I have a holistic dentist and just love how his methods are so pain free and take into account my overall health. At a  recent dentist appointment for a tooth extraction, I discovered how the working smarter framework is similar to holistic dentistry.

Here is how my Doctor describes his dentistry practice .

” We take a holistic approach to dental treatment, primarily caring for our patient’s health and safety from both a conventional as well as alternative health care point of view. As such, we are a mercury-free dental practice. We examine the relationship between your oral health and the rest of your body, focusing on overall harmony – not just your teeth!

Dr. Chris (my holistic dentist) explained to me that it was very important to remove a dead tooth because that tooth was steadily affecting other parts of my body, particularly the internal stomach organs.

After my pain free extraction, I told him how glad I was to have taken his recommendation to extract the tooth.  Knowing my interest in naturopathic approaches to health, Chris offered a few comments about dentistry.

Chris explained that in general dentists are trained to solve problems, usually by removing it or patching it up. They are not trained to think about the total and long term health of the person. He said that many dentists recommend just leaving the dead tooth and mention nothing of the long term health implications of that option. He also emphasized the importance of asking probing questions to bring underlaying issues to the surface.

His comments got me thinking about my own adoption of the working smarter framework in my work with clients. That approach calls for a more comprehensive understanding of the organization’s internal and external communications and then implementing a social strategy that supports staff learning and collaboration. The end goal of this approach is a stronger, more resilient organization, creating new solutions and deepening relationships with all stakeholders.

I think the tide is turning as organizations are discovering that supporting staff to work smarter is the best way to address long term sustainability needs. The quick fix approach of signing up for a social networking sites without having a plan or even understanding why this might help the organization is coming to a close.

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Brent Uncategorized jarche, social-learning, workingsmarter

I’m producing a series of videos called  “Working Smarter”. Harold Jarche and others in the Internet Time Alliance (ITA) are the lead thinkers and writers on the working smarter framework.

Members of the ITA are publishing books, posting articles and making presentations around the world about how the business world is inexorably moving to a working smarter model.

Since immersing myself in the “working smarter” framework, I’ve become a full fledged advocate for this way of thinking about learning and working in a world transformed by digital technologies.

The framework has become my lens for making sense out of my own professional development as well in my work of mentoring or guiding organizations in their integration of social media strategies.

The videos will be posted over the coming weeks. This post is meant to give a “heads up” to those in my network and share a little bit why I’m doing the video series.

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Brent Uncategorized leadership, work_smarter ita social_learning

I am immersing myself in the “working smarter” framework that Harold Jarche and others in the Internet Time Alliance write about on the web and in their books.

The three pillars of this framework are social learning, collaboration and leadership, with social media tools energizing the processes operating within these pillars.

To help me in my work, I often use surveys to discover how people are learning and collaborating in the workplace. These questions also reveal the workplace culture and a sense of how the leadership supports learning and collaboration.

These are the 20 questions that I used for creating my working smarter survey. I left out the question choices and various check boxes as it wasn’t my intention to post a full survey.

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Introduction:

As I work with organizations and leaders on developing and integrating social media programs into their business operations, I often mention how these new communication technologies can increase the resiliency of their organization.

Reflecting on those discussions led me realize how closely the concepts within the resiliency framework parallel the working smarter framework that Harold Jarche discusses on his blog and work with the Internet Time Alliance. I provide an overview of Harold’s working smarter framework later in this post.

I am a firm proponent of the working smarter framework as a means to help Executive Directors (leaders) bring about essential improvements to their organization. My post is about utilizing the resiliency framework as a plug and play tool that can work with Harold’s working smarter framework, when and if needed.

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Brent Uncategorized jarche, resilience, worksmarter

On May 27th, the iSchool Institute, Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto hosted Harold Jarche for a day long workshop.

The iSchool gave me the green light to video record the presentation. The video recordings (or portions) will be accessible via the iSchool web site once I complete the editing.

At the end of the day Harold and Mark Shepphard, a workshop participant had a lively discussion, which for me captures the flavour, excitement and energy of traveling and participating in a network learning landscape.

Harold’s workshop was titled Network Learning – Working Smarter. Here are a few excerpts from the iSchool’s description of Harold’s one day course.

