The future of Learning – Are you part of the Learning Revolution?

July 23, 2014

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Alvin Toffler

In the future (see also here), I believe that our ability to learn and take advantage of varying environmental shifts and opportunities will define how successful we are and how successful our organisations become.

Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg

The concept of the Learning organisation has been discussed at length and indeed some companies have embraced it looking forward to how the marketspace would be endeavouring to equip themselves with the right tools and right skill-sets and attitudes that would enable them to remain relevant and succeed in the future.

Considering the Future, it is hard to predict what the art of Learning will look like. Technology, social media, interactive learning spaces and our thinking about education and learning is rapidly shifting e.g. embracing concepts like “multiple intelligences” (see here) slowly but surely will remove ourselves from the overly structured and dry learning spaces.

However, it will take years if not decades to fully understand how this shift in thinking will evolve and how it will affect us. To understand this better consider that:

“this is exactly what happened with the invention of the printing press. When Gutenburg first invented the printing press in the 15th century he did not have any idea of the transformative change this machine would bring to the entire humankind. A century later and after printing became a taken-for-granted part of life only then people realized the grandeur of such invention. This is probably what will happen with learning too”. educatorstechnology

As part of this discussion, I came across three resources that very eloquently discuss this issue and contribute to our thinking on how to make Learning more effective for our organisations and for ourselves.

Ken Robinson – his famous talk on the Learning Revolution on TED.com

Ken’s book the Element is also a great resource on the topic.

Sugata Mitra’s TED talk on his Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) Project.

SOLE is a great paradigm of how technology can stimulate engagement and learning.

FInally, Knowledgeworks have taken a look into the future of education and learning put their thoughts in this great infographic.

The Future of Learning - knowledgeworks

The Future of Learning – knowledgeworks

Download the pdf version from here.

 

How do you promote learning and employee engagement within your team and your own organisation?

 

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Filed under Effective Communication, Future Trends, Leadership, Team Development Series Tagged with ,

David Allen – GTD system – Practical Personal Productivity

July 11, 2014

“Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.”David Allen

We live in a world that is full of demands, requirements, deadlines and disruptions.

How can someone overcome the challenges this posits and enjoy the benefits?

One way is by developing a sound system of personal productivity (so-called,Action Management) that allows for macro-planning but at the same time for getting the everyday tasks done towards achieving our goals in life.

A great system that be-frees our potential can be found in David Allen’s – Getting Things done (GTD).

The system cannot be explained in one blog post so, I will try to provide an introduction here.

Keep on reading if you want to find out the basic tenets and thinking about this system as well as a presentation that goes through and additional resources for putting a concrete Action Management system in your life.

David Allen

David Allen

 

INTRODUCTION

Action Management can be defined as the process of creating a system in your life that helps you stay on top of your tasks, projects, aims and maintain an excellent work effort.

 

GTD system’s basic tenets

“You can do anything, not everything” David Allen. 

 

David Allen GTD system is formed around two basic axes:

1) Capture your thoughts.

The idea is that we are burdened by the constant flow of thoughts and actions that come to our minds.

As you may have noticed these may be in irrelevant random order or in sequence.

Worrying about forgetting something to be done, relying purely on memory alone is quite a stress in itself.

Tests have provided strong indications that the average person can retain around the 7 items in a list. Check this out when you test your memory when going to the supermarket. Some details can be found here.

In modern Western societies especially when we are constantly dealing with conflicting demands the magical number 7 is really low when compared to the amount of tasks one needs to retain to accomplish his /her goals.

Moreover, when the focus and stress is on retaining the menial tasks that need to be done to get by, one may lose the opportunity to create the necessary “mindspace” to think about the grander picture.

So, capturing your thoughts is very handy and be-freeing.

2) Focus on the Next Action

David’s system does not subscribe to the ABC rule (see here) but breaks down the projects in individual tasks (a task may be defined as something that can be accomplished in 20 minutes or less) and then urges us to focus only on the next step – next action towards achieving our goal.

