Insights

Jeff Bezos

There he is in front of a flipchart talking to camera to the employees of Zappos which Amazon just bought! Great insights:  1. Obsess over Customers  2. Invent   3. Think long term 4. It is always day one Plus what a great message to Zappos staff:  you’ve done great, but you ain’t seen nothing yet! 
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Online is Better Than Face to Face (but only just)

A US Government report that was published in May 09 is worth reading. It is a meta analysis of 51 studies on the impact of web-based learning. The conclusion is a tentative ‘it works better’ with blended working better than straight online. In fact there were three significant variables: Effects were larger when a blended
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Words! Words! Words!

A beautifully produced little video that exposes the Mehrabian Myth about communication being mostly performance and not so much words. ie how you say, rather than what you say. This has become known as the Mehrabian Rule.  Even Mehrabian does not believe his own mythology and claims he has been misquoted. It has been produced
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Edgeless Universities

A Demos report released this week written by Peter Bradwell aout the future for Universities in Britain.  If you want a taste, then this paragraph from the introduction sums up the tone and direction: ‘Universities provide spaces for developing expertise,validating learning and they bring prestige to those affiliated tothem. This is not going to change.
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Leading on Learning: A Line Manager’s Guide

Free booklet on the Campaign for Learning’s Website which is packed full of ideas for line managers to help them build a learning culture in their team.  You can download it here.
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Performance Reviews!

Business Week has a very interesting article written by Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford Business School, about the futility of performance reviews and Cammybean drew my attention to it. Worth reading. But what caught my eye was one of the comments on the article. This was truly depressing. Industry modernising and findling new ways to empower
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Gary Hamel Podcast: For Management Activists

CIPD has released an excellent Gary Hamel podcast.  Listen here, it is 30 minutes well spent.  Especially if you are, what he calls, a management activist. Accountability leads to responsibility (rather than tighter and tighter rules); innovation starts with aspiration not perspiration; managment is no longer about control but enabling. Safe innovation (low cost. low
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OECD Fact Book

The OECD has released a web-based tool for displaying graphically all the data they have on member states. It is brilliant, and hard to explain without it in front of you.  So have a look and have a go here. You can graphically display data on economic performance, fertility rates set against the percentage of
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Innovation

Quote by Sally Preston the founder of frozen babyfood maker: Babylicious. “Although people say they want innovation in corporations, they don’t really. It doesn’t fit their procedures and processes.” Innovation is a culture and attitude before it becomes a process.  Sally is right, it sounds good but is hard to deliver. Quoted by Rene Carayol
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Rapid E Learning

In an excellent case study produced by Kineo about the line managers’ portal they developed with and for   Marks and Spencer.  It is available here. Amongst the gems is a list of the five key questions you need to ask a subject matter expert if you want to take out the knowledge and build the
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