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The emergence of the internet has given people the opportunity to become as visible as they want to be. Visibility means people can spill their guts and reveal themselves in so many new ways. We can post our opinions on blogs, update our ‘status’ as often as we want on Facebook, Tweet about things we like or dislike and put up our photo’s for people to rate. Why do we do this? And is it good or bad?

I would say that this desire to be seen online mimics our need to be seen offline. Why do most human beings want to become celebrities? It’s simple, for love and for power. All of us need and want love and many of us want power (to varying degrees). Take for example sites like hotornot.com and soyouthinkyourecool.com which allow you to put up your picture and something about yourself for others to rate. This way strangers can weigh in on whether you’re pretty or cool, but why do we care what strangers say? They don’t know us or impact our lives in any way. Perhaps that’s the key. Since they don’t know us they’re not like our family or friends who have a biased opinion. However while these ratings may be more truthful, they’re totally superficial. This is where the fine line between wanting love and vanity emerges. Seeking social approval from friends and colleagues is natural and healthy (to a certain degree). Seeking approval from strangers over the internet is like a call for help.

In fact in our quest for social approval what seems worse than a good or bad rating, is no rating at all. Having your blog, profile or photos ignored is like being banished into the desert or sitting by yourself in the corner of the classroom. The instances where it’s worse to be poorly rated than ignored is in those unfortunate cases where bullying and ostracism have occurred. In general however we want to maximize the number of comments, ratings and friends we have on Facebook (even if we barely know these ‘friends’). Building our ratings and friends simply to have them is a façade that shows we are important and loved. This again is a call for help.

Of course there are legitimate benefits to social media. The ability to connect with people, share ideas, promote our businesses and so on via social media is great. What is not so great is our society’s obsession with rating and being rated. The internet is a powerful tool and many people in the world are now on it. Therefore we should expect every corner of human thought and behavior to manifest itself there. However we should take care to spend our time and direct our thoughts to positive ideals and not worry about how we’re viewed by people we will never meet.

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They say if you give a man a fish you’ve fed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish then you’ve fed him forever. So why don’t we apply this logic in the classroom? In other words why don’t we teach students (of all ages) how to start a business of their own instead of relying on paychecks from an employer? I have a few theories on this;

1. Business is something you learn on your own - The conventional wisdom is that you learn ‘the ropes’ of business as an apprentice and then branch out to start your own business. While this is a valid path I think this applies to a small number of entrepreneurs these days. Most people spend many years in a corporation hating their job and not imagining that there may be a better way (as I did). Typically the people who make this leap have been forced to since they were laid off or had to leave before they had a nervous breakdown.

2. Schools aren’t prepared to teach entrepreneurship - School curricular don’t have the means to teach this because there hasn’t been enough demand historically. Furthermore teachers typically don’t have any entrepreneurial experience to draw on so they would need to bring in outside speakers for help. This isn’t a bad thing however it would take a real push to convince the school board.

3. This is what business school is for, isn’t it? – Typically people think that business is a complex topic that should be left for business school. However while business school is useful for those who want to specialize in finance, marketing etc. it’s not for everyone. This doesn’t mean that the broader audience shouldn’t learn business skills. The student interested in cooking may want to open a restaurant someday or the student interested in math may open an engineering consultancy or web development company.

Giving students an exposure to business means teaching them how to develop products, market them, manage inventory, deal with customers and finances. Certainly the complexity of these topics will increase as students progress through the years. As we don’t teach elementary students calculus, we wouldn’t teach younger children about corporate finance or tax optimization. However there are many important lessons that they can learn which will benefit them greatly in the future. The payoff to the student would be a sense of empowerment to be able to start and successfully manage their own businesses. The benefit to us (as a society) would be a stronger economy with less unemployment since small business is the engine of job and economic growth.

Andrew Hargadon has written a great piece entitled ‘7 Ways to Make Students more Entrepreneurial‘ which discusses how we can enhance our educational system to integrate entrepreneurship.