As Master Yoda might say “do, or do not” – there is no priority C.  🙂

Of course, the system can be modified to use e.g. the Pomodoro technique for focus management (considering accomplishment of individual tasks) and the ABC method  to plan your projects and what comes first during your weekly/ monthly / yearly reviews. You can use SCAMPER for this (see here and here)

Working in small chunks is aligned with the idea elaborated before in the blog post “how to eat an elephant” and is used extensively by successful professionals.

Whatever productivity system you choose to work with, focusing on the next action in an invaluable tool.

 

PRESENTATION

The below presentation is elaborating on the GTD system and its main tenets.

 

 

 

Special thanks to Beth Wilton for collaborating in the development of the presentation.

 

If you are interested some further reading have a look at multitasking and ways to approach it (here).

 

 

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Image courtesy of http://www.thelegacyproject.co.za

 

Filed under Productivity, Team Development Series Tagged with , ,

How to perform a mid-year Procurement review!

July 5, 2014

Constant reviews are part of every effective system. As Peter Drucker mentioned, every so often, it is crucial to do the “Feedback Analysis” in three steps:

1. Whenever you take a key decision or action, write down what you expect to happen.
2. Review results at regular intervals and compare them with expectations.
3. Use this feedback as a guide and road to reinforce strengths and eliminate weaknesses.

                                                                                                                         Peter Drucker

The end of the Financial year (in Australia) and reaching the mid-calendar year point in other parts of the world, makes for a great opportunity to review the progress made so far, look afresh at your personal, team and/or departmental KPIs and goals for the year and review any new opportunities that may have come up.

Having an appraisal review once a year may have been effective in previous generations but not in the modern post-GFC fast paced marketspace.

Read on if you want to learn about a scheme for performing a General review and a comprehensive checklist to go through during a Procurement specific one.

 

Alexander Knight

GENERAL REVIEW

So, utilise the One-on-One meetings (or other frameworks, some of which I mentioned here and here) sit down with your staff and/or book a meeting room for a space free of distractions and revisit:

  1. Your KPIs
  2. Your team’s or department’s KPIs
  3. Opportunities that may have come up
  4. Challenges that have occurred
  5. Projects in development that may need your contribution or that you can contribute to.

 

PROCUREMENT REVIEW

Especially, for Procurement, there is a more specific list of things to do.

As Richard Waugh, VP of Corporate Development at Zycus, mentioned in his recent post titled “Spring Cleaning time in the Procurement household:A Checklist” in spendmatters.com below are some key areas every Procurement professional should look into.

Based on the article I put together a checklist which I thought I’d share. For more information please refer to Richard’s article which makes a compelling read:

CHECKLIST for EFFECTIVE PROCUREMENT REVIEWS:

Contracts

  1. Look for contracts that have expired or are due to do so soon. Update your Contract calendar.
  2. Review at least one auto-renewal of an evergreen agreement.
  3. Look for maintenance agreements on long discarded assets or not used software licenses. 
  4. Review that rebate provisions are up to date.

Spend Analysis

  1. Refresh your spend data to evaluate changes in spending patterns.
  2. Analyze for purchase price variance i.e. paying different prices for the same item.
  3. Analyze for Payment Term Rationalization – standardizing on contracted payment terms with preferred vendors.
  4. Look for Supplier Rationalization opportunities i.e. root out “supplier creep”

Supplier Management

  1. Look for duplicate and inactive vendors in your vendor database.
  2. Ensure that insurance, quality, diversity, or other certifications are up-to-date.
  3. Update the Supplier segmentation matrix (categories: strategic, critical, important or tactical).
  4. Ensure Supplier Managers are allocated to strategic, critical and important suppliers.

Category Management/Sourcing

  1. Review category strategies taking into account commodity price trends and forecasts.
  2. Look for opportunities of hedging through longer term contracts where price increases are projected.

Performance Management

  1. Refresh your scorecard including value offered by Procurement and Contract Management in recent gains in “spend under management, realized cost savings, increased user adoption, cycle time reduction, contract compliance, supplier enablement” etc.
  2. Benchmark your performance against the market. 

 

Image courtesy of Alexander Kaiser, pooliestudios.com / www.flickr.com

Filed under Category Management, Continuous Improvement, Contract Management, Procurement, Sourcing Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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