If Frankenstien had curated?

Picture the scene.......Dr Frankenstein is in the lab, bringing the very SPARK !!! of life to his Monster. He hooks up all the relevant cables and with the twist of a dial bubbles gloop up through a series of giant beakers. Bursts of electricity growl out of a giant van de graaff machine and he gestures to Igor to flick the switch. The final surge of electricity pulses over the monsters hand stitched body.....He's alive.....!! ALIVE !!!!!.............now before the monster can sit up, in walks Dr Frankenstiens accountant. You see.....old Frankie boy has been racking up one heck of an electricity bill of late.....then there is overtime payments and health insurance for Igor, the upkeep of his lab and not forgetting his P.R agency fees.

Accountant- "Dr Frankenstein, this obsession with creation can't go on. In order to maintain your standard of living you need to consider a new strategy. have you ever considered Curation over Creation?"

At this point Frankie (real name Victor) recalled a conversation he was having at a recent mad scientist convention where all the talk was about content over creation and he pondered over why you couldn't have both.....and if indeed they were not one in the same so in order to allay the fears of his account there was only one thing he could say....

Frankie - said "relax"

He needed more time to work on his project but agreed that perhaps some parts of his experiments could be aided by sourcing information, material and the odd formula from other like minded crazy professors but where would he start to look?

First port of call for most people these days is of course the good old internet, but tread carefully as Mitchell Kapor would say as this is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. The wide web of wordly information is a fabulous place but you should plan and be strategic about what you need, when you need it, how you will use it or how you will support it. A random search for "making life like frankenstein" takes about 0.4 of a second to come up with 6,280,000 hits but Frankie is easily distracted and gets lost in a recipe for monster marshmallow pops........he could be there for hours. However, had Frankie focussed his search on "electricity and the human body" he would have eventually came across articles about the work of Luigi Galvani which he could have used to great effect rather than investing heavily in his own set of tests......alternatively he could have just rubbed a balloon on Igors head and watched the static flow. 

Mary Shelly was curating a number of theories and ideas of the time and put them together. You have Galvanism from Galvanis work, references from Paradise Lost by John Milton and elements of influence from Humphry Davys Elements of Chemical Philosophy. All of these combined to create the novel which in itself has been curated by others, turned twisted and fed a whole new generation of stories. 

So Curation isn't new. We are maybe led to believe it is but like many things it is really just a buzz word and  way of of bringing content together in a place that allows us to source it and then display it or comment on it in a chosen format. We even have a number of  tools available that have been created to produce and release content for like minded people or those with a passing interest. In fact if you think about it these lend more to Frankenstein than we could imagine. Take Flipboard, Scoop it and Paper.li, are they not Curation tools created to stitch a range of content from various sources together then bring it all back to life?

That Learning Dude @LearningXDude

Dr Who and my incredibly tenuous link with 70:20:10

Okay...I'm torn.

You see. I wanted to do a piece on Dr Who given we have the 50th anniversary show this weekend and I started to rattle some ideas around Learning Dude HQ in the last couple of days. Like anything when you grow up with something you learn things, for example, Daleks can fly up stairwells, you can hear Cybermen coming and Ood's can fair hold a tune.....but......

I got an email today and along with the content of that email, the mention of something on a Webinar and comments made recently to me I felt that the only way to mask my frustration was to merge the two and therefore I give you Dr Who and the incredibly tenuous link with 70:20:10.

So lately I have been grumping a little as more and more people start talking about 70:20:10 again. For those that don't know what it is, this (in learning)  relates to the "theory" that 70% of what we learn happens on the job, doing tasks, projects or problem solving (to name but a few) 20% relates to coaching, feedback and positive role models etc and 10% accounts for formal training, or old skool classroom training. As a theory and concept I don't have a problem with it even if it is a little dated given the origins date back to the 1960's and a little flawed as it is based on a fair degree of assumptions but what really winds me up more than the SS Madame de Pompadours Clockwork Men is when it is when people make a conscious decision to talk about 70:20:10 as a thing, a product or a way of life when really it is just a wrapper of numbers around content.

