Yesterday was the "Take Back Your 9-5" Career Retreat that Rosetta Thurman and I began planning for a few months ago. Quite simply, it was amazing. Just incredible to be in a room with 18 professional women, most of them in their 20's and 30's, taking a day for themselves to really explore where they were at and what they wanted to do. It became much bigger than talking about... Read more →

A few months ago I wrote a post entitled, Note to the Next Generation of Leaders: Don't Wait for Baby Boomers to Hand Over the Reins. In it, I suggested some strategies for Gen X and Y leaders to develop themselves. One of my thoughts was to get "disruptive"--start your own organization to do it better, rather than trying to get your foot in the door of an existing one.... Read more →

Here's a question for you. Would anyone in your organization feel like they had the authority to do this? When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I... Read more →

Like Christine Martell I've clearly let my magazine reading fall by the wayside more than I realized, because the article I'm about to reference was published in April 2007, which in Internet time might as well be April 1997. At any rate. . . Last week I finally got to read Wired Magazine's The See Through CEO, which is a must-read for everyone. Some choice quotes: Google is not a... Read more →

The Stanford Social Innovation Review has an excellent article summarizing the findings of Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Heather McLeod Grant and Leslie Crutchfield. Chronicling four years of research into 12 highly successful nonprofits, including Teach for America and Habitat for Humanity, the book dispels some common myths about what makes a nonprofit successful, as well as identifying six successful practices. The Myths and Practices... Read more →

The last day of Reader Questions and this morning I had something from Sky who asked me for a clearer version of my Personal Learning Environment Mindmap from April. Since this is about the fifth time someone has asked me for it, I decided that I needed to create a version that is more easily readable. With the first version I had to resort to a screen capture, but that... Read more →

Yesterday I started to answer Glen Ross's question about how to support staff in developing and using personal learning environments (PLEs) by defining what I mean when I talk about a PLE. Today I'm getting to the real meat of Glen's question, which is how to support staff in creating and using their own PLEs. Nurture a Culture of Learning Staff have to feel that learning is part of their... Read more →

As part of answering Reader Questions this week, I'm going back to something that Glenn Ross asked me awhile ago: If I'm responsible for L&D in my organization, how can I help my employees identify their PLEs (personal learning environments) and what resources do I need to provide for them? Apparently Glenn likes to ask the tough questions. But I'm feeling brave, so I'm going to try for an answer... Read more →

Good Monday morning from Philadelphia, where the sun is just starting to peek through the clouds and we're preparing for yet another muggy day. A few quick reads for you: Rosetta Thurman of Perspectives from the Pipeline is hosting this week's Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. She's pulled together seven great posts on becoming a better leader, so wander on over and check them out. If you checked out the post... Read more →

Danah Boyd has posted a provocative essay on the class divisions she sees in the users of MySpace vs. Facebook. This is actually a phenomenon I've noticed myself in the past several months as I watch my 15 year old move from MySpace to Facebook and get her perspective on who in her high school is making the shift to Facebook and who is staying on MySpace. Danah's premise, in... Read more →