Tag: Learning

Story + Narrative, The Curious Will Inherit The World, The Future of Work3 Comments

It’s Time To #WOLyo!

ThisMuchWeKnow

Here is my current applied learning process: I connect with those who are further ahead, some who are behind or abreast but who are seekers also; I watch, listen, read. I let the knowledge wash over me. I pause for thought. I create space for insight at several points through the day. I reach out, respond, enter the flow, deepen my awareness. I articulate my own connected thoughts on my blog, for my own challenge first. I work out loud. As ideas eddy and still and amplify, I bring new learning to work (day job). I share new ideas, new … Continue reading It’s Time To #WOLyo!

The Future of Work2 Comments

The Search For More

ThisMuchWeKnow

Ever since I started using Yammer more than three years ago, I have had a new found appreciation for the power of the network. Previously, I hugged close my knowledge and kept tight my network of trust. No longer. I have nothing to hide any more. Share is the new Save, I wrote a year ago, and I have been spending huge amounts of my free time unlearning and relearning how to scale EVERYTHING accordingly. I have moved my primary learning environment from the yammer customer network – thousands of like-minded seekers of organizational scaling – to the Change Agents … Continue reading The Search For More

Story + Narrative2 Comments

Why do We Need New Presentation Approaches? Because No-one Is Listening

ThisMuchWeKnow

Everyone hates PowerPoint (notwithstanding all the PPT consultants who proclaim is has cooler transitions and widgets than people know). It doesn’t matter what PPT does. What matters is that we don’t like the outcome – the engorged dataset, the monotonous word-for-word reading of the presenter, the preference for data over learning / take-aways. We are inured to the build and rebuild of PPTs, taking last period’s content and updating it with NEW shiny content. What we want from presentations are memories, when our internal hard drive is bombarded with increasing amounts of data and we outsource everything to google. We … Continue reading Why do We Need New Presentation Approaches? Because No-one Is Listening

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Asking “What If?” Can Raise your IQ

ThisMuchWeKnow

In yesterday’s post I evidenced the growing requirement to ask questions if one is to survive and thrive in this mad, mad, mad world of ours. No sooner had I hit Publish, another piece of evidence crossed the wires from Warren Berger in this Fast Co. article. Asking big questions is where innovation comes from, and is associated with overcoming fear. John Seely Brown suggests starting with simply asking: what if? Yes, what if? Could there be a more beautiful question? Berger has other beauties to ask in his new book, and a quiz to take too, so you can … Continue reading Asking “What If?” Can Raise your IQ

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Questions Are MUCH More Important Than Answers. Damn It!

ThisMuchWeKnow

My partner Lori is a saint, natch. Though she has every right to do so, daily, she rarely complains. Woe be hers, rarely. However, when she does, I ALWAYS have an answer at hand. Isn’t she the lucky one?! In recent times, lifelong learner that I am, I have tried to bite my tongue. When someone is offloading, they rarely need or want the answer. They want someone to listen, to comfort, to ask a good clarifying question. Not my number one strength. As a worker and colleague, same goes. Answers are easy. Everyone has an answer. But who has … Continue reading Questions Are MUCH More Important Than Answers. Damn It!

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Simple / Complex. I’m Confused.

ThisMuchWeKnow

I often get myself tangled up in the conversation about complexity, because I prefer things to be simple (I consider myself a simple fellow at heart) yet I recognize the (increasing) complexity of work/life and I am determined to manage it insofar as I can, embrace it proactively, and benefit from it. So, I am stuck with a conundrum. The ambiguities inherent in complex, complicated, chaotic, chaordic environments seems to point in a different direction to simplicity, that place I call home. How can I square this away? By looking to those who have trodden the path before me, more … Continue reading Simple / Complex. I’m Confused.

Personal Branding, Social Business, Story + Narrative, The Curious Will Inherit The World, The Future of WorkLeave a comment

Using My Online Personal Brand To Discuss Personal Branding

ThisMuchWeKnow

I was recently asked to share some thoughts with young communicators in Vancouver on kick starting your career. The event is today. Upon gathering my notes / ideas together, a core one of which is working out loud, I realised that I might have already articulated my thoughts. In other words, if I work out loud, I probably have the content online, in the open, already. So, I perused just 4-5 weeks of tweets and voila! there it all was, in plain sight. This is called walking the talk. Phew. An hour in Storify later and I had a flow … Continue reading Using My Online Personal Brand To Discuss Personal Branding

The Curious Will Inherit The World, The Future of Work1 Comment

There Are Change Agents, And There Are Change Agents. It’s #FutureOfWork Checklist Time! #CAWW

ThisMuchWeKnow

Fellow CAWWer Catherine Shinners has a good review of recent thinking on what organizations need for breakthrough performance via the Conference Executive Board: read her article for some detail. I will suffice here with listing the CEB checklist of differentiating competencies for high performance: prioritization, teamwork, organizational awareness, problem solving, self-awareness, proactivity, influence, decision-making, learning agility and technical expertise. I like! All of these are in reach of all of us. Attitude, and forward momentum is all that is required to get us on this road… Shinners also shared a Future Work Skills 2020 study that sees successful trends to be: sense-making, … Continue reading There Are Change Agents, And There Are Change Agents. It’s #FutureOfWork Checklist Time! #CAWW

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#Unsquirrel 7: We Leave Home But We Never Really Move On.

ThisMuchWeKnow

Speaking of travel, “As Freud saw it, we basically spend our lives unconsciously replaying a tired old script memorized in childhood through endless rehearsals with our parents and siblings. We leave home but we never really move on. We just take the show on the road, casting everyone we meet in supporting roles…” I ain’t no analyst, y’all, so I’ll stick to what I do know. I got stuck in my life. I have been down many a knowledge and skills cul-de-sac. I have rehashed my knowledge – and my issues and insecurities – in an endless series of screechy … Continue reading #Unsquirrel 7: We Leave Home But We Never Really Move On.

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#Unsquirrel 6: I Come Back Sounding Strange Even To Myself

ThisMuchWeKnow

Travel remains a journey into whatever we can’t explain, or explain away…I know in my own case that a trip has really been successful if I come back sounding strange even to myself; if, in some sense, I never come back at all, but remain up at night unsettled by what I’ve seen. –          Pico Iyer, “The Place Across The Mountains” in Sun After Dark. I am not sure of the ratio, but let’s say it is 1000:1. One thousand pieces of data and knowledge wash over me; but one of those pieces changes something. Maybe not everything – though … Continue reading #Unsquirrel 6: I Come Back Sounding Strange Even To Myself

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#Unsquirrel 4: You Say Benevolence, We Say Malevolence

ThisMuchWeKnow

More on Canada’s psyche: Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well-informed about the United States.” –          John Bertlet Brebner Agree. People here in Canada know more about US politics / affairs than they do their own country’s. We pity them. Americans’ ignorance of Canadians means we get away with a lot… ←This Much We Know.→ Continue reading #Unsquirrel 4: You Say Benevolence, We Say Malevolence

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#Unsquirrel 2: The Fruits Of Idleness

ThisMuchWeKnow

Dang! I should unsquirrel to myself a bit more often. Here I was, on the last day of 2013, writing about flanerie: How could it be that this word, this idea, this approach to life has passed me by all these years?!… it’s a flâneur’s life for me. And yet, all along, squirreled away, hidden, I had this nugget from printed publication unknown, from the German Marxist commentator Walter Benjamin (from The Arcades Project): Basic to flanerie, among other things, is the idea that the fruits of idleness are more precious than the fruits of labour. Amidst the existential angst of … Continue reading #Unsquirrel 2: The Fruits Of Idleness