However, to appease business leaders we throw them some numbers and apportion the biggest chunk of learning to the business and tell them...yes....70% of what we learn requires no effort....yep, it will just happen.....projects?......yep, learning......tasks?...yep learning and so on and so forth but this is born from an assumption that the business can take time out to develop ideas, try some new things and then review and embed the learning, perhaps trying new strategies born out of that review........but if that was always possible, why would a companion not be able to fly the TARDIS on their own? Why....? well because with the job, in most cases everyone just gets on with, there is little time to stop. That's not to say you don't learn on the job but you only have to look at Donna Nobles problems when she was gifted with the her boss's.........eh Doctors knowledge. The thing about the 70% it removes itself from the formal aspect of learning but I don't think that can happen, they need to be connected.

Now we come to the 20%. Here we place a reliance on the coach, the manager and the support of a positive role model. I have no issue with this but if we consider what we said about the 70%, without structure or a connection to the formal learning part it becomes a struggle to help people develop. What I find laughable is people spend a lot of time dissecting learning to come up with 70:20:10 and then because they don't really get it they add the 70&20 together and proclaim, it's all about the 90% .......eh? .....uhuh ....okay....? What is? ....."eh.....you know the on the job and the coaching you get" Oh right, okay so what you are saying is you're going to leave even more to the business? and that's just what the business will hear......we're leaving it up to you and that's not a positive message. They need to know that while they facilitate this possibility, we are there to support it but if we leave them to it, they will go off and do it all them self which we all know means armed with lack of knowledge and a corporate credit card. Good news for the external, bad for our reputation but back to the Dr Who link. Companionship or support is an essential part of development but how can you put a figure around that? The doctor has sometime travelled with one companion, two companions or as and when required brought old and new together and lost some along the way. Different development requirements require differing levels of support but by putting a number around this to try and comfort business and say, you will only be required to coach 20% of the time......eh but you just told them 70% was on the job......and some of you said 90% lies out with the responsibility of the development community...........quick hide !

.

So.....here we are at the end of my tale and yet I hear the cry of "what about the 10%?"

Here's the thing......it doesn't exist, at least I don't think it does. You see, 10% of what... is formal?

For me, there only is 100% of everything, unless you have a structure and strategy that supports dissecting learning and passing bits off here and there we should just keep it all in one spot because it grows and will only continue to grow because we have an ever expanding need for knowledge. We can go back in time and bring information forward and into the consciousness. We can plant information for future reference and ultimately regenerate ideas to match the technology of the time............why it's as if learning itself is our very own TARDIS.

I am glad I got that out of my head, now I can crack on with plans for Dr.Who........time for Day of the Doctor.

That Leaning Dude @LearningXDude

Hollywood, Fiction, Science and Innovation

How many times have you sat watching a film intently when someone sitting next to you says "that couldn't happen?" and then launch in to some scientific rant of hawkingesque proportions about black holes, gravity and theoretical physics. This kind of talk always takes me back to the Deathstar blowing up and the noise that reverberated around the cinema as empirical scum were blown to pieces and I overheard someone say oh you can't hear that sound if you're in space. I then recall the smart ass tagline of Alien in 1979 which seemed to echo these comments where it said in space no one can hear you scream. Now I ain't going to fall into their trap and explain the principals of sound transmission in a vacuum but needless to say John Hurt squealing like a pig at the dinner table lets you know that the theory was pretty much thrown out the window fairly early in the film.

I know, I know, you think I am ranting again. So where are am I going?

Well I am reading an article the other day about TALOS Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit and it got me thinking. The TALOS has been dubbed Iron Man suit which is reported to be an exoskelton covered in some form of liquid armour, al very clever stuff and adding the Hollywood name to it for media purposes gives it a little edge for interest but what other innovations lend them self to the movies for the idea and vice versa?

