Work

business & working

Laudably/Renewal Consulting Group Launches

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Rob Paterson and Jevon MacDonald have launched Laudably/Renewal, a combination of their separate consulting companies, on Prince Edward Island.

We help organizations use an exceptionally inexpensive set of tools that provide the cultural experience of really breaking the silos, of really bringing the voice of the customer and the front line expert into the corporate head office and of really creating a legitimate community and hence more trust in both the workplace and with customers and suppliers.

Our objective to to provide you with a sustainable competitive edge ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú that of being able to compete, not in an arms race of yet more financial resources, but culturally.

Our process is to work with you to install a simple set of tools, based on Social Software, that enable you, with a minimum investment and with minimum disruption, set in motion forces and experiences that have the power to transform the culture of your entire organization.

I am forecasting that this will not be the last venture of this kind in the region, as small, innovative companies take up the slack that has been left by decades of managerial capitalism. Congratulations to Jevon and Rob for their leadership.

Synergy

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I am interested in the intersection of learning, work and technology. Why? One reason is that I firmly believe that a multi-disciplinary approach can solve more complex problems. I try to stay current in matters of learning theories, instructional design, collaborative work, business models, economics, etc. Here is another reason, by Peter Smith of California State University, in an article entitled – Of Icebergs, Ships, and Arrogant Captains, published by Educause Review:

Synergy, a biological term, is defined as “the action of two or more substances, organs, or organisms, to achieve an effect of which each is individually incapable”  By itself, technology cannot save us. Considered in a vacuum, new learning models for organizations and individuals might not dramatically improve the impact of higher education. But if we understand and anticipate the synergy of the social, technological, economic, and political forces at work around us, employing them together, we will be able to achieve what cannot be done by employing any of these forces alone.

Performance Improvement Resources

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I’ve re-posted this as a reference for the audience of the session on Human Performance Technology that I presented to NBCC. You can also follow the Performance Improvement taxonomy links for my comments on this field of practice.

If you’re in the training business, and want to broaden your horizons, take a look at performance improvement. Here are two good resources for short articles on performance improvement. PI helps you link business needs with the appropriate learning or training solution. It also provides you with tools to ensure that training does not become the "one size fits all" solution for any human performance issue.

PerformanceExpress is published monthly by ISPI. On the bottom of the navigation bar is a link to back issues.

Harold Stolovitch publishes HSA Express and Performance. I like the April 2003 article on 10 low cost performance improvement solutions, for example:

  • Clean up performance expectations.
  • Develop feedback systems.
  • Create performance support systems.
  • Design simple and effective job aids.
  • Eliminate tasks that interfere with job performance.

NB Companies Collaborate in Strategic Partnership

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Two New Brunswick based companies have announced a strategic partnership this week. Innovatia (owned by Aliant) will be licensing Ensemble Collaboration’s OnDemand web service, for integration into its own portfolio of Knowledge Solutions. Both companies are members of LearnNB which promotes collaboration amongst its members.

Collaboration OnDemand,  part of Ensemble’s suite of web services called C-Change, enables companies to create custom collaborative workspaces for their workers. Ensemble’s services provide workers with access to the collective knowledge of their extended enterprise, expert mentors 24×7, and a global community of peers. Using Ensemble’s patent-pending technology framework, these services can be integrated with one another for a seamless learning experience and standard user interface.

Learning Outsourcing

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I mentioned in my last post that I had been working on an article on collaboration in the New Brunswick learning industry. As anyone here knows, almost all of our work is export focused, as the local economy is quite small. Another theme that is getting more press in the last year is learning outsourcing. Jay Cross thinks it may be the "next big thing", pointing to recent initiatives by Intrepid Learning Solutions and Knowledge Pool. In Atlantic Canada, many companies are already providing some kind of outsourcing services, be it custom development, hosted services, consulting, etc.

Jay is offering his services to help organisations examine the intricacies of outsourcing. Jay links to a recent report by SRI Business Consulting’s Learning on Demand service, entitled Learning Outsourcing: Strategic Opportunity. The report is authored by Eilif Trondsen and Hal Richman. Hal is my business partner, and resides in Nova Scotia. Given that Atlantic Canada has a number of learning-oriented companies, with a variety of skills and expertise, I think that we are well positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. We just have to get the word out.

Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business

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Last week I worked on a co-authored paper describing the value of collaboration in the learning industry in New Brunswick. After completing my draft of the paper, I came across this comprehensive paper by the Institute for the Future. I found it through a reference via Jon Husband that led to this post and reference on The Happy Tutor. The latter is not quite what some people would consider family reading.

The paper, from June 2004 (852 kb PDF), is entitled Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business. It’s a deep link that you cannot find from the main website, and I’m not sure if this was intended or not. The authors are Andrea Saveri, Howard Rheingold, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, and Kathi Vian. The questions posed are:

  • How can new insights about the dynamics of cooperation help us identify new and lucrative models for organizing production and wealth creation that leverage win-win dynamics?
  • How can organizations enhance their creativity and grow potential innovation with cooperation-based strategic models?

The paper then goes on to discuss seven lenses, from diverse fields such as mathematics, biology, sociology, technology, law and economics, psychology, and political science, through which to view cooperation and collective behaviour. The seven lenses are: synchrony, symbiosis, group selection, catalysis, commons, collective action, and collective intelligence.

This paper does not claim to be a definitive work but it is a neat synthesis of work in many fields that may lead us to a better understanding of how cooperation may be the best strategy for economic growth and prosperity. It also puts many other ideas into perspective – such as Reed’s Law which I’ve previously discussed (see the map on page 5).

There is a lot to review, or read for the first time. The last section is probably the most interesting for those trying to develop a new business strategy.

When we look across these opportunities and think of some of the fundamental dilemmas that businesses face, we find five key areas of potential innovation and disruption to business as usual.

Knowledge-generating collectives

Adaptive resource management

Collective readiness and response

Sustainable business organisms

Peer-to-peer politics

The authors then go on to describe the implications of recent innovations in each of these areas.

Overall, this is a great read.

Understanding the Real New Economy

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This Summer I had the opportunity to help Rob Paterson with his 4th year UPEI course, called Understanding the Real New Economy. It was fun, and quite easy for me as a mentor. All I had to do was read the postings and make comments – no marking, or assignments done under deadline. I really enjoyed reading the wide variety of opinions; some more insightful and thought provoking than others.

The main text for the course was Natural Capitalism, parts of which you can access online. The final assignment was to describe two possible future scenarios on PEI. One being the result of just "bumbling along" and the other about creating a plan and acting upon it. One of the students, Joshua Arsenault, has posted his final assignment on his blog. Here is the conclusion of the positive scenario:

But, in the end, change is highly contingent on individuals and the circumstances around the person at that time. It seems that the fuel crisis actually spurred innovation and change because Prince Edward Island had the creative people who stepped forward to promote change before the crisis occurred. The crisis then acted as the tipping point for the positive changes we live with now.

I hope that some of these students will be stepping forward in the near future.

Advertising on Blogs

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Google owns Blogger, and has recently removed advertising on its blogs. It has instead started a program called AdSense which allows bloggers to opt into targeted advertising. This got me thinking that maybe ads would generate some (probably not much) cash for this site.

What do you think? Would ads make any difference to you? Are they a pain, or do you just ignore them? Do you actually read and perhaps click on them?

Please make your opinions known on my poll.

Corporate Blog Manifesto

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Microsoft blogger, Robert Scoble, has published The Corporate Weblog Manifesto on ChangeThis. Here are some of Scoble’s twenty points:

  • Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth.
  • Use a human voice.
  • Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards.
  • If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast.
  • Under promise and over deliver.
  • Never change the URL of your weblog.
  • If you don’t have the answers, say so.
    Never lie.
    Never hide information.

I agree with all the points of the manifesto, but I think that #19 – BOGU [look it up] could have been rephrased as “be kind to everyone”. I guess that’s just my Canadian perspective. As a smart-looking PDF this is the kind of document that you can print in colour for your CEO or CIO. Many of these points have been discussed by others, particularly Lilia Efimova, but it can’t hurt having a “manifesto”.