Human Society at a Crossroads; Spitballing the State of the World in 2018

"Trigger Warning"

This is going to be a long and serious post, probably the first of a series because I wouldn't reach anyone if I wrote a single treatise. This will be long, dense, you may likely disagree with some of it, I may even ramble at points, and it'll be as clear as I can make it, but having just completed a 2000-mile road trip across a good portion of the US with plenty of time to ponder, think through, and consider, I felt the need to get this out of my head in some way. It's an attempt to try and see everything from above, to do what humans do and try and make sense of the disconnected details of daily life in 2018.

Prologue (Yes, a Prologue)

I'll start with what I think is a reasonable point in history: the 2016 election that took place here in the United States. Since that event, global society has gone through some motions - some expected, others not, still others that were suggested though but arrived differently than imagined - that make humanity's future (again taken globally) more uncertain and less determinate in the sense that we don't know where the current leaders, economics, technology, or the systems that underpin any of these. To be sure, never before have we had more tools for prediction of all sorts of things than we now have. But we still cannot predict the future, and while we can make reasonable projections, it's still hard for us to see how things will work out to arrive at the destinations our data models suggest.

My Point (or, Abstract of a Pop-Culture Player)

To get to the main point lest I lose too many people early, there is underway a massive turn-over of the old ways and a birthing of new orders in several key facets of daily life, but, perhaps sooner than we expect, life as anyone currently knows it. I'm not about to knit a web of conspiracies or well-laid plans of nefarious intent; I shudder at the thought of my providing additional power to base means of thought we would all be better off without.

What I care about is how people - my kids, my fellow citizens, my fellow humans - will get on with their lives peaceably, with security, power in self-determination, with the ability to make their own happiness without unreasonable or overly judicious intrusion of law or government. The state of all of those things is in serious question perhaps more so than ever.

There is too much poverty - in any country - at a time of seemingly expansive wealth humanity has never before fathomed as companies tread near 13-figure market valuations, and the notion of the world's first trillionaire individual is seen as likely within a couple decades.

The negative impact of humanity on its worldly environment has reached a tipping point when we consider the proliferation of trash bogs in our oceans and an expanding population with worsening air quality.

Authoritarianism has seen a halting resurgence around the globe as global coalitions meant to protect the weak and vulnerable have frayed at the seams first sewn by its very creators.

Technology is more ubiquitous and inexpensive than it ever has been while many of its unexpected substantial drawbacks are only now becoming known and felt at the national and global level politically.

Jobless numbers balloon and workers' rights contract or fail to take root altogether as a result of what is viewed as cutting fat and cost out of economic systems and beliefs that put indefinite up-and-to-the-right thinking and expectations above anything else.

Economic and social divides are solidifying from symptoms we did not fully see nor could reasonably quantify and comprehend until their effects have begun pushing institutions off their foundations.

There is *a lot* happening, and while there are positives anyone can find in the news, they don't seem to be serving as sufficient counterweight to the negatives, or even as appreciable stumbling blocks for them.

Now Hold On a Second...

But the last thing I seek for this post to be (and its related follow-ons) is a diatribe of fear and anger meant to shock its readers into complacent, submissive stasis, or wild fits of animus-fueled survivalist rage from the weight of things no one person can control. Rather, I'm just going to lay what I see out on the table, make what I think are reasonable connections, and come up with what is, with all nods to personal opinion noted up front, what needs to be done.

In the Next Part...

I started this blog years ago to discuss topics relating to education of people of any age (though my content has usually focused on adult learning). From where I sit, and to give a short preview for what's to follow in this series: I cannot see a future where people do NOT have direct control over their education and training, or lack the ability to "pivot" their present life position to a very different path on short notice either by choice or by happenstance. A more productive, wealthy, healthy, dynamic, peaceful future - indeed, a more moral and ethical one - cannot be sustained without this kind of freedom. That is how I will relate the above back to this blog's focus and purpose, but for now, I hope you and others will find my proposal in this series meaningful, and worth your patient and thorough reading.

PHX Startup Week Day 5 - LIVE BLOG

Common Legal Mistakes Startups Make When Raising Capital, by John Carter of Hool Coury Law

11:42 LLCs have an operating agreement, breach each of this by a member is a legal stuff. You want your op Agreement, which you have control over, to be clear about who does what in the LLC. Otherwise the law, which is agnostic to your business, will be the standard by which disputes will be resolved.

11:37 Question about when to convert from LLC: a good investor will demand an S-Corp at the appropriate time, so don’t convert until there’s outside pressure to.

11:35 Define who owns intellectual property, make sure it’s assigned to the business.

11:33 Issue stock certificates to avoid a founder checking out with ownership they don’t have to work for. Legal strategy must be part of business strategy.

11:30 Governance docs should be clean. Bylaws, stockholder agreements, articles of inc., etc. should be complete, ready, easily located. No excuses.

11.28 Complex cap tables will scare large investors away because there are too many chefs in the kitchen, and a tiny investor can hold up a big one.

11:28 All companies should have a cap table that lists all stockholders and how much each has. KNOW THIS DOCUMENT VERY WELL AND KEEP IT UP TO DATE.

11:24 At the formation of the company, issuance of founder stock is not considered issuance of securities; this ONLY APPLIES AT THE VERY START.

11:21 Don’t get into company valuation fights with investors, especially not early on. Convertible notes and SAFEs can protect you to a degree.

11:19 There are people saying they can get your company capital; they MUST BE ACCREDITED, or forget it.

11:16 Do not advertise or openly solicit investors. You are responsible for knowing whether an individual is accredited. Start with people you know and understand already. Dated simply: know who is investing and meet them personally to verify law-sensitive particulars before accepting them.

