Learn and Lead

Using Dave Ferguson’s three clicks out method I discovered I found ten strategies for transforming negativity and unpredictability into opportunities for growth, progress, and achievement that comes from Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach.

As I read through the ten strategies I wondered why these were only for the scary times like the recession. These are strategies that we should use even in the good times. I found these useful and similar to some of the things I base my life on.

1. Forget about yourself, focus on others.
Focus on helping others transform their negatives into positives. The more you contribute in this fashion, the less you will need to worry about your own situation. You will become a source of confidence for everyone else.

2. Forget about your commodity, focus on your relationships.
In uncertain times, people become frightened about the viability of their “commodities” — the things they sell and the jobs they hold. A more strategic response here is to disregard your own commodity and focus on deepening the power and possibility of all your relationships — with family, friends, team members, suppliers, clients, customers, and prospects. Every time you strengthen a relationship, the viability of your commodity will increase.

3. Forget about the sale, focus on creating value.
Most people don’t like being sold at the best of times... what people want at all times is value creation — that is, solutions that help them eliminate their dangers, capture their opportunities, and reinforce their strengths. When you focus on providing these three solutions, the sales will naturally follow.

4. Forget about your losses, focus on your opportunities.
Things you had and may have taken for granted sometimes disappear. Some people never get over this. They keep trying to replay their old games. A better strategy is to start an entirely new game — using new ideas, new energies, new tools, and new resources. As the world changes, opportunities suddenly become available to achieve far more than you ever did in the past.

5. Forget about your difficulties, focus on your progress.
Because of some changes, things may not be as easy as they once were. New difficulties can either defeat you or reveal new strengths. Your body’s muscles always get stronger from working against resistance. The same is true for the “muscles” in your mind, your spirit, and your character. Treat this whole period of challenge as a time when you can make your greatest progress as a human being.

6. Forget about the “future,” focus on today.
The “future” is an abstraction. It doesn’t exist except as an idea. The only future that has any reality is the one that you continually create for yourself through each day’s contributions, achievements, and results. Focus on what you can do over the course of each 24 hours, and you’ll be the only expert on the future you’ll ever need.

7. Forget about who you were, focus on who you can be.
Many people define themselves by external circumstances. When these abruptly or unexpectedly change, they don’t know who they are, so they keep trying to be who they used to be. From now on, take your cues from the inside — from your dreams, ideals, values, and operating principles. These need never change, regardless of the circumstances. Take advantage of external confusion to become self-directed, self-managed, and self-motivated.

8. Forget about events, focus on your responses.
When things are going well, many people think they are actually in control of events. That’s why they feel so defeated and depressed when things turn bad. They think they’ve lost some fundamental ability. The most consistently successful people in the world know they can’t control events — but continually work toward greater control over their creative responses to events. Any period when things are uncertain is an excellent time to focus all of your attention and energies on being creatively responsive to all of the unpredictable events that lie ahead.

9. Forget about what’s missing, focus on what’s available.
When things change for the worse, many desirable resources are inevitably missing — including information, knowledge, tools, systems, personnel, and capabilities. These deficiencies can paralyze many people, who believe they can’t make decisions and take action. A strategic response is to take advantage of every resource that is immediately available in order to achieve as many small results and make as much daily progress as possible. Work with every resource and opportunity at hand, and your confidence will continually grow.

10. Forget about your complaints, focus on your gratitude.
When times get tough, everyone has to make a fundamental decision: to complain or to be grateful. In an environment where negative sentiment is rampant, the consequences of this decision are much greater. Complaining only attracts negative thoughts and people. Gratitude, on the other hand, creates the opportunity for the best thinking, actions, and results to emerge. Focus on everything that you are grateful for, communicate this, and open yourself each day to the best possible consequences.

Go to “The Scary Times” Success Manual via Michele Martin’ post Success in Scary Times --> Pam Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation.

Is there a correlation between academic results and workplace performance? Any research or pointers to this subject?

I am faced with a situation to try and solve the talent acquisition challenge for large IT organizations in India. One of the challenges is that for hiring fresh graduates, large IT organization work with a certain cut off marks (60%) in graduation. However I believe that this cut off is hampering their ability to tap into a large pool of talent who might do the job equally well. I would interested in hearing views on this subject and get pointers any research that might exist that compares academic results with workplace performance.

Amazing video...

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Dave Ferguson kicked off the first Working/Learning blog carnival (a collection of posts around one topic) on his blog. Blog carnivals are a kind of anthology-on-the-fly, a collection of posts from several blogs. For each issue of a carnival, participants post on their own blogs, and a host posts links to all the participating posts.The theme of the blog carnival is "Work at Learning/Learning at Work" primarily aimed at people who work in the training/learning area (that is, non-academics) e.g., how training/learning professionals go about their own learning, or how learning happens in the workplace. In the first carnival, there were contributions from Michele Martin, Cathy Moore, Harold Jarche, Janet Clarey, and Dave Ferguson.

The response to the second carnival edition has been, well overwhelming. A special thanks to all the contributors.

Here’s the second edition of the Blog Carnival:

1. Rupa Rajagoplan in her post talks about how different learners learn and provides her suggestions on what companies can do to encourage learning at work.
2. Viplav Baxi explores the challenges that we face in moving our organizations to the new 2.0 world.
3. Dave Ferguson in his post takes one of John Medina's brain rules, "remember to repeat," and talks about how we move information into long-term memory, how we get it out again, and what impact those things can have on how we manage learning at work.
4. Harold Jarche shares his post on Skills 2.0 for learning professionals who may want to know why it’s important to understand the Web for training and development.
5. Geetha Krishnan talks about three informal ways in which he learns at the workplace.
6. How often do you ask yourself the basic question “What Have I Learned at Work?” And if and when you do ask it, how satisfied are you with the answers? In this post, Jeff Cobb considers how we might get more out of workplace learning and issues a simple challenge.
7. Sonali Malik shares her learning sources in her post on the eCube team blog.
8. Ken Carroll in his post Constructionism works looks at learning in social networks and online communities and feel Sociology can provide insights in the way the web is creating new social structures that pertain to learning and their dynamics.
9. Clive Shepherd in his post shares we may learn to do something, whether that's proactively, because we want to develop our knowledge and skills to meet future commitments, or reactively, because we need new knowledge and skills to carry out a current task. But a great deal of learning, probably the majority, is incidental.
10. Cathy Moore resurrects an old post where she points out that elearning is more efficient and powerful if we focus on what learners need to do, not what they need to know.
11. Michele Martin provides an interesting primer on Pecha Kucha presentation style for learning.
12. Dr. Karl Kapp talks in his post about the mistake that most people make in thinking that learning should be easy, simple and straightforward when to the contrary it hard and a continuous process.
13. Janet Clarey talks about how social learning technologies are changing the way we learn at work.
14. And my own contribution talks about leadership impact on workplace learning.
15. A last minute contribution by Cammy Bean just came in. It is something I really can related to and I couldn't resist updating this blog even after it's been published. She talks about how she builds learning into work -- when you just don't feel like you have the time?

The first carnival was organized via email. For the second carnival, in addition to email, I experimented with using Facebook for organizing the event hosted on the eCube Facebook group. The group is open and is my experiment to create a collaborative learning environment, a forum to Engage people by Encouraging them to Explore new Environments and Experiment with the them.



Looking forward to the next edition of the blog carnival and seeking volunteers for the next edition of carnival...