Essential Actions for Effective Virtual Collaboration by Stewart Levine

We are navigating uncharted territory. Virtual collaboration in a world of distributed teams is new to everyone. People are free to thrive or fail based on their instincts and ability to listen to feedback, feeling their way along in this increasingly nonverbal world. Learning leaders play an important role in facilitating coordination, developing team spirit and fostering collaboration in the workplace. Here are some steps to make virtual communications more effective.

25 Stretch Goals for Management

Preview Gary Hamel's February 2009 article in the Harvard Business Review, Moon Shots for Management.

In May 2008, a group of renowned scholars and business leaders gathered in Half Moon Bay, California, with a simple goal: to lay out an agenda for reinventing management in the 21st century.

The two-day event, organized by the Management Lab with support from McKinsey & Company, brought together veteran management experts such as CK Prahalad, Henry Mintzberg, and Peter Senge; distinguished social commentators including Kevin Kelly, James Surowiecki and Shoshana Zuboff; and a number of progressive CEOs, including Terri Kelly from WL Gore, Vineet Nayar from HCL Technologies, and John Mackey from Whole Foods.

Before arriving, each of the 35 attendees participated in an hour-long interview. The double-barreled question: What is it about the way large organizations are currently managed that will most imperil their ability to thrive in the decades ahead; and given this, what fundamental changes will be needed in management principles, processes and practices?

Social media revolution..

It's brilliant

anti-creativity checklist

My Anti-Creativity Checklist from Youngme Moon on Vimeo.

But it's better than TV...interesting thought from Seth Godin

At the local health food store lunch buffet, they offer stir fried tempeh.

I never get it. Not because I don’t like it, but because there are always so many other things on the buffet that I prefer.

That's why I don't watch TV. At all. There are so many other things I'd rather do in that moment.

Broadcast TV was a great choice when a> there weren't a lot of other options and b> when everyone else was watching the same thing, so you needed to see it to be educated.

Now, though, you could:

* Run a little store on eBay
* Write a daily blog
* Write a novel
* Start an online community about your favorite passion
* Go to meetups in your town
* Volunteer to tutor a kid, in person or online
* Learn a new language, verbal or programming
* Write hand written thank you notes each evening to people who helped you out or did a good job
* Produce small films and publish them online
* Listen to the one thousand most important operas
* Read a book or two every evening
* Play a game of Scrabble with your family

None of them are perfect. Each of them are better than TV.

Clay Shirky has noticed the trend of talented people putting five or six hours an evening to work instead of to waste. Add that up across a million or ten million people and the output is astonishing. He calls it cognitive surplus and it's one of the underappreciated world-changing stories of our time.

On social media and what is happening around us

10 Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn From Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein has long been considered a genius by the masses. He was a theoretical physicist, philosopher, author, and is perhaps the most influential scientists to ever live.

Einstein has made great contributions to the scientific world, including the theory of relativity, the founding of relativistic cosmology, the prediction of the deflection of light by gravity, the quantum theory of atomic motion in solids, the zero-point energy concept, and the quantum theory of a monatomic gas which predicted Bose–Einstein condensation, to name a few of his scientific contributions.

Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”

He’s published more than 300 scientific works and over 150 non-scientific works. Einstein is considered the father of modern physics and is probably the most successful scientist there ever was.

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory

Put the fish on the table! Hiding from the real issues

Put aside the 'veneer of politeness' and put the most troublesome issues on the table -- so they can be resolved.

(FORTUNE Magazine) - "Put the fish on the table," says George Kohlrieser, a professor at the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland. You've got to go through the "smelly, bloody process of cleaning it," but the reward is "a great fish dinner at the end of the day."
Most people don't want to be the one who puts the proverbial fish on the table. "There's a veneer of politeness," says consultant David Nadler, "or unspoken reciprocity - we won't raise our differences in front of the boss."

Column: Think Outside the Building by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Thinking outside the box is a popular metaphor for creativity. But recent major systemic challenges (the financial crisis, health care reform, and climate change, among others) require new ideas significantly bigger than a mere box. The greatest future breakthroughs will come from leaders who encourage thinking outside a whole building full of boxes.
Inside-the-building thinking is the hallmark of establishments, whose structures inhibit innovation. Once the architecture is set, vested interests divide up the floors and reinforce existing patterns and practices. Even change-oriented inside-the-building thinkers take organization and industry structures for granted. They pay most attention to similar-looking competitors in markets already served. They focus on enhancing the use of existing capabilities rather than developing new solutions to emerging problems.

Why It Can Be So Hard for Successful Leaders to Change

The Success Delusion by Marshall Goldsmith

Any human, in fact, any animal will tend to repeat behavior that is followed by positive reinforcement. The more successful we become, the more positive reinforcement we get - and the more likely we are to experience the success delusion.

I behave this way. I am successful. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way.

Wrong!