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In life we tend to study only successful people, companies, governments and so on. Even when we study the lives of these “successes” we tend to gloss over their mistakes, indiscretions and failures. Take for example, Abraham Lincoln who is considered one of America’s greatest presidents. He had a number of failures on his road to the White House (listed here ). He lost numerous political races and even had a nervous breakdown at one point.

So what’s the point? Perhaps we can learn just as much or more from a person’s successes as from their failures. All of us have faced and will face again, both success and failure in school, work or life.  Therefore we need to accept that both will be a part of our lives. Furthermore we need to learn how to take our mistakes and turn them into successes. Take for example Donald Trump, he’s a multi-millionaire who has been enormously successful in business. However, he wasn’t always a success. When the real estate market tanked in the early 90’s, his fortune evaporated and he was left owing over $900 million dollars to banks. He once remarked that he drove past a homeless man one day and said ‘that man is $900 million dollars richer than me!’. He didn’t let his failure become associated with who he was. Instead he kept working and learned from past mistakes. This is something we should all aspire to. This is why I recommend that after every group project that the group gets together and fills out a lessons learned document. This serves to document your successes and mistakes and understand why they occurred.

Finally, this post was motivated by a great speech by J.K. Rowling who was the graduation speaker at Harvard in 2008. Her speech discusses the power of going your own way in life and what failure has to teach us. She certainly would know what both failure and success feel like. She wrote Harry Potter while almost homeless and broke. It is now a billion dollar industry. Please check out her speech;

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I don’t know about you, but I am the type of person that likes to get things quickly and not spend a lot of time debating or arguing. Case in point, whenever I go shopping I tend to buy things quickly with the goal of getting out of the store as soon as possible. This usually results in my forgetting to purchase a few items or my buying something which is overpriced or doesn’t fit right.

I have realized, the hard way, that whenever I spend a few moments and make a list of things I need to buy my shopping experience is greatly enhanced. When I use a checklist I tend to find what I need faster and almost never have to go back to the grocery store to buy things I had forgotten to earlier. The idea is that writing down what you need to do actually helps you to do it. This concept can be applied to a group project.

The act of writing down something seems to enhance its importance at the same time as helping us remember what to do. Daniel Boorman of Boeing Airplanes has written about the importance of checklists in the operation of commercial Boeing aircraft. According to Boorman, ‘In five years of service …the tool [checklists] has consistently found to prevent errors’[i]. Furthermore, noted surgeon and author Atul Gawande has written an article (which is a must read) that has morphed into a book (called ‘The Checklist Manifesto‘) that really addresses the need for simple checklists in complex places like an intensive care unit. Gawande discusses situations where hospital staffs have been able to treat severely injured people in ICUs, where time and process are extremely important, by using checklists. The checklist in this case is a way of ensuring that all the necessary steps have been followed and that the correct process is being implemented.

To extend the point, Gawande discusses the work of Peter Pronovost who has successfully implemented the use of checklists in hospitals around the world. Pronovost’s work has shown that checklists have reduced the incidence of preventable complications such as infection. By following a simple checklist, doctors and nurses discovered that they were routinely skipping steps in accepted medical practices. The reason wasn’t necessarily because they were poorly trained or lazy, but simply that in the confusion of the moment that they forgot. Furthermore, as was the case at Sinai-Grace hospital in Michigan, the necessary supplies such as certain soaps and gowns weren’t usually available. Hence this was an issue of ensuring that the right steps were documented and could be followed.

From this work I think we can dispel a couple of myths about the use of checklists which are that  they’re only for the chronically forgetful or stupid. As we’ve seen, even doctors, nurses and pilots can skip crucial steps so we can rule out forgetfulness and stupidity. Rather I would suggest that checklists act as both reminders and enforcers. They remind us of the sometimes mundane and they enforce a systematic approach.

