We loved this explanation of the relationship between innovation and #SOPA - and the example Brad Burnham uses to illustrate his point? It's a workforce example. Thank you Brad Burnham, Big Think, and @danielhonan.

Here are most of the cited links & resources (the commentary is from my email to Greg):

1. Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. The examples in the book are a little dated but the overall observations holds. And we’re only at the beginning…

2. Dan Pink’s Free Agent Nation. I swear I thought we’d have a hundred examples of the Freelancer’s Union by now…

3. Derek Sievers’ How to Start a Movement in Three Minutes. Where I’d quibble with him is on the idea that leadership is overrated. I think it’s just the idea of leader at the top that’s overrated – leadership is a role, not a person, it’s important but can be shared. And the more, the merrier.

4. Charlene Li’s Open Leadership. I reviewed it on my Cisco blog here.

5. Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner’s The Truth about Leadership. I also did a blog post on that one.

6. UsNow – how do I love this?!?! It’s a little dated but continues to inspire! Here’s the clip that gives me chills every single time (at this point, I could narrate this film – click on part 1).

7. Social Innovation Exchange

8. June Holley’s blog is a great intro to Social Network Analysis

9. Here’s my presentation on Crowdfunding from REVV 2011.

10. Learning platforms – here’s a good summary of potential disruptors. Here’s a list of learning platforms.

We came across this video in Big Think. 

We were so pleased to hear Joi Ito, Executive Director of the MIT Media Lab, communicating the importance of adopting a wide-angle point of view (WEadership practice #1) and facilitating connections between people (WEadership practice #2).

We liked the same quote author Meagan Erickson did:

“The world is full of expertise,” says Joi Ito, “What it lacks is agility and context.”

Thanks to Joi Ito for his brilliance and humility and to Big Think for sharing it.

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What business are you in?

It’s rarely as simple a question as it seems. Remember the vendors who thought they were in the ice business but were eclipsed by Frigidaire?

Workforce leaders in government agencies, nonprofit organizations or private-sector firms struggle with this question every day as they seek to grow jobs and build prosperity in their communities.

What does it mean to work on “jobs?”

Part of the reason the jobs agenda is so difficult to solve is that it’s not one problem. Most communities face some combination of the following:

• Too few jobs (especially those offering health insurance and family-sustaining wages)
• Skills gaps among applicants competing for good jobs that do exist and those in emerging industries
• Young workers having difficulty making the leap from job to career (or from school to job)
• Older experienced workers who cannot afford to retire or simply want to remain engaged but in different roles than they play today
• Labor markets that lack transparency (e.g., applicants submit hundreds of resumes into “black holes“)
• Persistent poverty, especially among communities of color, which limits access to job
  opportunities and to the social networks that help people advance
• Overcrowded and underfunded public schools and institutions of higher education struggle to cultivate the talents of all of their students
• Ongoing economic shocks—not just unanticipated layoffs, but also natural and weather-related disasters of which there have been 83 in 2011 (a record high in any calendar year)

 These challenges are not for the faint of heart, and cannot be solved by a single leader, organization or sector. But they are among the defining challenges of our day. And courageous leaders in public, private, non-profit, and civic sectors all over the country are quietly stepping forward to tackle them—increasingly, in partnership with one another.

How do effective leaders insure they are making a difference?

The 519 leaders who participated in our study—ranging from mayors and state legislators
to nonprofit and corporate executives—offered the following lessons:

1. Do work that matters. There are a plethora of strategies and approaches for cultivating prosperous families, firms, and communities. And yet, many struggle. If the status quo is not working, effective workforce leaders champion change. They actively seek to understand which problems matter most in their communities and focus on solutions that hold the greatest promise.
2. Do work you do well or could learn to do well.
   There is much work to do, but effective workforce leaders are choosy. They resist the temptation to “do it all” and find ways to apply their individual and organizational strengths while leveraging the contributions of others.
3. Measure what matters most (and share credit for success). Measuring the impact of community change efforts in complex and difficult, but effective leaders invest measurement systems that tell them something about impact, even if imperfectly and even if funders don’t require it.