11:13 An investor in your business should be accredited, otherwise, non-accredited ones mean more paperwork, more law, more unnecessary exposure.

11:13 A disclosure document must be very up front and honest about your company.

11:11 You must disclose all risks to your investors, if you don’t you can be sued.

11:09 Issuance of securities must by law be registered with the SEC. There is a private offering of $5m or less at state and federal levels that donor need to be.

11:06 If you try a non-compliant first offering, investors can get you for fraud, as can the SEC, and your walking a very thin line.

11:05 Raising the very first dollar triggers fed and state securities laws, so compliance is huge.


Steven Rose’s Reasonably Unreasonable Goals

10:34 Conservative and moderate goals can be the milestones for aggressive future goals. Don’t put all energy into aggressive future goals because then you lose track of what you need to do in the near term.

10:30 An interesting use of the 401k-style conservative-moderate-aggressive investment concept for goal setting.

10:28 The team should see wins when they happen, rewards.

10:28 To won, you need a mix of conservative, moderate, and aggressive goals.

10:27 1 in 10 startups succeed.

10:26 People Lise faith if they have best months ever, but still aren’t meeting goals.

10:25 Steven is discussing how the lack of quality in company, team, or individual goals can kill forward momentum in a startup.

Bottle and Labels: The Latest Victim of the Modern Age

Nature posted a story last week about some new scientific findings that appear to bust a relatively recent verbal construct that has been rather central to the HR world and the discussion of Millennials in the workplace: the so-called "digital native". It seems this term, created to bottle certain people up into an easy-to-understand construct, may be similarly as meaningless as the now increasingly derided concept of "learning styles".

I have to admit, I somewhat blindly accepted the implication of this "digital native" label myself. Being a member of the newly minted "xennial" micro-generation (oh dear), it made some amount of sense that everyone born after me, or at least most those in the Millennial group, were far more accustomed to digital everything, and analog nothing. For example, how many minutes has it been since you're heard another Gen X or older individual express concern over the lack of cursive classes in today's grade schools? Quick side note: if Millennials are digital natives, what, then, are my two children, both of whom were born post-iPhone and post-iPad, and look at the corded phones that access land-based wired telecommunications as if they were technological fossils of a long-expired civilization?

But back on topic, it seemed to be almost self-evident that digital natives (assuming those exist or existED) had not only a, uh, micro-perspective that wrapped into their generation's perspective, but assumptions and ways of working that were unique to their group, and perhaps even advantageous. They've grown up with keyboards, massive amounts of time sitting in front of screens usually attached to a computer-like device, absolutely stonking amounts of computer storage and processing capability, even wireless cell phones before the smartphone revolution of the last ten years. The research findings in Nature's article do make sense, however.

Keyboards are just tools, and Millennials possess no ways of using I/O on computers and smartphones inherently better than anyone from another generation. They let their email inboxes fill up like (most) everyone else. They play the same games and use the same media available to everyone, all of which has gone electronic. They frequent many of the same websites while gravitating away from traditional cable media services. They have their noses stuck in their phones (just like nearly every adult of every generation patronizing the coffee joint I'm typing this in). Their expectations for how life should move along may be different, but that's not so much a "digital native" thing as it is a Millennial thing, and even less so when one considers the general trends across global society, particularly in workplaces enabled by technology.

I have personally come to a place where I am rather oppositional to the "Millennial" label, so I feel I should divest myself of other labels as well, however well-meaning they may be. "Digital native" should probably be dropped because of at least some assumptions we can now apply data to, that falsify at least some it. I consider myself a digital native, even though I'm a late Gen X. Before I had even completed high school, I was using Windows PCs, and once I entered college in the mid-90s, nearly everything was handled by computer. 21 years later, I do nearly everything not requiring physical effort on a computer or smartphone, and my handwriting has suffered to the point where the old joke about doctors' handwriting applies quite well.

So we as knowledge workers, who may not have grown up with half the things Millennials did but surely use most if not all of them now, should probably drop the labels and focus on solutions for people where they are, and not where they "should" be based on the shelf their bottle - now broken - is expected to be.

Is eLearning Really on the Decline?

I was reading Karl Kapp's blog post from 1/31 about market reports on the decline of self-paced elearning. I would agree with the comment left by another reader that replied to his story: Can we really say that self-paced elearning is on the decline? Because that's a really grey area and methinks the tools to capture this information aren't honed well enough to make this claim.

...but first, a message from our sponsor...

Let's get one thing straight up front: elearning is not going away, though it may be take on a new term at some point. I don't see self-paced elearning declining, though it depend on where it's recorded that will potentially return a "declining" status in market data. While self-paced elearning may be declining in enterprise (indeed, a great many fewer corporations want churn-n-burn, objectives-content-summary-test modules), "elearning" is a broad term. What does seem to be growing, are much more produced and designed learning experiences in the form of games with badges, point systems, etc. But are these not also elearning?

The death, or at least waning importance of, slideshow-based "courseware" elearning is certainly true, though there's still some basic relevance for it for quick data dumps, minor topic update, and reporting purposes. So it is perhaps more apt to say that basic, or what would be considered "bad" or undesigned, elearning is declining.

Kapp closed the blog post by highlighting the continuing and likely growing need for Instructional Design. This is also true. Truly deep and impactful learning game experiences cannot exist without thorough design.

True, but...

But to vindicate "bad" elearning a bit, or at least explain why it came about first and remained relevant for so long, it was like any new tool humanity finds. In the 1990s, society had this thing called computer technology and the Internet that exploded into our daily lives, having spent the first part of the decade creeping onto our desks at work or our dens at home. Once computing power and Internet connectivity were roughly ubiquitous enough for some meaningful democratization, naturally some would ask the question "How can this be used in the employ of education or organizational development?"