Network Learning (also called Personal Knowledge Management or personal learning networks)is an individual, disciplined process by which we make sense of information, observations and ideas. In the past it may have been keeping a journal, writing letters or having conversations. These are still valid, but with digital media we can add context by categorizing, commenting or even remixing it. We can also store digital media for easy retrieval.

The Web has given us more ways to connect with others in our learning but many people only see the information overload aspect of our digital society. Engaging others can actually make it easier to learn and not become overwhelmed. Effective networked learning is the difference between surfing the waves or being drowned by them. It also helps us to work smarter.

Harold has posted all the resources he used in the workshop. You can visit his site and download the slide presentation.

Harold is a partner in the Internet Time Alliance (ITA), a multidisciplinary, international think tank. The Internet Time Alliance helps organizations work smarter, by developing next practices on how to embed learning in our work. The partners are Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Clark Quinn and Charles Jennings.

The ITA is a group of insightful and inspiring network learning practitioners that I follow closely. These folks are helping me learn to learn and to develop my own network learning environment, for which I’m most grateful.

Brent Uncategorized ITA, learning, networks, workshops

The fine folks at the York University Knowledge Mobilization Unit hosted the KM Expo a few days ago. They asked me to do a 2 hour workshop on social media, aptly titled Social Media 101. I know many of the local non profits attending and Michael Johnny and his team at the KM Unit, so it was a good opportunity for me to reconnect to that part of my network.

There were a few glitches. The Internet connection was dead slow to just dead so I could not do some of the facilitation work I planned. It sure pays to have a back up when you are counting on IT connections. I made do but it was more me presenting as opposed to co-creating content online as I had planned.

I used a Mindmeister map to give participants an opportunity to think through a task, then publish your ideas to the Internet. While it didn’t work out with the slow connection, it’s available here for any participants willing to post a comment. If you were not at the workshop, you are invited to add your comments as well.

My focus was on the “working smarter, network learning, social learning” activities that organizations and practitioners can adopt in order to be stronger innovators and collaborators inside and outside the organization.

Here are the slides from my Social Learning and Working Smarter – KM Expo presentation. You can also view and download the slides on Slideshare.

I brought a few of my resource books to the workshop. A few people asked for a list of them so here they are.

Working Smarter Field Book September Edition: Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings & Clark Quinn

The New Social Learning – A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media: Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner

Social Learning Handbook – How to Use Social Media to Work & Learn Smarter: Jane Hart

The Networked Non Profit – Connecting With Social Media to Drive Change: Beth Kanter & Allison H. Fine

Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us: Daniel H. Pink

Social Media ROI – Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization: Olivier Blanchard

Open Leadership – How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead: Charlene Li

Groundswell – Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies: Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (Forester Research)

The DragonFly Effect – Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change: Jennifer Aaker & Andy Smith with Carlye Adler

Brent Uncategorized

I’ve written a  post that advertises my consulting services. The language is more the “hire me” tone but the message is consistent with what I’ve being writing about this past year. Hugh MacLeod’s illustration captures my message perfectly. It’s not the tools, it’s what the user does with the tools. As a leader, you want to strengthen your organization’s capacity to fulfil its mission and meet its core business goals. Now, you have a new set of tools to help you achieve these goals: social media technologies power social learning, and radically increase organizational and staff performance.

So how should you proceed? First, you need to empower staff collaboration, creativity and learning by adopting social media programs that engage, support, and deepen relationships with your stakeholders, including volunteers, service users, supporters, members, partners, funders and the wider community.  And you need to begin this journey now. If you delay, your organization risks losing ground as others forge ahead with social learning and social media innovations.

Consider the following questions:

• Do you have organizational stories that can be used to amplify your core business and engage stakeholders?
• Are you concerned about you or your staff taking on a more public online presence in your business and sector?
• Do you need to listen more effectively to what your community, service users and supporters are saying and doing?
• Do you have valuable insights and knowledge within the organization that is not being shared or utilized?

If your organization is struggling with any of these issues, I can help you chart your course. Through my company, Social Media Tools for Work & Learning, I help businesses and non-profit organizations build social media programs that integrate with their core business goals, achieving concrete results from their social media investment.

You can learn to use online collaboration, storytelling and mapping tools to tell your stories, increase engagement capacity inside and outside the organization, and build commitment to your organization.