These leaders we engaged assess their assets relative to community needs not once, but over and over again. The specific value they bring changes with time and circumstances but their contributions remain special and significant.

Are you doing work that really matters? How do you know?

_________________________________

Kristin Wolff and Vinz Koller, of Social Policy Research Associates, authored the WEadership Guide (August 2011), the result of a one-year US Department of Labor study of leadership in the field of public policy concerned with work and learning. They were thrilled at the opportunity to link their professional pursuits (public policy) with their personal commitments to positive social change and innovation, and look to increase, accelerate, and intensify these connections within the field of workforce in the coming months.
The entire project is documented at EnhacingWorkforceLeadership.org. Follow it (and them) at @WFLeadership, @kristinwolff, @kollerv.

_____________________________

What business are you in?

It’s rarely as simple a question as it seems. Remember the vendors who thought they were in the ice business but were eclipsed by Frigidaire?

Workforce leaders in government agencies, nonprofit organizations or private-sector firms struggle with this question every day as they seek to grow jobs and build prosperity in their communities.

What does it mean to work on “jobs?”

Part of the reason the jobs agenda is so difficult to solve is that it’s not one problem. Most communities face some combination of the following:

• Too few jobs (especially those offering health insurance and family-sustaining wages)
• Skills gaps among applicants competing for good jobs that do exist and those in emerging industries
• Young workers having difficulty making the leap from job to career (or from school to job)
• Older experienced workers who cannot afford to retire or simply want to remain engaged but in different roles than they play today
• Labor markets that lack transparency (e.g., applicants submit hundreds of resumes into “black holes“)
• Persistent poverty, especially among communities of color, which limits access to job
  opportunities and to the social networks that help people advance
• Overcrowded and underfunded public schools and institutions of higher education struggle to cultivate the talents of all of their students
• Ongoing economic shocks—not just unanticipated layoffs, but also natural and weather-related disasters of which there have been 83 in 2011 (a record high in any calendar year)

 These challenges are not for the faint of heart, and cannot be solved by a single leader, organization or sector. But they are among the defining challenges of our day. And courageous leaders in public, private, non-profit, and civic sectors all over the country are quietly stepping forward to tackle them—increasingly, in partnership with one another.

How do effective leaders insure they are making a difference?

The 519 leaders who participated in our study—ranging from mayors and state legislators
to nonprofit and corporate executives—offered the following lessons:

1. Do work that matters. There are a plethora of strategies and approaches for cultivating prosperous families, firms, and communities. And yet, many struggle. If the status quo is not working, effective workforce leaders champion change. They actively seek to understand which problems matter most in their communities and focus on solutions that hold the greatest promise.
2. Do work you do well or could learn to do well.
   There is much work to do, but effective workforce leaders are choosy. They resist the temptation to “do it all” and find ways to apply their individual and organizational strengths while leveraging the contributions of others.
3. Measure what matters most (and share credit for success). Measuring the impact of community change efforts in complex and difficult, but effective leaders invest measurement systems that tell them something about impact, even if imperfectly and even if funders don’t require it.

These leaders we engaged assess their assets relative to community needs not once, but over and over again. The specific value they bring changes with time and circumstances but their contributions remain special and significant.

Are you doing work that really matters? How do you know?

_________________________________

Kristin Wolff and Vinz Koller, of Social Policy Research Associates, authored the WEadership Guide (August 2011), the result of a one-year US Department of Labor study of leadership in the field of public policy concerned with work and learning. They were thrilled at the opportunity to link their professional pursuits (public policy) with their personal commitments to positive social change and innovation, and look to increase, accelerate, and intensify these connections within the field of workforce in the coming months.
The entire project is documented at EnhacingWorkforceLeadership.org. Follow it (and them) at @WFLeadership, @kristinwolff, @kollerv.

_____________________________

Photo credit: Flickr frienc eleaf

The Speed of Life

For today’s leaders, the speed and intensity of change in the workplace is among the most significant challenges they face.