Working in group projects also requires a systematic approach in which following certain steps can greatly help your group. At EnterTheGroup.com (a free site for managing group projects) we supply users with a checklist which breaks down a project into 4 phases. The first phase is called ‘Pre-Project’ and asks questions concerning how you will organize your group, if everyone knows the objective of the project and if misunderstandings are being taken care. These are all important steps to think about before you start working on your project. The next phase of the project is called ‘Project Proposal’. This is where your group will start to organize specifically how it wants to tackle the project. It involves making sure you have had an initial meeting, written up a project outline, chosen a project coordinator and so on. The third phase is called ‘Work breakdown’ and it involves making sure that everyone in the group is communicating about their tasks and milestones. The final phase is called ‘Project Wrap-up’ where the project is near completion and everyone should make sure that all the assigned tasks have been completed, the project has been reviewed and a lessons learned document has been filled out.

Following a process when it comes to working on projects is essential and the checklist is one powerful way of ensuring that everything gets done.

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[i] “Safety Benefits of Electronic Checklists: An analysis of Commercial Transport Accidents” by Daniel Boorman, Boeing Airplanes

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I just read an article from Forbes.com which discusses the new Center for Leadership at Dartmouth’s business school. The idea is that leadership can be taught and that an important component of leadership is knowing yourself. If you don’t know yourself, how will you know your strengths and weaknesses? Furthermore, how will you know your strengths and weaknesses in a crisis situation? While I think this is important, it raises a lot of questions in my mind.

One question is, can leadership be defined? Some people not only say yes, but that leadership can be learned as well (see ‘Can Leadership be Learned?‘ ).  In my view, truly great leaders are born with a set of special characteristics which are given the right combination of environment and circumstance to allows these skills to come to fruition. Great leaders require catalysts to propel them to greatness. Think of any great leader like Churchill, Lincoln, Napoleon or Gandhi and what comes to mind is always the enormous struggles they faced. However, this is not to say that great leaders don’t learn how to lead through experience. They have the seeds of leadership within them, but they require life experience to develop those skills.

What would have happened if Gandhi had been born in Ohio in the 1960’s? This is not to slag Ohio or the 60’s but simply my question is how would have Gandhi lived his life had he been born in a quiet place at a quiet time? Would he still have become a great leader? Perhaps yes and perhaps no, but what is likely is that he would have been some type of leader. Maybe we would have never have heard of him, but he would surely be some type of community or religious leader. The point is that

So what are these special characteristics that great leaders share? Well if you study the history of these men and women you see a few commonalities;

1. A compelling vision – They all have an idea of the type of business, country, army etc. that they want to create. Their vision is something which motivates people to follow them so that they can become a part of making the vision a reality.

2. Communication - What good is having a compelling vision if you can’t explain it to people? Great leaders speak to their followers and get them to understand what’s needed of them.

3. Steadfastness – In times of crisis people seek out stability and meaning. Leaders tend to provide people with certainty that there will be a better tomorrow and that they can trust them to guide them there. When the world is crumbling around them, leaders can remain calm and focused on what they need to do.

4. Fairness – To lead people they must believe that the world you want to create is fair. Fairness simply means that your behavior is in accord with your vision. Being a hypocrite will cause your followers to doubt your sincerity and without followers you’re not a leader.

5. Courage – Leaders don’t let fear rule them, they conquer their fears.

6. Self-knowledge – This is taking a page out of the Forbes article I referenced at the beginning of this article. A leader knows what he is all about, he knows his strengths, weaknesses, what he lives for and what he would die for.

Another question is can ANYONE develop leadership skills? I think the answer is definitely yes. All of us are leaders and followers at something at various points in our life. Leadership is like any other skill or talent; it must be worked on to develop. We develop our skills through practice and we gain opportunities to practice by stepping to new challenges.

Leadership is a skill which will definitely gain you an advantage in group projects and in the working world. If you are still wondering how you can develop your leadership skills well one simple answer is to volunteer as a project coordinator for your group project. Another way to gain practice is to volunteer for your favorite committees, clubs or charities. Try organizing meetings or events for these groups. Another thing you can do is volunteer for Big Brothers/ Big Sisters, where you would be helping a youngster out from time to time by being their ‘leader’ so to speak.