Like children fueled by curiosity, lack of experience, and a new tool we've never seen before, we grabbed something and ran with it, sharp end first. This predictably lead to a lot of doing the right thing the wrong way in the early going. Companies have realized, over the last 15 years, that throwing money at these programs could be and in many cases was somewhat wasteful. Just as they realized between 2000 and 2010 that sending people cross-country for in-person training sessions wasn't panning out well.

What Could This Mean?

Today, the focus is shifting to the individual taking on more responsibility to upskill themselves both within and without a job. How that is accomplished is up to each person, and that is where I think the data is potentially skewed to represent a greater decline than exists.

Startup Pitfalls: Overpromising the MVP

By now you may be aware of the fate of Theranos, the embattled medical testing startup that was the darling of Silicon Valley just over a year ago. If you are not familiar with their story, I advise you to go research it as it is perhaps the prime example of great intentions and vision in a Silicon Valley startup being sunk by secrecy, lack of execution, and failure of critical examination as just a few of its problems.

For those familiar with the startup, the paper-thin foundation upon which Theranos was built began collapsing after a landmark Wall Street Journal report on the company, released near the end of 2015. The report detailed how Theranos had yet to demonstrate not only the use of its vaunted-but-unseen blood testing tech in research, but any data-based results whatsoever while continuing to use existing medical tech to perform all marketed tests. In the wake of the WSJ story, time kept passing, Theranos' workforce mysteriously dwindled while unqualified persons ran key aspects of their medical operations in violation of federal law, questions began being asked by more and more people, and today Theranos appears to be on hiatus, and may never recover. Theranos' founder Elizabeth Holmes, until recently Silicon Valley's newest rising star, is now often seen in social media memes touting her quote about intentionally foregoing a backup plan for her company.

After I read this story last week, it seems that one could be forgiven for thinking Magic Leap's name could be used in place of Theranos. This is another case of hype and early investment exceeding the MVP (minimum viable product)...or an MVP at all.

Magic Leap has been a darling of the AR (augmented reality) market, a startup that has supposedly created tech that can superimpose amazing visuals over what people see using a headset device. Perhaps needless to say in this age of tech startup stardom, Magic Leap has secured funding and global investor interest to the tune of a rough valuation near $5 billion. They made a promise to their market, but have yet to deliver on it. Now, after a bit of digging by the press, it seems Magic Leap is much further behind the curve they were thought to be ahead of.

Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap, is telling everyone to have faith. "Believe" he tweeted earlier this month. But how is anyone interested in his company's technology supposed to accept that kind of furtive solace when it has been revealed that Magic Leap's hype-generating video was not only not a display of their tech in progress, but was essentially a Hollywood-quality ruse for what their technology eventually would do (in the vacuum of a delivery time frame)?

I'm very interested to see how Magic Leap's story plays out in light of the Theranos debacle. There are many parallels that I see just on the surface. Theranos suffered from good intentions attempting to take the shortcut to financial and economic glory through Silicon Valley hype-sterism and a reliance on an executive and advisory team that was not sufficiently circumspect of the plan or demanding of results.

Hopefully Magic Leap's story doesn't include all of these weakening elements, and will take a better path in the near future.

Changing Focus...

A few years back, I started this blog to discuss educational technologies and interventions for improving human performance. I borrowed the blog's byline from the movie The Matrix, trading spoons for calcium carbonate. My point in selecting this quote was to note the ever-changing nature of what a "solution" is, and that true solutions never really fit in molds or follow conventions.

I want to redirect the meaning of my borrowed metaphor by shifting this blog to focus on the emergence - or rather, re-emergence - of VR, virtual reality, as a viable technology for solving problems. I will also be including augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR), as I envision a future that harnesses all three of these technologies rather than pitting them against each other. But other technologies that will rapidly change how we learn are those that power how the machines around us learn. Machine learning (ML) and data mining (DM) will allow computers to begin to generate VR environments for organizations. The big data (BD) that enterprises have been gathering for a few years now will become the database from which the data mining can be done.

The other obvious augmentation to all of these is to bring mobile into the mix, but for now, I want to emphasize my shift to a technology focus, here. I want to make sure I note that simply using tech isn't enough to serve as an OD/OM/JIT solution in itself. In that spirit, here is a smattering of the VR/MR/AR and DM/ML/BD developments from the last few years, that will fuel the next decade of advancements:

• Magic Leap and the future of mixed reality 
• Microsoft HoloLens
• IGN Reviews the First-Generation Consumer-Edition Oculus Rift
• How HTC and Valve Built the Vive
• Machine Learning
• Data Mining Machine Learning at Arizona State University
• AstroML: Machine Learning and Data Mining for Astronomy
• What's the Difference Between Data Mining, Statistics, Machine Learning, and AI?

Project-Based Work Evolution Breeds Project-Based Education

The Chronicle of Higher Ed posted an interview with Christine Ortiz, Dean of Graduate Ed at MIT, where she discusses her perspective on higher education, and how she sees higher ed evolving in the future. Like many of her peers, she believes that concept of tenure is on its way out. What I liked most about her perspective is that she sees education becoming more project-based and on a long-term schedule, with the tools of traditional instruction taking a peripheral seat to be accessed when and where necessary. In this sort of model, the lecture is no longer monolithic, and any "lecture" can be as short as 5 minutes. There are plenty of examples already using the short lecture format (Udemy being one).