Lets go back a bit, in 1865 Jules Verne wrote De la terre a la lune (from the earth to the moon) and with this began the early (loose) connection with Hollywood, fiction, science and innovation. Verne had the idea that he could use a cannon to fire a capsule containing three passengers to the moon. Seemed a decent enough idea for a book, and along with the H.G.Wells novel First Men in the Moon in 1901 it inspired the first science fiction movie A trip to the Moon................. ......... however.....with that came the first recorded science pedant, no they never made reference to anything about screaming in space but in 1903 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky shattered the dreams of every Victorian planning to take a break from Brighton for the summer and head to the moon. Tsiolkovsky said such a cannon would have to be of lengthy proportions and subject to thousands of g etc etc etc.......didn't stop him from going on to be one of the founding fathers of space flight. So early inspirations came from written work and movies and more has followed over the years, learning off the job if you like.

Now it's also worth noting that although Iron Man has been around for years in comic form, it was only with the movie releases in the last few years that the link is now being made with advancements in infantry armour from science fiction but of course this like most of what I say can be subject to interpretation.....after all, Colonel Steve Austin was a man barely alive after a test flight went horribly wrong when for the princely sum of $6million dollars was rebuilt faster and stronger to fight crime for a covert off the radar type operational unit.....although for a few dollars more it could have perhaps helped to add some improvements as his bionic limbs were a tad problematic when the temperature dropped.....All the bad guys needed to do to outwit him was take a fridge with them or stick to robbing banks in Alaska during winter.

So what else is there?

Well the Lightsaber is a good place to start. Top notch weapon of choice for Jedi and aspiring Jedi alike but as soon as the amateur starts to have a bit of fun making vemmming and vooshizzing noises with a stick along comes the debunker..... ...."oh how can you stop the beam being longer than a couple of feet?" "why doesn't the handle melt?" "oooh what about the power source?" ........For the love of the force, did mummy trade you to Qui Gonn Jinn? Get over yourselves...oh and for the record, a couple of dudes from Harvard and MIT have made a discovery that sees a certain molecule behave in a similar way to the fictitious lightsaber. Yes fictitious.....but someone is thinking about the physics of it and saying, hey this could happen.

That's how it works, you think about it and you develop it.

Teleportation.....ah yes. You were expecting me to talk about Star Trek and the idea of this happening in the 60's? No chance.....Willy Wonka developed the idea to transport chocolate (large bar of it at that) from one side of the room to the other, total genius, I mean at the moment I have to get up and go to the kitchen cupboard to get one and aside from the side effects suffered by Mike TV it sounds like a great plan but oh no look out...here they come "Oooh suicide machine" " Ooooh scanning and replicating at an alarming rate" Oh yeah......well here's hoping a fly gets into the mix when your popping down the shops in a few years time. Again in theory and in the lab it has been shown it can be done so who are we to debunk it just yet? (although I'm busy if they ask for some UAT)

I could go on, and usually do but be it the tractor beam, invisibility cloak, time travel and the rest there are a number of examples where something from the movies has been written off as impossible and in theory or in some cases in reality people prove it can happen.

Now I know it's just the movies and I ain't completely debunking the debunkers but to be Innovative you have to dream it can happen, think that the impossible is not unreachable and have the will and desire to prove the doubters wrong. If you do that then who knows?

That Learning Dude @learningXDude

#NoNovation......and scraping the bottom of the Apple barrel

Wooohooooo I'm back..........(pauses for cheers and rapturous applause).........still waiting.......?

Anyhoooo.

So, I'm back after a summer break spent watching some glorious sporting achievements and fine sunsets over the west coast of Scotland. My intention for this blog post was to write about some of those summer adventures when BOOOOOM it happened.

Apple held a press conference.

Now I still like to point out that I do...did like Apple, mainly for their past exploits in terms of what they have done to shake up the industry and drive competitors to make their own stuff bigger, badder and better but in doing so have lost a little bit of sparkle and keep churning out numbers rather than products. I call this NoNovation. Now just to be balanced I would say that it is not unique to Apple, other tech companies, like Samsung, Nokia and Microsoft et al all seem to have forgotten what made them successful and where to go to next. You only have to look at the humble wristwatch, it is generally noted that the first wristwatch was created for a Hungarian countess in 1868 remarkably for the purpose of (a) being worn on the wrist & (b) for telling the time. Innovative at the time and since then yes there have been watches with calendars, timers, alarms, lights and more but ultimately designed to do the same thing. Which I guess is where Apple are currently at. The iPhone is still an iPhone oh and regardless if Samsung, Sony and others have brought out Smart watches......they're still watches.

