Author: Susan Hendrich

How are you surfing the social layer?

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The Social Layer – Guest Blogger, Thomas Hendrich, weighs in:

What’s this #sociallayer thing? Cloud Apps & VPNs/Citrix are a great leap forward for building engagement where we work, but not the final leap. I’m toying with Google+, and one thing I’m drawn to is the concept of embedding the #sociallayer across the application suite. What does this mean for us? As a user engagement model, I like Google+ placing the #sociallayer where we interact in our work, collaborate, learn, and ultimately, live our lives. In the workplace, this social layer can connect conversations around tangible places of work initiatives and projects. Adding the #sociallayer through enterprise apps such as Sharepoint, Outlook, Portals, ERPs, CRMs, HISs, and major apps can create better connections with real value-add, AND enhance user ease-of-access to social tools, bringing conversations to where we interact and congregate. Check out the 2 screenshots I’ve attached, one from Google apps, another from Gmail, illustrating the ability to connect with others directly from these apps. Let’s roll with #Enterprise2.0! #yam

Do You Have Klout?

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What is Your Klout Score?

Klout is the measurement of your overall online influence. Klout scores range from 1 to 100, and higher scores represent wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout looks at 35+ variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. They believe influence is “ability to drive people to action.”

Ex: True Reach = size of your engaged audience (based on followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages). Want to learn more about Klout?

So…do I have enough Klout to get you to respond to this post?

About Klout

http://mashable.com/follow/topics/klout   

Klout is a San Francisco based company that provides social media analytics that measures a users influence across their social network. The analysis is done on data collected from sites such as Twitter and Facebook and measures the size of a person’s network, the content created, and how other people interact with that content.

Sticky Note Mind Maps

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Need help solving a dilemma? Want ideas for a better way to do things? Got a new project that needs structure? Try Sticky Note Mind Mapping!

Psychologist Tony Buzan developed “Mind Mapping” as a tool for thinking ‘laterally’ – it’s a type of visual brainstorming that’s based on a central idea written in the center of a page (or wall), then related ideas are added on branches that radiate from this central idea. Because of this structure, it requires all ideas to be connected to the center and allows connection to one another, providing opportunity for convergent thinking, fitting ideas together, as well as thinking up new ideas. Sticky note Mind mapping allows you to ‘storm and sort’ your ideas.

Steps:
1. Find a large section of blank wall or whiteboard and lots of sticky notes and markers. Using a variety of sticky note colors and sizes, simply jot down all your thoughts on the sticky notes – with each new thought or concept on a new sticky note.
2. As you write down your thoughts on the sticky notes, stick them up on the wall or whiteboard – you can group them into similar themes as you stick them up, but the best thing about using sticky notes for this map is that you can move them around as your thoughts develop.
3. Once you’ve jotted down all your thoughts and stuck them on the wall, look for branches and connections between the ideas. What’s missing? What are the recurring ideas? Where are the connections?
4. When you’ve sorted the sticky notes into a map that makes the most sense of your thoughts, you can either take a photo of it as your record, or draw it as a real mind map.

Considerations:
• Don’t think too much about structure as you’re preparing the map – just let it flow as you work through the process
• Work through it quickly to keep up the flow of ideas
• Keep the points brief – you can expand them later
• Use sketches, images and pictures (if you can) – it makes it easier to remember and more personal, but make sure it doesn’t slow down the brainstorming flow. ClipArt is great for this!
• Once you’ve got it all down, stand back and take a look. What’s missing? What are the recurring ideas? Where are the connections?
• Continue! This mind map is a work in progress.

Have you tried a sticky note mind map? If so, let us know how it helped you!

Overcoming my bias

/ Susan Hendrich / 2 Comments

A few resources for you on overcoming biases. And, yes, we all have them…

Learning objective: Recognize implicit bias

  • Implicit Association Test (IAT), which has become the standard for measuring implicit bias
  • A Class Divided (The Brown eyes / Blue eyes story)
  • Johari Window (A simple and useful tool for illustrating and improving self-awareness, and mutual understanding between individuals within a group. I use the “Unknown” box to illustrate bias)
  • The Hermann Grid activity (Sometimes we see things that do not exist; First impressions are not always right) 

Learning objective: Identify specific techniques for overcoming bias

Learning objective: Describe ways to build trust

Learning objective: Explain how initial perception can create a self-fulfilling prophesy

Story on Self-Fulfilling Prophesy: “The monk and the travellers”

One day a traveller was walking along a road on his journey from one village to another. As he walked he noticed a monk tending the ground in the fields beside the road. The monk said “Good day” to the traveller, and the traveller nodded to the monk. The traveller then turned to the monk and said “Excuse me, do you mind if I ask you a question?”.

“Not at all,” replied the monk.

“I am travelling from the village in the mountains to the village in the valley and I was wondering if you knew what it is like in the village in the valley?”

“Tell me,” said the monk, “What was your experience of the village in the mountains?”

“Dreadful,” replied the traveller, “to be honest I am glad to be away from there. I found the people most unwelcoming. When I first arrived I was greeted coldly. I was never made to feel part of the village no matter how hard I tried. The villagers keep very much to themselves, they don’t take kindly to strangers. So tell me, what can I expect in the village in the valley?”

“I am sorry to tell you,” said the monk, “but I think your experience will be much the same there”.

The traveller hung his head despondently and walked on.

A while later another traveller was journeying down the same road and he also came upon the monk.

“I’m going to the village in the valley,” said the second traveller, “Do you know what it is like?”

“I do,” replied the monk “But first tell me – where have you come from?”

“I’ve come from the village in the mountains.”

“And how was that?”

“It was a wonderful experience. I would have stayed if I could but I am committed to travelling on. I felt as though I was a member of the family in the village. The elders gave me much advice, the children laughed and joked with me and people were generally kind and generous. I am sad to have left there. It will always hold special memories for me. And what of the village in the valley?” he asked again.

“I think you will find it much the same” replied the monk, “Good day to you”.

 “Good day and thank you,” the traveler replied, smiled, and journeyed on.