I like where she's going with this, and I'm already envious of future generations that will have the opportunity to learn in this way. But I see this format changing not only traditional higher education, but other formats like vo-tech, which itself is already changing with a proliferation of job prep and technical electives at the high school level. And where do the essentials of education, the 3 Rs, factor in? What would a holistic higher education program look like, that combines long-term, multi-year projects centered around education, with real-world experience as the central modality? The ideal end result of such a system would seem to be a market-ready individual who, using traditional time metrics, has a portfolio of projects and a wealth of experience gained in parallel.

There will certainly still be challenges, though. Project selection and a life cycle view would become paramount concerns early on. It would not be beneficial for the individual for projects to become obsolete a year or two in, or lose value by the end of the education process. The speed at which markets and industry move, and their rate of acceleration, will make this aspect of future higher education very challenging.

Another challenge will be keeping learners (née students) afloat of those technological developments well enough that they don't fall behind.

A third is likely to be a "client-side" feature that higher ed may have to adopt for many fields, which is the ability to participate in a virtual in-person fashion. This is technology that is still coming about, but could prove to be a boon for Ortiz's vision.

Will this model shift higher ed to a year-long format?

Will FYE (first year experience) courses become fundamental inclusions? Will these become part of the late high school experience?

Where will the lines between education and work be drawn?

The future of higher education is daunting but holds increasingly limitless possibilities. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this particular future plays out.

Random Thought...

Tip the half empty/half full experiment on its head:

Do you think "necessity is the mother of invention", or that "everything that can be invented, has been"?

Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think most people, when asked, would choose the former over the latter. Our 21st century times practically demand it, almost instinctively.

I hit upon this thought while trying to get my kids off to school this morning. What are your thoughts? Consider if you were asked this in a job interview; what would your response be and how might you elaborate?

Bad Beliefs: Talent

How many of us have either been told, or complemented someone on, their "talent" for accomplishing things in a certain area? Some have heard it more than others, but the popular notion that a person is "born" or predestined to be exceptionally good at one thing over others is one of the most well-known, intangible social memes. You hear it a lot in discussions of sports figures. I've always had a bit of a problem with this concept because the logical implications for the ostensibly "untalented" are not generally positive.

The Huffington Post had a story yesterday that has links to some of the basic discussion of this phenomenon from a scientific and media perspective. This is a growing area of scientific inquiry, but evidence is already showing that talent, as popularly defined, is nothing more than a myth.

Wait a minute...let's decontruct the word first:

Talent: "inclination, disposition, will, desire"

Ok, that's etymology. What about the definition?

Talent: "a special ability that allows someone to do something well"

Notice the difference in the construction versus accepted meaning. Inclinations and desires can be adjusted; special abilities cannot.

Donald Clark has had a negative view of talent for some time, and I agree with him. Simply put, talent is a negative, limiting belief that negatively affects how we judge the effort and outcomes that others produce. It's simply incompatible with modernity and the reality of organizations that need individuals to do more with the hands already employed.

A decade ago, a group of scientists was already finding evidence of what everyone already knew: that hard work and determination were correlated with success. This is another popular meme, not just from our own individual lives, but from observing the fruits of others' labor in this Age of the Entrepreneur™. The Economist just posted a story about new research by Chia-Jung Tsay of University College London that deconstructs the myth of talent further. Her findings show how ingrained the notion of "talent" is by pitting investors against a group of entrepreneurs divided into "naturals" and "strivers".

In her results, the naturals were almost always seen to be the more enticing bet to receive investment dollars because the belief is that they have to work less hard to achieve great results, regardless of IQ and other factors. The strivers, on the other hand, were given the distant-second nice try award for effort. The strivers always faced an uphill battle that, while they had the grit and determination, they were perceived to take longer and require more effort to achieve. In essence, the money follows a perceived ability to deliver more with less energy.

I see a further problem: A false dichotomy that has us choose between either talented, or untalented. But as the evidence of Duckworth et al in the 2005 study shows, even individuals identified as uniquely talented are further identified as a "prodigy" (another term with no quantifiable definition) very infrequently.

What this means is that socially we have put a lot of intangible weight on things that don't actually exist. It's no longer a question of talent versus non-talent. In my opinion, today's enterprises simply cannot afford to look at their people as one or the other, and reward them as such. And the real-world results bear this out: many companies today are looking for ways to get existing employees to extend their experience beyond their job description. Those efforts have mixed results depending on a company's individual outlook on OrgDev, but those efforts are real.

...socially we have put a lot of intangible weight on things that don't actually exist.

And to interject a bit of my own life experience, as a parent I cannot afford to teach my kids that they are talented only in one area. I want them to experience so many different things, and talent is a vestige of the past that is no longer useful. If it were, how do we explain people like Andre Agassi, who hated tennis yet achieved greatness in that sport? Or Tiger Woods, who hasn't set a golf club down since the age of 4? If sports is a great place to prop up the notion of talent, it's a great place to disassemble that bad belief as well. I want my kids to practice the true meaning of "talent" - the desire and perseverance - not the accepted definition that they are either gifted one thing or another, excusing lack of effort elsewhere.

So which would you rather have in your organization? 1 talented individual, or 10 persevering ones?

Learning UX: From Brick-n-Mortar to Virtual, Spitballing the Future of Virtual Desktops

Catherine Lombardozzie, writing for ATD's online magazine, expounds on the characteristics of a true learning environment in an organization. She's essentially making a case for talent development professionals facilitating an environment where learning can happen at whatever level of formality and pace each individual deems necessary. Her points are all sound, and I think they serve as a reminder for those providing training products and services from the perspective of an external vendor.

My role is essentially to ensure most of Lombardozzie's points are represented in. For the past several years now, I have been interfacing with clients in efforts to build experiential learning environments, primarily in the form of virtual desktops. Until recently, providing a desktop with installed software for a specific course, either general or specialized, has been mostly sufficient, and the technical features completed the experience. But I've seen that really begin to change in the last year.

