if this has affected you.]

Facebook? No, thanks.

The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity.
--Robert Stuberg

This feels like I'm about to go public on something bordering on blog heresy and family treason.

Facebook is the current social networking phenomenon that appears to be sweeping all before it. Only today on BBC News, mention was made of the number of hits a Wolverhampton tramp had received on his site. It seems a physical home is optional, but a Facebook syber-home is a 'must have'. Personal evidence for this is that, from what I can gather, all my children are on Facebook and I've just received another invitation from a friend to join.

Yes, the sad truth about me is that I'm not yet on Facebook.

From time to time a son or daughter tells me that they are aware of a sibling doing such-and-such or is feeling thus-and-so because of their Facebook. I met a client delegate last week who said she made it her business to get an invitation from her son to become her Facebook 'friend'; it took a while for him to comply while he did the Facebook equivalent of tidying up his room before the invitation was forthcoming!

So am I missing out? Probably. Well, shouldn't I 'get with the revolution'?

No, thanks. This is for reasons not directed at Facebook in particular. I am sure it is a very good piece of technology that brings all kinds of happiness to those who use it. And if I were criticising Facebook per se I would be doing so from a position of some ignorance, wouldn't I?

My reasons are more generic, both negative and positive, and apply equally well to why I don't have a Blackberry or an iPhone either.

Negatively, I fear such technologies will make further inroads into my already too-fragmented life. They will make demands on my time at inconvenient moments. Like adding a cuckoo egg to my nest, in time it will hatch into some growing, voracious monster, demanding more and more from me. I fear it will displace the quality and energy I commit to more conventional but deeply rewarding social networking: the small group of people I meet with weekly, for example. We 'do life deeply' together, and we do it the old-fashioned way by going to meet each other and sharing a real, not virtual, Java.

Positively, I decline Facebook invitations for a pursuit that is more deeply counter-cultural: I want to live more and more by the spiritual discipline of Simplicity. Like other spiritual disciplines, superficially it looks like denying oneself something; but at a deeper level it enriches the life of the disciple. By denying myself otherwise good activities and possessions I find I de-clutter my day and my thinking so that I can pursue and focus upon what Stephen Covey calls, "That which matters most". I've come to value 'thinking time' as crucial to staying focused on the important. Whereas when I react to email, IM or phone calls, I find I am doing just that - reacting. The more I can shift my life onto pro-active, simple focused thought and action, the more the quality and effectiveness of my life improves.

Try it.

So, if you are generous enough to invite me onto Facebook, MySpace or whatever other social network, please don't take offence if my response, sad as it may appear, is, "Thanks, but no thanks."

 

Technorati Tags: Facebook, simplicity, spiritual discipline, MySpace, Blackberry

OneNote Blogging

I've recently upgraded to OneNote2007. In the case of this much-overlooked package, the upgrade seems to be quite significant. For example, I can now have several Notebooks. Importing my 2003 OneNote data was fairly effortless, and the Print to OneNote driver works far better than on my old system.

 

Over the last few months, I had moved to Windows Live Writer (Beta) for writing my posts, but I am tempted by this system. The one thing I haven't figured out yet is how to add Technorati tags.