So back to today. I know millions will rush out and buy one.....maybe both models (innovation for the ambidextrous) but different colours, plastic back and fingerprint recognition......is that the best that they can do? It's NoNovation. I see the appeal, I hear so much from so many friends who have them but cannot get my head round the fact that people will want to upgrade. If you want a choice of colours, take your current phone and head off down to your local garage and invest in some spray paint and masking tape, far more colours to choose from or alternatively go down to your local market and find the angry birds or star wars cover you have always wanted. Fingerprint readers? How long before the first de-thumbed person reports a stolen iPhone? Okay extreme scenario but it's still NoNovation.

Overload !!!..... i'm gonna stop now. Hopefully Apple return to the innovative product development soon. I am sure they have it all in hand but if that involves the rumoured iWatch I think I may explode. I still pray that they were actually winding everyone up when they let the rumour slip it was in development and they are going to to come out and say narr narr na na narr we weren't developing a watch but we have the iTardis !!

But then one can only hope.

That Learning Dude @LearningXDude on Twitter.

It Killed the Radio Star and it's still on the Run

I've been reading a lot about MOOCs lately, partly because one of my favourite blogger's Donald Clark has written a fair few articles on the subject but also because I have this thing about the current education system which from experience through childhood to adulthood I forget about and then when I became a parent I suddenly started to take an interest again.......and I have to say I have some real issues and concerns about the current state of play but that is not for now....I will keep that until parents night.

Anyhooo... I was pointed to an article about video the other day, its growing use in education and the MOOC  (Massive Open Online Courses) revolution (the authors word not mine). A lot of the article referred to Futurelearn and how it plans to change the way MOOCs are viewed. There was a couple of references from one person to the next, mostly one company versus another. Futurelearn say that early MOOCs were little more than some videos with content wrapped around it, interestingly their radical approach is eh....some videos with slides and discussion broken down into blocks and units !!! Okay.....erm......so very different? Okay to be fair to them they are talking about starting with mobile and working up instead of retrofitting and that could be a big plus but something still doesn't sit right with me just yet......I still need convinced.

                                      

Now Futurelearn do know a little about using video for education, after all how many of us stumbled in after a night out and found ourselves watching an Open University programme as we munched our way through a kebab?.....okay perhaps just me but given that they own Futurelearn it could be that they have a lead on some of their rivals like Udacity and Coursera but one of the things that strikes me most is that the Education sector is trying to stake a claim of ownership on what in business some people have been doing for some time and I get more than a little peeved as I read about how MOOCs are made out to be something new exciting and radical but really it's just higher education playing catch up after realising that the blank looks in the lecture hall are actually empty seats.

So, Open University are well placed to position themselves in the market which is merely an extension of what they already do and the likes of City & Guilds who with the recent acquisition of Kineo must be considering similar entrance into the land of MOOC but as bring your own device and curation are more to the fore now, is the day of the MOOC ever going to arrive or is academia going to continue to claim it for themselves and dismantle the very idea of it? All this happening because education can no longer dismiss what a lot of us have been saying and doing for years but it's the ferocity of which that has ramped up recently. Universities are adding MOOCs every other day but I still need convinced.

Speaking of the dismantle, MOOC ! Massive, Ooooh, is it 10, 100, 1000, 10000 users? it's irrelevant given the fact you have called it Open, Eh so anyone can join? but then I suppose OOC sounds rubbish. Online, okay we are getting somewhere. Then finally you come to Course, why do we ever use this word? Far too structured for my liking. Okay, I know it requires some structure but there needs to be more freedom and flexibility around the content yet the juggernaut keeps rolling on and the education playground has become a battleground and that only adds to my frustration, and I wonder is it all a Wrath on Khan?