The time has come that I must now think about virtual desktop deployment in the holistic sense; programs over courses, unique experience over simple service delivery. Customers want something beyond a desktop with software, because the increasing profligacy of virtual machines and the software that run them has made the delivery of such a service more commonplace. Taking some of the points around meeting the basics of the experience, what was cool in the past is not that interesting anymore because the market is familiar with it now, and it now wants something more.

Gamification is often a road that is considered or requested, but due to the current state of the desktop virtualization market, there are few, if any, integrated tools that can allow this kind of functionality and experience in a cohesive, cost-effective way. The typical path of such discussions often becomes how best to construct a more "game-like" environment in a given course, using manual means that with the grading structure as the basis. A hard sell for major higher education institutions, to say the least.

So what can be an ideal user experience in virtual desktops for training?

My sense is that the user experience can incorporate most of Lombardozzie's points as regards resources and curation. After all, it is becoming increasingly likely that, just as society moved from single-car households to more than one, so too will our computing lives move from a single computer to many. We see this already in the power contained in our smartphones, and how cloud services link them to our only somewhat more powerful laptops and desktops. It's feasible that people will soon carry virtual desktop files or stick computers that are intended for specific uses such as education. Once that happens, it's further possible, I think, that services will be built and offered around supporting such products delivered as a cost item or service, and around curating them for users.

Do you work in or with virtual desktops? What do you see for the future?

The Brass Tacks of Individual Development

Michele Martin on Friday tweeted a link to a Fast Company article that talks about an SAT test prep platform that helps aid student success while predicting how successful they will be. Michelle's comment that there could be interesting implications for adult learning and motivation is probably an understatement.

Michele had earlier written a blog post about how the very notion of a job is changing, and how people can generate multiple streams of income by thinking from an entrepreneurial perspective. She and many others are right: with the relative democratization of options for gathering knowledge and experience, so too must peoples' education and "job" prospects be diversified like a stock portfolio.

Speaking with respect to SAT test prep, the problem seems to be self-motivation and that all-important work factor. From the Fast Company article: "The problem...[is] that kids don't do the work because there's little immediate, incremental incentive, and it's piled on top of an already full load of classwork and activities..." One indicator of this, to my mind, is the proliferation of first year success programs in higher education. Many of them focus on educational basics I was required to have to enter college in the mid-1990s. Many people coming into community colleges and public universities, as well as for-profit institutions, come from a less fortunate educational background, but still seek higher education. However, many of them don't know how to cope with a model that essentially inundates them with choices while they lack the glue of motivation. What's left is a hybrid of a prescriptive learning model intertwined with the feel of completely open education.

Some will have the motivation to push through the early period to success. Others will lack that, and the risk is that they will feel forced to stop or put off their education. Testive, I think, hits on a workable model for motivation. Such methods were very helpful in my recent success in passing the PMP exam. The possibility of passing that test would have been remote for me if I did not have practice facilities that mimicked the real thing while providing immediate feedback and a focus on weak areas of knowledge. While Testive's platform focuses on SAT and ACT testing, I think their approach could be applied to all sorts of areas.

So how does a test success algorithm relate to career entrepreneurship at the individual level?

With the democratization of educational options, it's becoming easier for someone to steer their career in new and different directions, or to build on the current course, on a proverbial dime. Tools similar to what Testive offers can help people achieve goals more quickly by predicting success through the targeting of weak areas.

My overall perspective is that more and more tools are becoming available that will drive solutions to let people guide themselves through the entire education and career launch process. We may eventually reach the point where people onboard themselves into a company by testing and passing a particular standard for performance in a particular role. There are all sorts of positive and negative implications for this, once society has determined how best to resolve motivation problem. Society already seems to be distrustful of a future where advancement in anything depends on cold, quantitative analysis of everything. The positive side affords freedoms our forebears couldn't conceive of, though that may look like a precipice to some.

In all honesty I have some genuine trepidation about these developments as well. The future will be interesting one way or another.

Self Awareness and the Performance Review

Harold Jarche's weekend post relates a story from Harvard Business Review. It's about a sort of star candidate who was groomed to lead an overseas division of a company. All the boxes for him were set up to be checked off, but as his leadership began and things progressed early on, outcomes didn't go to plan. The status quo was followed too closely, and increasingly the operation of the business and the division suffered. How could this be?

So someone else - more or less the diametric opposite, as far as the details of the story let on - was put in place to lead the overseas division. Success resulted soon after. The moral of this particular story is that the status quo and the leaders working within it may not generate the expected level of success. But this wasn't what I took from the story.

My takeaway is the underlining of the importance of self awareness, and using external feedback to obtain that perspective. John from the story appears to have been someone who felt the system would handle whatever difficulties came up. He delegated his leadership role to the system he was supposed to be guiding. His replacement, Alex, took an active role. John didn't bother learning; Alex did. But beyond that, it didn't appear that John did much work in the way of checking his performance with his superiors. Alex, on the other hand, bucked the status quo while making begrudging admirers out of them.

Something I've done at various points in the positions I've held is to initiate off-the-cuff performance reviews. The reason I've done this is to address any concerns I may not be aware of, before someone prepares to address them with me. I've also felt that it shows some initiative and struggle to maintain a learning and improving ethic in my profession.

What about you? Do you initiate informal reviews of your performance? What ways have you sought out feedback not directly related to a training or major process change event?

Learning Technology and the Global Wealth Gap

I am a regular reader of The Verge. It's a great site that mixes tech with everything from politics to entrepreneurship, all with a healthy dose of pop culture references and lingo. This month Bill Gates is there guest editor, and I was very intrigued by an article on MOOCs and the developing world, written by Adi Robertson.