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Ever feel like you have been at work all day and haven’t gotten anything done? And have you wondered where all your time went? And why you have so little to show for at the end of the day? I know the feeling very well since this is something I struggle with constantly. Since I work on many self-directed projects and typically work out of my home, out of necessity, I have had to find ways to become more productive.

The main steps in becoming more productive are getting focused and organized. One way to achieve this is to follow a simple six step plan that I devised. This method has helped me tremendously from wasting time and to produce tangible results at the end of the day. Here are the 6 Steps;

1. Set the Scene - To be effective you need the right scenario and that means No Distractions! Anything that can distract you away from your work, like TV, food, people or music needs to be removed from your office.  Your workplace, wherever or whatever it may be, should be a type of sanctuary for you. It is your own place where you control the outcome of things and where work gets done. Make sure before you start working every morning that your workplace is free of distractions

2. Review your planner or calendar – Checking your calendar first thing in the morning can remind you of your meetings and obligations for the day. Once you have an idea of how much time you will have to dedicate to work today, you can then begin preparing a to-do list (step 3). Also, if you don’t keep a planner or calendar then you should strongly consider keeping one. There are many websites that offer these services for free.

3. Make a list of things to do today – Writing a list will force you to think about specific goals you want to accomplish. These should be things that you can realistically finish in a day or at least come close to finishing. Write down specific goals that you want to accomplish and be very specific. If you write down vague objectives like, ‘work on term project’ or ‘write business proposal’, you will find it difficult to start your tasks and even more difficult to produce some actual deliverables at the end of the day. Deliverables are completed tasks, or more simply something to show for at the end of the day. This list is the most important step of the day for me and I treat it like a contract with myself regarding what I promise to deliver by the end of the day. Of course this contract is on a ‘best-efforts basis’, but always treat it with respect. Finally your list should be somewhere that you can see it clearly, like a whiteboard, tack board or memo pad so that you can be reminded of your responsibilities throughout the day.

4. Check email and the internet at fixed intervals - Part of your job may involve distractions like attending to e-mails or checking the news. These types of things should be checked at regular intervals, like every three or four hours. You’d be amazed how much time is wasted by checking your email constantly. It is not just the time that you spend looking at email or the internet that is wasted, but it is also the time you need to get your mind back into whatever you were doing before you were distracted.

5. If you complete your list of things to do – This may happen a lot the first few times you do this since people tend to overestimate how long things will take. In fact it usually goes one of two ways; either people drastically overestimate how long things will take or they overestimate how much they can do in a day. Either way, their lists need revision. If it turns out that your list is too short then go back to step 3 and make a new list keeping in mind how much time is left in the day.

6. Review your accomplishments at the end of the day – After everything is said and done it is important to determine if you have actually delivered on the work you promised yourself to do. Examine what you did and did not accomplish and ask yourself if the quality of work is what you expected. Also, if there were things you didn’t complete on your list, ask yourself why you didn’t complete them and what you could do to improve tomorrow.

Now while this plan may be simple, following it religiously is not. It is going to take a commitment of time and effort to make this a part of your routine. Eventually, if you consistently follow the plan, these steps will become natural and you will become much more productive than you could ever imagine. The key is not to try to change your lifestyle in a day, but to make progressive changes daily. There is a concept in Japan called ‘Kaizen’ which is the daily activity of enhancing your workplace (and life) through small progressive changes. Try to implement a form of Kaizen in your life through the steps outlined here and your productivity will increase dramatically.

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Regardless of your political leanings, everyone should admit that Obama’s speech about the situation in Afghanistan last night was well delivered. He spoke to the issues, explained the history of the situation and outlined his vision going forward. He was clear, cogent and spoke intelligently. He also kept his calm in a situation where many people are angry with the government for its lack of strategy or direction.