Yesterday’s successful approaches may not meet the needs of tomorrow’s customers, employees, or communities. As change occurs, experimentation plays an important role in helping leaders identify new strategies and approaches better suited to emerging demands.

New Ideas Needed

Many leaders know they need new ideas and new ideas need testing.

We found that despite the widespread desire to experiment among leaders and organizations participating in our study, many factors work against trying anything new: risk-averse cultures, resource constraints, incentive systems that favor the status quo or motivate internal competition over collaboration, even just plain inertia.

But these constraints can be managed and appropriate incentives–from public recognition to financial rewards–can support experimentation and create a desirable balance between tried and true methods and innovation approaches.

5 Ways Leaders Can Create Space (and Support) for Experimentation

1. Dedicate staff time and resources to exploring, integrating, and testing new ideas. There are an infinite number of ways this can be structured, but dedicating resources is important because it signals a commitment to innovation.
2. Subject a few existing programs, initiatives, processes, services, or products to close scrutiny to identify needed changes that promise to improve outcomes or increase impact. Make one change. Measure the impact. Repeat.
3. Manage risk openly. This means talking about failure–and owning it collectively. It also means addressing the risk of not trying new things.
4. Document. Document. Document. With every experiment (or near experiment), there is intelligence gathered beyond the narrow set of data associated with a particular change. Why was a given experiment conceived? What was the theory of change in pursuing it? By making a habit out of asking (and answering) these critical questions, leaders
   can create opportunities to learn at all levels – this helps make everyone smarter.
5. Opt for boldness (at least sometimes). It’s easy to get stuck in a series of new small ideas. These are important, but they also tend to be incremental. Leaders can also choose big bold disruptive ideas. They are higher risk, but extremely motivating. (Who doesn’t want to change the world?)

What are you waiting for?

________________________

Kristin Wolff and Vinz Koller, of Social Policy Research Associates, authored the WEadership Guide (August 2011), the result of a one-year US Department of Labor study of leadership in the field of public policy concerned with work and learning. They were thrilled at the opportunity to link their professional pursuits (public policy) with their personal commitments to positive social change and innovation, and look to increase, accelerate, and intensify these connections within the field of workforce in the coming months.
The entire project is documented at EnhacingWorkforceLeadership.org. Follow it (and them) at @WFLeadership, @kristinwolff, @kollerv.

_____________________________

Photo credit: Flickr frienc eleaf

The Speed of Life

For today’s leaders, the speed and intensity of change in the workplace is among the most significant challenges they face.

Yesterday’s successful approaches may not meet the needs of tomorrow’s customers, employees, or communities. As change occurs, experimentation plays an important role in helping leaders identify new strategies and approaches better suited to emerging demands.

New Ideas Needed

Many leaders know they need new ideas and new ideas need testing.

We found that despite the widespread desire to experiment among leaders and organizations participating in our study, many factors work against trying anything new: risk-averse cultures, resource constraints, incentive systems that favor the status quo or motivate internal competition over collaboration, even just plain inertia.

But these constraints can be managed and appropriate incentives–from public recognition to financial rewards–can support experimentation and create a desirable balance between tried and true methods and innovation approaches.

5 Ways Leaders Can Create Space (and Support) for Experimentation

1. Dedicate staff time and resources to exploring, integrating, and testing new ideas. There are an infinite number of ways this can be structured, but dedicating resources is important because it signals a commitment to innovation.
2. Subject a few existing programs, initiatives, processes, services, or products to close scrutiny to identify needed changes that promise to improve outcomes or increase impact. Make one change. Measure the impact. Repeat.
3. Manage risk openly. This means talking about failure–and owning it collectively. It also means addressing the risk of not trying new things.
4. Document. Document. Document. With every experiment (or near experiment), there is intelligence gathered beyond the narrow set of data associated with a particular change. Why was a given experiment conceived? What was the theory of change in pursuing it? By making a habit out of asking (and answering) these critical questions, leaders
   can create opportunities to learn at all levels – this helps make everyone smarter.
5. Opt for boldness (at least sometimes). It’s easy to get stuck in a series of new small ideas. These are important, but they also tend to be incremental. Leaders can also choose big bold disruptive ideas. They are higher risk, but extremely motivating. (Who doesn’t want to change the world?)