Then, just by chance, I was reviewing my RSS feed of Donald Clark's Plan B blog, and noticed this gem of his from a few weeks back. I had somehow missed it previously, but with today's unfortunate news that another terror attack on free speech had taken place in Denmark, when I saw Donald's post about Boko Haram, I had to read it. He is very often a contrarian to accepted practices and theories, and I appreciate his regular checks against the winds of the industry. I encourage anyone to read both articles.

Donald lays out a sobering picture of the where, when, why, and how of education in parts of Africa. As I reflected on the MOOC story, there were so many confirmations of the key thrust of Donald's point: “Africa, above all, has a form of schooling that is deeply colonial, defined by the academic systems in Britain and France.” He later lays out how and why this system fails youth across the African continent, and how such a grotesque machination in Boko Haram can be seeing brutal success in spreading its backward, violent, and dictatorial ends. Donald points out that there is no local face on education in places like Nigeria.

Referring back to Adi's article, a local face and spin on education appears to be reflected as a consistent theme in other places in the developing world, as well. In fact, both articles arrive at many of the same points, including the fact that even the latest learning technology will not solve the education problem.

So the question I have in light of the Gates-edited article is, if technology isn't the solution, and MOOCs are typically used most by the already-educated, what is the plan underlying the international efforts to expand education, not just for youth, but for all age groups? There are clear indications that there are a few who have devised ways to connect with education via mobile phones, but these opportunities are individualized and have a complex situational context.

The seemingly clear solution to getting any new effort off the ground is a multi-dimensional matter of money, infrastructure, properly trained local teachers, and local government and community support. In other words, the answer to the question involves lots of questions about how to handle everything that would enable education in the first place.

That is clearly no small thing to solve. More on the subject:

AEO: Education & Skills Mismatch
WSJ: Why Foreign Aid Is Hurting Africa

Can the Physical Office go Mobile?

The debate about whether more or less work gets done by companies that allow their employees to work from home has been on a vigorous burn for a while, now. There are great arguments on both sides; here's one of the negative views on the practice. I happen to work for a company where many employees work remote from home almost exclusively. I am one of those people and I am never wanting for emails to send, milestones to complete, or objectives to hit on any given day.

But part of my background has certainly included positions with a daily commute, a corporate office atmosphere, and everything associated with that. It is on rare occasion I get to visit the offices of my present company, and to directly interact with those I otherwise work with via phone, Skype, or email. When I do get those chances, I am always appreciative for the opportunity to have more fluid and potentially serendipitous conversations between individuals I would not in any other time be able to simply pull aside. Such reflections would seem to indicate that telecommuting is for the birds, right?

Well, the increasing reality of work on the go, work-life integration, and the notion of the mobile office will make at least some of the arguments for the brick-and-mortar office moot. But the question is

• can that office environment - that culture and feel - be made mobile, or can it at least be abstracted beyond the physical structure of HQ? 
• Are social media and project platforms like JIRA or Confluence enough to facilitate this?
• Will telepresence eventually solve this?
• Are all the pieces to solve this problem already out there, but lacking in cohesiveness to be a viable solution?

Is It Possible To Go About Rebuilding "Silent" Networks?

My wife and I have had a few discussions over the last year about one particular topic: Why do previous long-term contacts, be they personal (usually) or professional, seem to fall away and go silent? For starters, I'm a parent, so often times it's just not on my daily radar to text, email, or phone a friend to say hello. But I've noticed that the further I get from the last time I spoke with them, the less likely I am to get a response back when I do think to ping them. Granted, everyone's life changes at some point, and surely there is at least one reason they cannot reply within a short timeframe. But after a couple unresolved attempts to reinitiate contact, what next?

This has been a frustration point for me, as I tend to want to keep (most of) the networks I've built up over the years rather than just dropping them. Networks do require maintenance, certainly. After all, I place value in the people I've built friendships with, particularly since high school (20 years ago, eek!). But the sheer number of contacts can make this process unmanageable. Then there are those person-to-person networks from the unconnected, still pre-dotcom era 90s when I was in high school that seem to slowly be making a minor comeback as I approach my 20 year reunion.

I think this is a serious question as I proceed into the future. The reality we live in now is increasingly demanding a diverse and deep set of networks to do almost anything, from finding out things to do with your kids on the weekends, to staffing the latest project at work. Of course this phenomenon doesn't deter me from wanting to build other, new networks regardless, but I do find myself concerned over what feels like lost social capital.

My questions are:

• Have you experienced a sort of communicative "disappearance" of certain individuals similar to the above?
• Has social media helped or hindered your efforts to maintain contact?
• What have these "disappearances" meant for your network(s)?
• If you've managed to reinitiate a "silent" network, What strategy did you use?

Testing: Placebo or Salve?

I woke up to the news today that Arizona has passed a law that requires high school students to pass a "civics test" before they can walk away with a diploma or GED. The supposed aim of this test (which is required to be given by both public and private school) is for students to demonstrate an education in American civic life. Another stated goal by one of the groups behind the bill is to build a sense of patriotism in students.

The test can be taken starting in eighth grade, and can be taken as many times as possible to pass. One irony of the test is that only a 60% score is required to pass it. In other words, failing is passing. And what kind of patriot is being created - assuming the mere act of testing someone could produce such an effect - if the bar is set that low?

Now word is the test is effectively the same one given to immigrants to pass before they are granted citizenship. That's fine I suppose, but the problem for this test when it is applied to high school students (starting in 2017) is that it amounts to little more than a long multiple choice quiz. There are no requirements, designs, guidelines, expectations, curriculum, or anything else, to prepare the students to actually be good citizens.