Apart from the politics, I think this is a great lesson on how to speak to people when you absolutely need to be understood and people are looking for leadership.

watch?v=jnHcHbZi5Bs

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It was not a surprise to me to read this article from the PsyBlog which argues that people in groups tend not to make the best decisions because they don’t share information. From my experience in the money management world I know that people tend to tell you what you want to hear rather than what you ‘need’ to hear. People seek to find the consensus of a group and then quickly join in so as to avoid standing out.

I was aware that stock analysts and portfolio managers follow the herd, but this article cites evidence that even doctors fail to share information when it comes to diagnosing patients (that’s scary). So it would seem that people working in groups, regardless of the industry, tend to fall prey to this phenomenon.

When working on a group project the same issues apply; we have to create an atmosphere of trust where everyone feels safe to share information. We also have to be thorough so that we think about every piece of information that could be relevant to our project.

Check out this great article;http://entertheblog.com/1C

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Have you ever had that feeling where you have so many things to do that you don’t know where to begin? Have you felt anxiety that your project won’t get done on time? I think most of us can relate to that. Sometimes when we are working on a project we compare where we are today to where we need to be in the future and can’t imagine how we will ever get there! This is when panic sets in and your project can become adversely affected.

There is a way to make your life easier though. It’s called chunking, which means to break your project into a series of smaller bite size pieces. While the name is a bit ridiculous, the principle is very useful and has helped me many times when I felt overwhelmed. Back in the 1950’s a psychologist from Harvard named George Miller published an article arguing that the human mind has a short term memory capacity of approximately 7 items. Beyond 7 items it becomes much harder for people to absorb and memorize information. This is why phone numbers are only 7 digits long. This is also why we need to break down large projects into smaller pieces.

A large project is really a collection of many smaller pieces. However sometimes we don’t see the trees for the forest, which means that we forget to think of all the smaller pieces that make up the whole. Whenever I have felt frustrated or overwhelmed by a project, whether it was building a house or a business, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I have to take things one step at a time. This means that I can’t finish my project as quickly and easily as I would like to. To throw out another cliché, we must remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Things of substance and value take a lot of hard work and planning.

Chopping your project into smaller parts isn’t that hard, it just requires analyzing how a project should unfold. For example if you’re building a house, you obviously don’t start with the roof. The first thing you do is design a floor plan, then you work on excavating your property for a foundation to be built and so on. Each one of these steps can then be broken down into further pieces. For example to design a floor plan you may need to go to the library and look at design books, then buy home design software, then draw a plan, then revise it a 100 times then contact a drafter or architect and so forth. Each of these steps is manageable and easier to conceptualize and complete as opposed to something vague like ‘design a house’. Therefore the key to chunking your project is to think about it in a linear way. Think of it literally as walking up a set of stairs, where each steps leads you closer to where you want to be.

The motivational guru, Tony Robbins, discusses chunking in a lot of his work. He talks about the very real problem of using chunking as an obstacle rather than a tool. If someone is not motivated to undertake a project, let’s say it’s starting a workout program, then they will focus on all the steps that you need to undertake to get started. For example they might say that to start a workout program they need to buy new workout clothes, then shop around for a gym, then re-schedule their days to fit in working out, then find a program they like and on and on. These are all excuses of course since if we were doing something that people enjoyed, like going to the beach, then they would simplify their work to just getting up and going to the beach. They wouldn’t think about packing the food, sunscreen, toys, water or fighting traffic and then trying to find a parking spot. The point being that our initial motivation for a project can affect how we visualize it unfolding.

In chunking our projects down we need to find a balance between being too vague and too specific. The whole point of this process is to make sure that we view our projects as manageable and realistic.

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This is an interesting read in the NYT. I think it is inevitable that technology and education will become more and more intertwined. This is just another confirmation that we don’t need to sit in classrooms to learn and collaborate with people and professors. Let’s hope for my selfish sake that this applies to group projects as too.

I am also really intrigued that Scott McNealy of Sun Micro is a believer of making education better through technology. This is the same view that we share at EnterTheGroup.com.

http://entertheblog.com/cL

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