What are you waiting for?

________________________

Kristin Wolff and Vinz Koller, of Social Policy Research Associates, authored the WEadership Guide (August 2011), the result of a one-year US Department of Labor study of leadership in the field of public policy concerned with work and learning. They were thrilled at the opportunity to link their professional pursuits (public policy) with their personal commitments to positive social change and innovation, and look to increase, accelerate, and intensify these connections within the field of workforce in the coming months.
The entire project is documented at EnhacingWorkforceLeadership.org. Follow it (and them) at @WFLeadership, @kristinwolff, @kollerv.

This post originally appeared on LeadChange. It is the third in a seven-part series summarizing the findings of a one-year study of workforce leadership in which we identified six practices next-generation leaders are using, comprising a new model of leadership we call WEadership in a nod to its collaborative nature.

_________________________________

WEadership and the Crowd

The idea that leaders “control” the people, information, and resources within their organizations is no longer plausible – if it ever was. Today people use social technologies to connect, share, and collaborate with peers and colleagues who can help them get things done, regardless of position or organizational affiliation.

This shift has created new demands for “transparency” on the part of organizations in public, private, and non-profit sectors alike. Employees, customers, shareholders, citizens, doners, etc. – increasingly, all of them want to make the businesses of doing business more transparent, more visible, and ultimately, more accountable.

Leaders can adapt to these changes by opening up the way they listen, share, and engage with employees, customers, and communities to solve important problems.

Openness in the Organization

Many of the 519 leaders in our study reported that the most important thing leaders can do to open up their organizations is listen. It seems simple, but in a media-saturated environment in which customers tweet, employees blog, and people of all kinds have conversations that can be shared with millions in minutes, listening has become complicated. But listening is critical because conversations about your issues are talking place, with or without you. The insights freely available to good listeners can make a business, while ignoring them can make a business irrelevant.

Sharing, too, has taken new forms. Open leaders are discovering the difference between broadcasting and sharing, and finding the latter a more effective approach to building brands, delivering services, and delighting customers. These leaders are:

• Using social media to host conversations
• Making complex data accessible, beautiful, and easy to understand
• Sharing “drafts” of planned changes to products, services, policies,and business models so they can be improved (rather than rolling out a finished product that meets yesterday’s need).

All of these practices speak to a more iterative approach to problem solving and one that involves more than the experts.

Collaborative Networks Within and Across Organizations

The “org chart” may reflect where people in an organization sit, but rarely how they get their work done or the relative value of their contributions to the enterprise. This is more true today, as employees maintain extensive social networks outside of their organizations. Open leaders understand this. They find ways to invite broad participation in problem-solving within and outside of their organizations. For example, leaders in our study reported experimenting with:

• Social networks that made the knowledge and expertise of individual employees known to everyone;
• Crowdsourcing platforms that invite people to share ideas, knowledge, and opinions at significant scale; and
• Convening partners (who might also be competitors) to develop collaborative solutions to common problems;

Sharing Leadership

Open leaders invite others to share leadership responsibility. They understand that leadership is a role, not a title, and that leadership can come from any corner of any organization or community, not just the management tier. For traditional leaders, this is a significant change. But it also represents a tremendous opportunity to engage more people in more meaningful work toward more significant ends.

Leaders, their organizations, their boards, and their communities will all have to find the particular combination of open leadership practices that is right for them.

Openness is a matter of degree, but it is also inevitable.

______________________________________

Kristin Wolff and Vinz Koller, of Social Policy Research Associates, authored the WEadership Guide (August 2011), the result of a one-year US Department of Labor study of leadership in the field of public policy concerned with work and learning. They were thrilled at the opportunity to link their professional pursuits (public policy) with their personal commitments to positive social change and innovation, and look to increase, accelerate, and intensify these connections within the field of workforce in the coming months. The entire project is documented at EnhacingWorkforceLeadership.org. Follow it at @WFLeadership.