The Joe Foss Institute, creators of this testing initiative, state that this is a way to ensure students understand the basics of American government. Judging by the sample tests in the linked stories, this "test" is definitely just a long quiz. There's no thinking to the answers, there are no lengthy response-style questions...its really more of a historical factoids test than anything else. But the JFI, also based in Arizona, seeks to convince every state legislature in the land to adopt a similar law. With the advent of ALEC and its disturbing influence, crafting law has now become an assembly-line process that others are modeling.

Maybe I'm expecting too much here, but this seems like a really pathetic initiative, considering the bill was paper-airplaned through the GOP-dominated state legislature in less than 24 hours before being sent to the new governor. And its inexplicable initiatives like these that sail through state houses unchallenged while teachers are being fired in local school districts as cities continue to vote down even flat public school spending. Maybe that 60% score isn't so low after all, when one teacher will be "teaching" 40 children in one room.

So the question must be asked: is a test like this a placebo, or a salve for a real problem. And if it's a placebo, who is swallowing it; students, or voters?

Work-Life Balance: Policy or Proactivity?

CLO's article today on mental fitness and the effectiveness of leaders raised (or rather, reminded) an interesting question for me:

To what degree does a company's culture allow for work-life balance, and what amount of latitude does someone have with their personal agency to affect that balance?

Let's be honest; the 21st century has put lots of tech on the table, but no time to digest and process everything that has thus been enabled by it. Throw in business-side concerns like project deadlines, quarterly reports, and life-side realities like parenting and soccer games, and one can be forgiven for having to accomplish goals in the way early computer chips once had. All this new technology allows us to handle work and life on a more real-time basis, but the dark underbelly is it always means we can rationalize (guilt?) ourselves into not doing more, more of the time. Missed opportunities! Lost time! Wasted profit!

Company policies are surely one part of the solution/problem. A codified statement is at the very least some sort of recognition that the balance exists and must be struck in order for a workforce's maximum net positive effectiveness. Whether or not that statement is outlined in further detail, and further still in action, remains up to the culture, its leaders, and the influence people at the various levels have to enact change - whatever magnitude - for the better.

Often times, at least from my perspective, the work side seems to be the focal point for the balance question, and rightly so. Work, especially for white collar careers, has never been more flexible in terms of where and when it can be done, or even how casually the work can progress in off-hand situations. But life can certainly be an equal if not heavily weighted contributor to the problem/solution as well, for any number of reasons.

A few of the article's points (i.e. eating right) can more or less be followed regardless of schedule. But aside from those, which side do you find the most challenging to organize for the balance equation? How has technology made the problem/solution better/worse? Has technology given you more power in this respect, or taken it away? Do you feel you have more power if the technology is yours, or the company's?

...and while we're answering this question, perhaps someone can provide a solution for getting news outlets to stop using awful clipart...

On Barbie and Glass Ceilings

Look at this face. Just look at it. This, readers, is Mattel's latest salvo in the fight against sexism and gender stereotypes. Computer Engineer Barbie. Those pink glasses are coming for you, male majority in IT!

I bit on the news link in my Facebook feed, finding myself curious how the Barbie franchise has been taken down the tech road. As someone who has been a part of designing and developing courses about information technology for young adults, this story was of unique import. There are many efforts out there right now to get young adults - or more specifically, teenage girls - interested in STEM fields as a viable career path. This is a good thing of course; women are underrepresented in IT, and getting young girls and women to consider a career in tech helps break the popular conception that IT and its many well-paying jobs are just for geeky, nerdy boys.

But the computer engineer mold cast for this Barbie is downright shameful, and indicative of the kinds of subtle/not-so-subtle sexist narratives that have come in for significant criticism lately, particularly in the still unfolding fallout from the gamergate scandal in the video game industry. Barbie's goal starts out innocently enough, with her wanting to learn how to program a game. The net result of her whirlwind education on the subject, though, is two male classmates essentially doing all the work for her as she spends next to no effort trying to learn the subject, all while botching multiple computers with viruses due to her lack of even basic computer skills.

Mattel has swiped utter defeat from the jaws of (what should have been) an easy victory.

How does a toy designer move so swiftly from lofty goal, to propagating stereotypes? What are young girls to make of a "role model" that constantly plays damsel in distress? Mattel has apologized for this particular Barbie outing, promising to do better next time. But, there's something in this that whispers some wisdom about checking assumptions, our perspective, and what we think we know at the door.

The Size of Your Organization's Toolbox

This article from Stephen Gill's Performance Improvement blog discusses how a worker's primary skill in the modern age is his or her ability to learn and learn fast. The driving force for all this learning is, of course, the swift current of technological progress.

One challenge I have been noticing of late, that exists beyond the question of learning, is the selection and use of tools that support learning and/or the transference of the information that supports that activity for groups. I have found myself in many cross-functional meetings with agenda topics that focus on what tool would be the best to adopt for a particular activity or set of activities. Inevitably there is a different tool offered by each person. Or so it seems, at least.

The goal of such conversations of course is to prevent a workplace workbench that looks like this:

The fact is there are plenty of tools. Information dissemination tools; Cloud file management tools; project management tools; communication tools; media creation tools; etc. The problem in selecting the best tools for your organizational toolbox often is hinges on factors such as:

• Tools and habits of your client - Your clients are organizations too, and they will surely have selected tools that ostensibly suit their needs. Introducing tools your organization uses can cause some friction, particularly if security measures become involved.
• Tools and habits of individuals within your group or company - Members of your team likely have a set of tools they prefer using for personal reasons. Some tools within your company or group likely are used simply because they are the tools someone else used from way back when.
• Feasibility for the organization in its current state - There may be some tools that would offer significant improvements in process, but the organization or group doesn't have the physical or procedural infrastructure to support it.
• Information security - If a client's, your organization's, or your group's activities are sensitive to the kind of exposure that external failures can present, your selection of tools is likely to be narrow.