Salman Khan, an M.I.T grad started producing video tutorials back in 2006 and posting them on You Tube. Doing this meant he could offer sessions to a wider audience. This concept grew quickly to the point that Salman left his job in 2009 to commit full time to the company. Now despite MIT open course ware and MOOCs kicking around at the same time, the fact that Khan Academy has had about 5 times the number of views on videos as the MIT stuff and twice as many subscribers, you wonder if it is this success that has contributed to the sudden push on creating courses. Is it with this they sat up and wanted to create their own success? Who knows......If executed well it could be a good thing as perhaps they are now more open to change and bringing what was for some seen as potentially elitist in terms of accessibility but there is caution as mentioned before where they are trying to make this sound different and this could reverse the openness and goal that they set out to achieve....you only have to look at the word "change" in all of this. I read a comment about how a faculty to deliver MOOCs could be selected and rather than saying they would change the way they do things they said it would disrupt it. Okay maybe just a word but if you want to increase they way you make education more open to the world, keep it simple and clear.

Quality must be first and foremost in the mind of the curator who builds a MOOC. Build it to be different to the experience of the classroom, use the tools (like Futurelearn) that people use and make it as easy as reaching into your back pocket and pulling out a phone. Make the content suitable, not just some hastily pulled together slide pack and introduce flexibilty that lets people build their own. Make it as non academic as possible, if it's a chalk and talk experience like watching an old skool O.U programme users could switch off. Explore interaction, flash MOOC events online and offline. Just make it an experience.

Now I have actually be writing this a few days now as every time I sat down to type, I looked up a little bit more on MOOCs so take this as part one, I am going to delve a little deeper with the thought that I want my perception changed. Not as a person with an opinion but as a participant.

Stay Tuned.

That Learning Dude @LearningXDude

Sir Alex and the manager with the red face

Let me tell you a little story about the manager with the red face.

There are two versions, possibly because there are two managers with the red face. One was looking at a way to lead and the other is the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson.

The first felt that the best way to lead was to dictate authority, demand everything from his team, expecting nothing but 110% and offering no thanks or respect in return. The position held great power but power ultimately corrupts in the hands of the wrong person and when things went wrong the frustration was written all over the face of the manager. He grew weary of the constant battles that he faced not just from the external challenges that landed on his desk but from within his own team. Why were people rebelling? Why did he not command respect. As the leader he felt people should look up to him, but he was missing one thing, the one thing that leads to two things, then three, four etc etc etc. Follower's.

Derek Sivers spoke on his well known TED talk about the importance of followers and how this is a critical aspect of leadership, now I am not naive enough to think that it is the one and only thing but without that support in your team, or backroom staff you have nothing and face a struggle to maintain control. I have witnessed this type of person struggle to lead on more than one occasion and if ever they need some lessons on leadership they should look no further than the other manager with the red face, red as in red devil.

Now the image on the right may not seem like much but it is the starting point of the greatest football managerial journey spanning almost forty years. Firs Park may only have entertained Sir Alex for a few months but in that short time he gained a reputation as a disciplinarian and perhaps the origins of the hairdryer had begun? Authority is a critical leadership skill but to be used cautiously even by a trained professional. You can't just dish it out, you use it combined with other attributes. It isn't about being harsh or abusive but just telling it how it is with honest intentions.

His reputation attracted interest from St.Mirren who despite being a bigger club were below East Stirling at the time and failing to attract any more than a thousand or so fans. Sir Alex had another couple of leadership qualities in his kit bag at the time and that was a sense of Loyalty to East Stirling who had given him his first real managerial opportunity and a good Network. Through this network he sought advice from another great manager, Jock Stein, the man who managed the first British club to lift the European Cup and he advised him to join St.Mirren. Loyalty not only demonstrates commitment but also respect and helps to build relationships within networks from which you can look for support in when needed.

His first taste of managerial success came in 1977 winning the Scottish First division and one of the critical aspects of his team and indeed another skill in his locker was being able to recognise and Develop Talent. The average age of his team was nineteen and youth has always been an important part of the his development strategy in all his years of management. You must learn to seek out talent and look to people who you would follow, not just those who could follow you.

He joined Aberdeen in 1978 and in the eight years that followed with him he won further ten trophies including two European competitions.

At Manchester United in 26 years he has coached some of the greatest players in the world, brought out their best and been able to handle their worst. He is not one to suffer fools gladly which has been found out by many a player but he has always been the one left standing. It wasn't all plain sailing and his early years presented some huge challenges but they stuck with him, grew to love and support him and believed that he would get it right and was doing the right things consistently......and oh how it paid off.

