December 1st, 2012
World AIDS Day is a day that always invites pause and reflection for me. Obviously it is a day with real global significance, but it also reminds me of one of the real bright spots in my adventures as an employee. Sometime in the year 2000 I started doing some volunteer work for Nebraska AIDS [Read More…]
September 5th, 2012
The fourth post in a series. Your organizational chart matters. A little. In a lot of ways it does not. Ideas, information, trust, influence, opportunity and other resources move through networks of relationships without necessarily adhering to what the org chart says. Social network analysis tools now allow us to make the invisible visible so [Read More…]
August 16th, 2012
The third in a series. You have probably heard the phrase: “A person’s eyes are the window to their soul.” I have another version: “How an organization makes decisions is a window into its culture.” How does your organization make decisions? How do you deal with disagreement? “We simply decide without thinking much about the [Read More…]
August 9th, 2012
The second post in my series on hacking your culture. Ask ten random peers in your organization the following questions: 1.) What is diversity? 2.) How is it valuable for your organization? 3.) What is our organization doing to capture that value? 4.) What is expected of you as an individual? 5.) What is inclusion? [Read More…]
August 2nd, 2012
Where to start, where to go from here, and what to do next? These are all questions that diversity and inclusion advocates care greatly about (as well as advocates for innovation, social media etc.), and they are all things that can really vary from one organization to another. Context matters. Having real understanding of the [Read More…]
July 26th, 2012
“Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all absorbing, and for the time being putting all other tumults to silence. [Read More…]
July 19th, 2012
Experience and expertise can be dangerous traps. Expertise and experience can make learning hard. They can also make it hard to appreciate novelty, hard to understand something unique or original, hard to explore the unknown. Shunryu Suzuki was one of the first American Zen Masters and he spoke to his students about the importance of [Read More…]
July 12th, 2012
This report, generated by Institute For The Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute: “…analyzes key drivers that will reshape the landscape of work and identifies key work skills needed in the next 10 years. It does not consider what will be the jobs of the future. Many studies have tried to predict specific [Read More…]
July 5th, 2012
I spend a lot of time helping organizations come to a more applicable and activist understanding of inclusion. Inclusion is not a state of mind—it is an activist orientation toward difference. It is about the things that you do to deliberately include additional difference in a group or process. Every time that I ask managers [Read More…]