My New Work-Life Balance With iGoogle – Series 1

igoogle Group

Work: I am looking after the development of a few thousand leaders and employees with a very diversified cultural background stretching over 14 hours time zone.  Life: I have two little kids and my wife is working as a system engineer.

Over the past years I have aquired many new skills and best practices to be more effective. I use speed-reading, speed writing, speed leading and also the process from David Allen – Getting things done – The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and Six Sigma.

And now I am starting to use the latest powers of Web 2.0 to get one more step ahead in designing the ultimate work-life balance.
It was last Sunday when I came about iGoogle. And there it was the ultimate environment to get my whole life and work organized in an instant.
So what has changed since then ?
I have setup two iGoogle accounts – one is for work and the other one for life.

Whenever I am at work I go to my iGoogle work account. There I have a number of gadgets that do some fancy stuff for me. I get the latest leadership quote of the day, the stock price of the company I work for, the latest news through Google Reader about my employer, all the news about Management, Leadership, Talent Management, Employee Development, Career Development and Human Resources and the weather forecast. I have also added Google Bookmarks and the be Twittered Gadget where I see the latest twitter for example from New York Times.
What is the result of this iGoogle for work ? Well, it takes me just 5 minutes and I have the latest update on my company and on my profession.
What other gadgets should I add ? Please leave your suggestions in the comment section below. Thank you.

Twice a day I will log into my iGoogle for Life.  There I can leave a note for my wife or vice versa, see where it is raining or snowing (radar) right now, the receipe of the day or I can search for one, the latest discount offers, another to do list, the snow report of our favourite ski resort, time table search for the public transport, what is on teli tonight, what are the latest movies released, send a free sms, MSN Messenger, News (Menshealth, automotor, etc.), Telephone Book search, Route Search, Translator and search on eBay.
What other gadgets should I add ? Please leave your suggestions in the comment section below. Thank you.

Interesting Blog Posts around Development and Web 2.0

New:

New: The Road To Financial Armageddon Series
Another interesting story about transformation. This time it is about personal cashflow management. How Trent Hamm managed to turn the looming bankruptcy of his family around and turn it into a sustainable financial success. Cashflow Management is key for any successful sustainable endeavour.

1) Web 2.0 in HCM
What it will do for Human Resources HR function ?

2) My prediction for 2008 – groupware is so cool
Why 2008 will be the year of web based groupware ?

3) Personal Learning Environments
What is are personal Learning Environments and what are their benefits ?

4) All about conferencing
What conference tools are around and what are their costs, etc ?

5) Personal Learning Environment for language learning
What does a Personal Learning Environment for language learning looks like ?
Fanatastic, this is just what I was looking for. This shows the state of the art in learning, wow . It also lists a very interesting free collaborative environment for language learning called MyHappyPlanet.

6) Jobs and Careers in Social and Collaborative Learning
What are the future or emerging jobs in careers in social and collaborative learning ?

7) How to become  a professional blogger ?
This is a great post on professional development. I find this a very good description of how someone transitioned over years into professional blogging. A must read in my opinion.

8) The Ten Most Marketable Web Development Skills ?
What are the current marketable technical skills for a web developper ? This post was published in December 2007. For each technical skill the author listed links to relevant learning resources. Excellent!

9)e-Learning Reloaded: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Info Junkies, Researchers & Students
How to collect all your notes, lists, links, etc. online for free ? How to get 1GB free storage space ? How to create free mindmaps and flowcharts collaboratively ? And many more interesting helpers….

10) How Tom Peters is using a wiki to collect real life management stories ?
Another example on how to collect collabaretively knowledge continuously for your
development.
You want to know about the management guru Tom Peters, check out his Blog.

11) 1000 True Fans
What does it take to build a sustainable living online ? Article by Kevin Kelly, founder executive editor of Wired News.
How this would translate into a winning strategy in making a living through teaching online is explored by Brian clark in his article: A 20-Step Process For Finding Your 1,000 True Fans.