Cost can sometimes be a factor as well, especially if the tool is intended to serve a wide array of functions or serve as the platform for major activities. But, in this day and age, there are at least a few tools you can try out before potentially having to buy one. Based on the kinds of such discussions I've been a part of recently, some of the most important considerations in tool selection are:

• The ease of integration of a particular tool and the time it takes to access it (does it require bookmarking a site, then creating an account, then logging in each time? Or, does it have a single sign-on facility that turns the tool into a 1-click activity?
• The mobility rating of the tool - does the tool in question have a smartphone and/or tablet version that could give you and your colleagues added flexibility to close work objectives on the fly?
• The habits the tool could introduce - will a tool change your organization's habits for the better? Are the internal processes in place to support the opportunity for the tool to make a positive impact?

What are your thoughts? How often does the discussion of the organizational toolset arise for you?

MBAs, Innovation, and Organizational Performance

As Julianna Davies succinctly puts it in her post today, corporate culture is often one of the most essential parts of organizational leadership for small businesses. There Is No Chalk is no stranger to corporate improvements and “outside the box” thinking, and Juliana’s ideas dovetail nicely with things that have been talked about here in the past. Juliana writes full-time about the b-school experience and what makes a good MBA program, and has developed something of an expertise when it comes to planning for success after graduation.

Creating a Thriving Company Culture Requires a Little More than an MBA 

MBA programs can offer aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to study under experienced and intelligent business professionals while making valuable contacts, and most business school graduates enthusiastically recommend the experience. Yet, experienced entrepreneurs are also often quick to point out the limitations of the academic world. In order to build a successful startup, for example, an entrepreneur must first build a healthy comfortable culture. Those who have been through the painstaking process frequently assert that a successful company culture can only be learned through experience in the the rigorous and occasionally cut-throat global marketplace.

Despite frequent talk within business communities of “company culture,” in reality, many business professionals are still unsure of what the concept actually represents. “A company's culture begins with its founders,” says David Roth, technology entrepreneur and Forbes magazine contributor: “what they believe in, what they value and how they work.” Essentially, a company's culture is its DNA, and in an effective company, it informs all elements of business, from management and human resources to employees and even consumers. Much of the success of companies like Apple or Google, for example, can be attributed to their easily identifiable respective cultures. Apple's culture promoting elegance and simplicity of design and Google's well-known penchant for innovation and user-empowerment have inspired and appealed to billions of consumers around the world.

When Innovation is a Company’s DNA, Leadership Follows

While few company leaders will ever lead a company with the size and scope of Apple or Google, there are still many insights that can be gleaned from these giants. Over a decade ago, Jim Stengel, author of Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit, embarked on a ten-year study of companies like Apple that are revered around the world. From his analysis, Stengel found that the most successful company cultures would “champion innovation of all kinds.” Stengel asserts that a company's portfolio should “emanate from dreams, not desperation”.

A tangible example of this is the recent crisis seen at Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of Blackberry. This is a company that disrupted and then revolutionized the cell phone market; it hasn’t even been a decade since the birth of the word Crack-berry, a term used to describe someone who was addicted to their cell phone. However, unable to compete with a host of emerging competitors, RIM began to see profits fall dramatically and in the first quarter of 2012, the company saw profit margins fall by $1.4 billion, a third of the company’s income. At that point, the company began a host of new campaigns designed to shake up their portfolio that were anything but innovative. In fact, many considered their new marketing tactics embarrassing and, for lack of a better word, desperate.

The experience of RIM demonstrates that a portfolio should be much more than just product improvements, and should include better business models, customer service improvements, as well as continuous process improvements. He also suggests company managers commit to “train all the time,” utilizing daily interactions with employees as opportunities for training and coaching rather than criticizing.

RIM’s experience also demonstrates that that innovation is present when new ideas are born, not when companies need to be saved. Unfortunately, the threat of unemployment (what befell 5,000 RIM employees) is not what sparks these great ideas, in fact, it may actually hinder them.

The Importance of Employees

Of course, a company's culture is only as strong as its employees, and companies that are experiencing rapid growth must be careful to ensure effective employee interaction isn't lost in the process. “These personal interactions often will set the tone for employee collaboration in finding solutions to work-related problems,” says Erik Markowitz, Inc. reporter on startups and entrepreneurs. “If your employees are located in different offices, one of the biggest challenges will be finding ways for your employees to stay in touch and learn a bit about each other.”

Culture, ultimately, is an employee driven venture. While companies can do their best to encourage culture by hiring accordingly, it is ultimately the people working for the company who perpetuate it. And it is inspiring, hands-on leaders are often what makes this possible. Leaders of this nature are not mico-managers, but rather those that promote open communication and honest feedback. Those who are able to take criticism without punishing their employees and, conversely, can critique employees in a helpful, understanding manner.

Open communication and collaboration are often the key to innovation. 

While building a startup always involves years of energy, stress and sacrifice, the development of a new and truly innovative business can be one of the most rewarding accomplishments an ambitious entrepreneur will ever experience. Though the lessons found in most MBA programs regarding finances and marketing can be greatly beneficial, it is all but impossible for any company to find lasting success without a culture that is truly inspiring for employees and consumers alike. By looking to companies that have weathered evolving market trends while still maintaining their ideals, aspiring entrepreneurs can bridge the gap between ambition and long-term success.