I offer an in-depth half or full-day workshop called “Learning & Working Smarter.” This interactive workshop will fully equip your employees to use social media effectively in the workplace.

With 20 years’ experience managing non-profit organizations, I understand this sector’s specific challenges. My company is uniquely positioned to provide the integrated social media programs and consulting services that non-profit organizations require.

Whether you need to build and manage your web site, develop an effective social media plan that maximizes the strengths of your organization, or train your staff in the latest social media technologies, Social Media Tools for Work & Learning can provide specifically tailored services and workshops to help you excel in the social media landscape.

Contact me today to start building your social media strategy and infrastructure.

Brent Uncategorized performance improve staff organization

I’m very pleased that Harold Jarche posted a video of Dave Dave Snowden explaining the Cynefin framework. I’ve been fascinated with this model for some time and having Dave Snowden, the originator of the Cynefin Framework explain how can be used was a real treat.

The Cynefin model is a sense making framework. It can be used to understand complex situations in which your organization is struggling. It is different than a categorization model where you plop data from your situation into a two by two matrix and sort out your decision based on how the matrix categorizes your data.

With complex situations (which the non profit sector is deeply mired in)  the categorization model doesn’t reveal the nuances that can jump up and bit your analysis on the backside. The Cynefin model lets the data stand on its own and the model rises to the surface through the data, enabling you to make sense of it and then you can decide on your course of action.

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Brent Uncategorized complexity cynefin network

My webinar sponsored by Edlink (Executive Directors Learning Community) went over pretty well yesterday.

There was some great questions at the end of the session. One person asked about the ROI of social media.

In answering , I chose to focus on the fact that Executive Directors are in control of the process. I reminded them that they have the experience and knowledge about the goals that drive their organization.

My view is that by focusing on organizational and program goals, they can start figuring out how to fit social media channels and tools into their goals. In this way, they are on familiar management turf with social media just one more tool that contributes to their Mission and goals.

To give participants a sense of what concrete results that could impact the organization with a social media program, I included an infographic put together by SocialCast.

This image highlights in dollars and cents the value of social media for improving 1. Sales (for non profit substitute members/supporters. 2. Staff engagement efficiencies; 3. Staff retention. The evidence is overwhelmingly conclusive that social media increases performance and financial savings across the organization.

I also discussed the new “working smarter” culture that organizations are evolving towards. I wanted them to understand how their role in this new culture will need to change to a more open leadership style.

Open leadership is becoming a critical facet of a leaders job description because social learning and collaboration is so clearly driving innovation and new solutions in the workplace. Social learning and collaboration activities activities just don’t survive or thrive in a workspace where leadership style is controlling and authoritarian.

Knowing how much attitude contributes to ones ability to make performance changes, I emphasized the importance of fostering a positive attitude when facing challenging situations. I included a paper by Harold Jarche titled Skills 2.0 (PDF) He artfully speaks about Web 2.0 giving learning professionals an aptitude adjustment.

My view is that your attitude towards change is critical determinant of a leader’s professional development as well as the organization’s progress in keeping pace with the expectations of their stakeholders including staff, volunteers, users, donors and partners.

Here is the slideshow from the webinar. You can access the video and audio recording of the webinar at the Edlink web site.

Brent Uncategorized attitude, infographic, sociallearning, socialmedia, webinar

On Thursday, March 24, I’m conducting a webinar titled “Overcoming Your Anxiety About Online Sharing”.

The purpose of the webinar is to address concerns about social media, learn from peers who are out there doing it, and gain confidence in your own online publishing skills.

I chose this topic because I think its a normal reaction to be anxious when faced with new expectations and tools.

Also, in the online learning communities that I am a part of, I noticed that when people first began participating online, there was a difficulty in adjusting their professional role so they could comfortably share personal experiences about their work.

This is my first webinar with the Edlink Online Community. My role is the Edlink Social & Tech Integration Expert. Quite a mouthful but essentially I serve as a support or guide for Executive Directors or organizational leaders interested in learning more about integrating social media within their organization.

EDLink is the global online resource and gathering place for Executive Directors (EDs) of non-profit / non-governmental organizations (NPOs/NGOs). Through EDLink, EDs have access to sharing and networking exclusively tailored to their profession.

Here is the EDLink Flyer (PDF). Please consider joining this community if you would like to access current knowledge and support related to your non profit leadership role.

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