12) Doing Business in Second Life (A Virtual World)
How people make a real living in a virtual environment ? These are one of these emerging jobs that did not exist just a couple of years ago.

List of Developmental Assignments 2.0

Developmental Assignments 2.0 

This is one of my favorite topic in development. Seminars, books, self study are not as effective as doing it, trying it out, putting it into action. Developmental assignments are the best way to leverage your development. 

There are plenty of possibilities to choose a developmental assignment for inside or outside of your job or while you are in between jobs. This book lists quite a number of assignments: McCauley, C., Developmental Assignment, ISBN: 1-882197-91-7 

Nowadays a lot of great assignments can be found on the internet. My intention is to collect them here. In order to better group these assignments I have chosen to list them against the MBA Core Curricula’s. I think this offer as good way to identify an assignments that would develop you further in the respective area.Another way to list assignments is against global competencies. Whilst this is an interesting way to structure development assignments yet these competencies vary from company to company.I took this MBA Core Curricula’s from the book “What the best MBAs know”, Edited by Peter Navarro, McGraw Hill 2005, Page 7

I would be happy to receive any suggestions around assignments in the commentary box. Thank you very much for your support in advance.

The list will be continuously updated. 

1. The Strategic and Tactical MBA
1.1 Management Strategy
1) An Archive of successful and failed business plans. (Business Plan Archive)
2) Vote on the best business plan. Get an eye for the winning plan. Another contest where one can vote.
3) Evaluate Business Models or submit your own. Click here to go to the site Ideawicket.
4) Web 2.0: “The next step is to start a planning process with a comprehensive map of your innovation ecosystem that positions your value creation and assesses the interdependencies that will determine the flow of benefits and your ability to capture a share of them. this is not a traditional competitive landscape or value-chain analysis but an analysis of the participants creating knowledge pertinent to your existing and future buiness. While this includes business partners and competitiors, it extends to academia, public research institutes, think tanks, creative communities or communities of practice, and contract research organizations. The map needs to be global and cover all relevant disciplines that intersect with your strategy.”Tapscott,Don; Williams Anthony D.: Wikinomics, Atlantic Books, 2007, Page 277 f.

1.2 Macroeconomics
1) Manage a virtual fund on Marketocracy. More about Maretocracy in wikipedia.It has several benefits to run a fund or participate in a club. It let’s you wear an investor’s head for some time and you need to take the macroeconomical situation into account. This is an interesting assignment for future leaders who will be involved in investor relations or who are going to run a business. 

2. The MBA Toolbox
2.1. Quantative Analysis (Statistics, Decision Analysis, and Modeling) 

2.2 Managerial Economics 

3. The Functional MBA
3.1 Operations Management 
3.2 Marketing
3.2.1 Public Relations
1) Be an editor on the community Digg. More about Digg in wikipedia. An opportunity to see what news in a democratic editorial environment makes it to the top.
2) A longer term assignment is to create your own blog and attract readers to your blog. 3) Colloborative Product Development and Design. CrowdSpirit.
4) A Rapid Prototyping Platform. Create an idea and sell it. Ponoko. 

3.3 Financial Accounting 

3.4 Managerial Accounting 

3.5 Corporate Finance 

3.6 Information Technology
1) Participate in a crowdsourcing project. Cambrian House. This one is IT related. 
2) Create a mashup. Paul Rademacher (Picture) created the mashup housingmaps. This got him later a job with Google.

4. The Organizational and Leadership MBA
4.1 Organizational Behavior and Leadership
1) Build your own community. Ning is platform where you can create your own social network. More about Ning in wikipedia.
2) Online Brainstorming. Brainreactions.
3)  Participate in a crowdsourcing project where you take the lead or support the leader. 