Consistency is something that is integral to a great leader. Finding the formula that works, keeping it going and making tweaks that bring improvement and increased performance. Sir Alex remained true to his desire to win and bring success to all his clubs and players. This has rubbed off on players he has worked with, many who have gone on to great success themselves as players and managers alike by adopting his style, they were and are his followers. They brought him the success through their belief in him and he gets to know all them individually. This builds rapport and allows him to bring out the best in them. He never forgets them, and shows empathy with the squad through every battle not just a team but every single player, a real people manager.

There are so many more attributes that Sir Alex has that the red face manager can learn from but the final one I will leave you with is his Legacy. This is a combination of all your skills. It is what you should always consider when building and developing your team. What do you want to be known for? Set out the vision early and work with your team on the strategy that will deliver it. They will be your legacy by way of their actions. Do this and who knows, you could get your own statue.....and maybe a stand, or a CBE....and a knighthood.......why not?

That Learning Dude @LearningXDude

Franchise yourself but learn from Hollywood

I was reading an article the other day that referred to the premiere of Fast and the Furious 6 and what makes a successful franchise. From 50 years of Bond to seven Police Academy movies, Hollywood always has a way of making the most of a good franchise and the worst of a bad one. Often the need to make another movie is driven by the pressure of investors and scriptwriters are called upon to pen a sequel, a prequel and the eyebrow raising reboot but in Leadership, Learning and Life we are always looking for ways to improve and develop, so is there a unique formula that we can learn from? Let's take a look at some of the good and bad lessons

Keep things simple - Okay, so it may have slipped your attention if you are not a regular reader but I like Star Trek, and just last night I was in fully freaky geeky mode at the launch of the latest release Into Darkness, an awesome prequel from a different time line (now there's a twist) . Star Trek has both good and bad examples. In forty plus years the Star Trek franchise has got it right and got it wrong on many occasions, part of the reason was the due to of some of the characters and the story lines they ran with, take Data from next generation for example, a real classic case of Pinnochio syndrome, he wants to be human but then when you hit him with an emotion chip he wants to be android (iOS wasn't available at the time) then he has an evil twin, a crazy "father/creator" a Borg queen stalker and on and on it went. Perhaps if they hadn't tried to replace a Vulcan with an android it would have been better. The reason the latest films have worked is they have stuck with the tried and tested formula. The prequel is sometimes where you can look for help. If you have a situation or something you need to learn from sometimes you have to go back a little further, Data mining if you pardon the pun.

Familiarity - Who doesn't like Toy Story? What makes it so special? It's the association with the characters. We all had or have played with a Mr Potato Head, a Slinky Dog and pretended to make calls with a Fisher Price phone. What is even more incredible is that Pixar were able to introduce us to new characters such as Woody and Buzz Lightyear on the strength of the other toys and they have both become almost more iconic than the original real toys. The success of  Toy Story 3 is unrivalled as the highest grossing animated film of all time, unique in that it is rare for sequels to do better than the original and the formula of a successful sequel can be looked at when wanting to improve ourselves, build better teams and become great leaders. Toy Story believed in its ability to bring a story to life from another perspective. Stepping out of your own perceptions and opinions and thinking about how it looks through someone else's eyes is a good way to become familiar with another persons way of thinking. This will help to build understanding of a situation, relationships and ultimately success.

Warning..........let me advise caution. Rebooting the franchise, repeating mistakes and wasting time. Now first let me say that everything I have saw so far about Man of Steel looks good and I will no doubt be again front of the IMAX queue to see it......but...when you think of Superman what do you think of? Is it the late Christopher Reeve on his perilous journey of milking a franchise whereby the movies descended into farcical sequels? The awful sickly sweet Lois & Clark or the reasonable (if a couple of seasons too long) Smallville? So why didn't anyone think of Brandon Routh? and who is saying "who" right now? Well because it was really a non sequel. Superman Returns tried to think prequel, sequel and a little bit of reboot all at once and by doing so became forgettable and so it comes to pass that the next churn out of Superman is a reboot that will try repair the damage and wipe our memory of all that has went before by telling a story of a boy who falls to earth from Krypton, taken in by a farmer and his wife, struggles through adolescent years, gets looked up in the phone book by General Zod, dons a cape, wears his pants outside his trousers (and you can't go wrong if you do that) and saves the world. Now there is nothing wrong with a reboot but in most cases it's like doing what you have always done and getting what you always get. It's okay to take risks, don't always revert to type if things are tough. If you act too cautious sometimes people can get suspicious that the consistency is a fear of improvement, others a little more cynical that you just can't change. Only reboot if you can add something different.


