“Dancing with Garbage: The Art and Science of Making Stories Work”

A two-part workshop on organizational storytelling (6/23 and 6/30 from 1-5pm)

Register here: http://soar.ois.psu.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SOAR.woa/wa/campusRegister?productId=200708SP107631

If you think stories are mostly about entertaining tall tales and fairy stories at bedtime, come to this Open Mind session to learn more about their power in organizational settings such as Penn State Outreach. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to express your experiences as compelling stories. You’ll listen powerfully to the stories others tell, and you’ll begin to develop the skill of noticing the gaps and parallels between the public stories that the organization tells about itself, and the organic stories that emerge from doing the work of the organization. In this two-part workshop, we’ll bridge the art of constructing stories and listening deeply to the broader implications stories have for active innovation and organizational change.

For more info on organizational storytelling en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_storytelling)

About the presenter:
Jo A. Tyler is Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, where she teaches in the M.Ed. program in Training and Development. A corporate practitioner for 25 years, most recently as a vice president of organization and management development at Armstrong World industries, she now consults with organizations interested in the influence and interplay of their stories, storytelling and organizational narratives. She has published articles and book chapters on storytelling in organizational settings and other topics related to organizational development. She received her Ed.D. in adult education and leadership from Columbia University in New York City.

This Open Minds Session is sponsored by:
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation funded FOCUS for Engagement Project
And

The Outreach Innovation Initiative: Question anything. Listen closely. Solve collaboratively.

innovation.outreach.psu.edu/

Check out this video of a flashmob freezing in Grand Central Station:

The Open Secret of Success

From The New Yorker
In the current atmosphere of economic tumult, the announcement that Toyota sold a hundred and sixty thousand more cars than General Motors in the first three months of this year might seem like a minor news item. But it may very well signal the end of one of the most remarkable runs in business history. For seventy-seven years, in good times and bad, G.M. has sold more cars annually than any other company in the world. But Toyota has long been the auto industry’s most profitable and innovative firm. And this year it appears likely to become, finally, the industry’s sales leader, too.

Calling Toyota an innovative company may, at first glance, seem a bit odd. Its vehicles are more liked than loved, and it is often attacked for being better at imitation than at invention. Fortune, which typically praises the company effusively, has labelled it “stodgy and bureaucratic.” But if Toyota doesn’t look like an innovative company it’s only because our definition of innovation - cool new products and technological breakthroughs, by Steve Jobs-like visionaries - is far too narrow. Toyota’s innovations, by contrast, have focused on process rather than on product, on the factory floor rather than on the showroom. That has made those innovations hard to see. But it hasn’t made them any less powerful.

read the rest

Another intriguing article from The New York Times:. here’s a teaser

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?
By JANET RAE-DUPREE
Published: May 4, 2008

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try - the more we step outside our comfort zone - the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

read the rest ….

Great interview.

Read the whole article here.

Some highlights:

In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget 0 but never shows up in a budget - is morale. [what's true for a movie is true for a startup!] If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. “You don’t play it safe - you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

via John Gruber

If you need a five minute break, check out www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/235. Absolutely brilliant.

And, for more mind food, Here’s

Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide?
www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/250

I’ve never really been a video game person per se but I’m loving my wii. This video on ted.com lists some nifty hacks for the wii remote - using the technology in the wii remote, with inexpensive addons, to create a white board, touch screen, & 3d viewer.

The researcher (Johnny Lee) makes some interesting points about getting technology out of the lab into people’s hands and the power of video in academia/research. He put a video on YouTube about this hack - it was view 1 million times in the first week. People from around the world started posting their own hacks on Youtube. His software was downloaded half a million times in 3 months.

Hello,

As part of a posting on Terra Incognita titled Fun at ADEC, VideoAnt, and OER In Mexico, I mentioned an interesting tool that I saw presented at the ADEC meeting. You can go into the VideoAnt site and easily play because they provide a sample video to work on, or if you have a URL, you can test the tool out on your own video. Here is the bit from the post:

I also want to point you to an interesting Video Annotation technology that was demonstrated by David Ernst, who serves as the Director of Academic and Information Technology at the University of Minnesota’s College of Education & Human Development. VideoAnt is a web-based video annotation application that is still in early development, but shows a lot of promise. Right now it only deals with FLV (Flash video) files and it has a relatively small development team working on it, but it shows great promise. I hope that this project goes the OSS Community route and supports more non-proprietary file formats to maximize its impact on education. To learn more and have some fun, visit the VideoAnt site and try it out. Feel free to tell us what you think.free to tell us what you think.

Remember, no jokes about software bugs!

You might be interested in some of the materials on this page.

www.jimcarroll.com

The Master of Business Innovation is interesting, I’ve just printed off 10 Great Words.

www.jimcarroll.com/ideas.htm

Have any of you read First, Break All The Rules
“What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently”
By Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman

I’m intrigued by the summary from www.bizsum.com/articles/art_first-break-all-the-rules.php

Here’s something to whet your appetite

Based on a mammoth research study conducted by the Gallup Organization involving
80,000 managers across different industries, this book explores the challenge of
many companies - attaining, keeping and measuring employee satisfaction. Discover
how great managers attract, hire, focus, and keep their most talented employees!

Key Ideas:
1. The best managers reject conventional wisdom.
2. The best managers treat every employee as an individual.
3. The best managers never try to fix weaknesses; instead they focus on strengths
and talent.
4. The best managers know they are on stage everyday. They know their people are
watching every move they make.
5. Measuring employee satisfaction is vital information for your investors.
6. People leave their immediate managers, not the companies they work for.
7. The best managers are those that build a work environment where the employees
answer positively to these

12 Questions:

a. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
b. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
c. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best everyday?
d. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
e. Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a person?
f. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
g. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
h. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
i. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
j. Do I have a best friend at work?
k. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
l. This last year, have I had the opportunity at work to learn and grow?