4.2 Human Resources Management
4.2.1 Learning & Development
1) Deliver Online Training. If there are no opportunities at your current company the option is to teach via the online learning community WiZiQ. You will also need to understand the technology in order to deliver your training. It prepares you to deliver your message to virtual teams and or give virtual presentations or trainings.
2) Career Planning or Planning your Development. The first step is self assessment.Here you find links to free Self-Assessment tools. (for example Myers-Briggs Personality type test) 
3) Leadership Development: “The starting point for any mager is personal use of the new collaborative technologies, preferably in conjunction with a Net Generation youngster. Ask your college student son or daughter to show you Facebook. Join MySpace. Edit a page in Wikipedia. Create a video clip for YouTube. Get a taste for how these open communities work.” Tapscott,Don; Williams Anthony D.: Wikinomics, Atlantic Books, 2007, Page 277.

5. The Political and Regulatory MBA
5.1 Business and Government 

5.2 Corporate Ethics Still verifying:

Second Life. This online game offers interesting opportunities to develop a number of the areas. One could be marketing, but I have not yet looked at it.

I looking for to list other successful collaborative assignments/projects here:
1) www.katarinalist.net is one of my favourite examples. Tapscott,Don; Williams Anthony D.: Wikinomics, Atlantic Books, 2007, Page 185 ff.

Eight Best Practices For Your Employability

Employability is the capability to stay employed or finding a new employement.

Your Experiences, Knowledge, Skills, Behaviours and Attitudes will influence your employability.

What are the Best Practices to maintain your employability as you go through your life ?
1. Employability is a Continuous Excercise
Employability is similar to staying fit. You need to excercise continuously. Too often I see people stopping this excercise as they grow in their career or reach a certain age. Yes it is an effort and it is the same as with excercising. Every time you need to overcome your inner resistance.

2. Experience matters – Overreliance on Titles and Certificates
Continuously look for challenges inside and outside of work, during your time of job search or while you study or even when you are retired.
Experience matters most. It is a powerful statement about yourself if you can say that you did this and such thing and had this and such successful outcome or this and such lessons learned.
Example: Someone would work in R&D and in his or her spare time would start a blog. How powerful would it be if this person could say at one point that by using marketing techniques she or he was able to increase the number of readers. This will show that this person demonstrated capabilities outside of his or her domain of expertise.

3. Use the Power of Developmental Assignments – stop looking for the easy way
A lot of research has been done on development assignments. These assignments are key when increasing your employability. By planning these activities well you can broaden your experience base across functions and businesses and demonstrate capabilities that are currently not fully utilized in your current development path.
I recommend you to read the book:
McCauly, Cynthia D.: Developmental Assignments – Creating Learning Expriences without Changing Jobs, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, North Carolina

4. Web2.0 – don’t miss it
Get yourself an insight in Web2.0 and what it can do for your area of expertise. Example: I myself as I am in Human Resources Development monitor regularly what Web2.0 could potentially change in the domain of Employee Development.

5. Networking face to face
The older you get the more you should put away time for networking. Toastmasters is for example an ideal place for networking and you improve your leadership and presentations skills at the same time

6. Social Networking via Web
Create yourself a compelling presence in Linkedin, Xing or Facebook. Additionally use your blog to list your experiences and successes and participate in relevant user forums and discussion groups.

7. Improve Your Communication Skills
Never give up on improving your communication skills. Besides Presentation Skills (toastmasters for example) take a negotiation skills training, join a debate club or particpate in politics. Read up on Listening Skills, writing skills or anything else you find on communication skills in the web. Communication is the same as learning a language. You need to practice continuously. If you do not practice your skill level same like with languages will eventually decrease over time.

8. Business Skills 
Any organisation profit or non-profit is a complex system with many processes in place.
The more you have an overview of an organisation the more your learn about organisations the more easier you can navigate your development path.
I recommend you to read the book to get you a good up to date overview:
Navarro, Peter: What the Best MBAs Know, McGraw-Hill, 2005 or visit
www.peternavarro.com