Movies and Hollywood are great places to learn from, you just have to follow the script, your script.

That Learning Dude @LearningXDude

Resilience in the force........how the leader strikes back

"You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine"

An awesome movie, story of good versus evil and an iconic quote. In this one line Obi-Wan looks Darth in the eyes and says bring it on. The Jedi have to demonstrate resilience as they deal with a great deal of change and uncertainty. They have their rivals but despite facing volatile, complex and sometimes ambiguous challenges they survive and rise once more............................(which I am sure will be well documented in the movie a year from Disney)

Now there is many a lesson to be learned from Star Wars or at the very least it is a great excuse to watch the movies over and over again but resilience is something I always see in the films. However as great as the old order is, they really missed a trick until Luke came of age. There were a few critical indicators nobody picked up on, key risks mentioned in an article I read by Elle Allison on the resilient leader. Of course she wasn't directly talking star wars and I never understood what she was talking about until I watched all the films again..........again.  I can't say it would have saved the force from the untimely loss of power but in the face of change and crisis there are 5 risk alerts to look out for.

Learning stops - As things started to go wrong for Anakin the last thing he wants is change, so he cuts back on learning. As he spirals out of control he is consumed by the dark side and thinks he knows everything he needs to know. This is a standard leadership mistake but to be a resilient leader you must recognise that responding to change always requires learning. Luke at least had the sense to go back and complete his training.

Blame it on budget cuts - Palpatine had some pretty costly operations what with galactic conquer, fuel costs and not least the cleaning bill for the Stormtroopers uniforms but when faced with downturn the easy option is always to blame it on the economics of running a team........or an empire. A lack of resilience as a leader by the emperor led to some dreadful economic decisions. He found this to his cost when these cuts came home to roost as corners cut in the construction of the Deathstar left a two metre exhaust port exposed to the sharp shooting by "young skywalker". A resilient leader should be aware of the value in everything they do so that if the going gets tough the important things are not damaged by savaging budgets. 

Read the reports - Read the signs. A Resilient leader will analyse reports, data and other feeds of information to help him respond to changing dynamics and indeed spot future trends. Obi-Wan and other members of the council missed some blatantly obvious data conveyed by Anakins changing behaviour. You can't always blame it on teenage angst. A keen eye would have noticed the lack of colour in his wardrobe, strong passion for black, permanent scowl and what about pony tail? I bet you haven't thought about it to now but that pony tail was probably still under Darths helmet and cape !!!

Workload overload - Darth must have had a nightmare of an inbox. eMails from contractors on the Deathstar projects, Union issues over Stormtrooper pay and conditions (although he always seemed to get them to agree to his terms) and to top it all the usual anonymous leadership opinion surveys that HR carried out on him.......as his old mentor used to say "they're not the scores you're looking for". This workload left gaps and he spent more times fighting fires because of a number of initiatives brought on board normally without closing off older ones. Bruch and Menges referred to this as the "acceleration trap" in an article that appeared in Harvard Business Review in 2010. A resilient leader should grab hold of the priorities and learn to let go of those that don't fit with them. 

Celebrating Success - How many parties did you see the Empire throw? Did Darth and Palpatine go for a pint after giving Luke something to think about next time he turns up looking for a fight (they were never going to fall for the old I'm dressed in black that makes me pure dark side). Contrast this with the celebrations when Luke gets back from blowing up the Deathstar or the Ewok village at the end of Return of the Jedi..........not that they need much of an excuse to party. In times of change it is easy to fear the future but the resilient leader avoids this by celebrating the success and learn lessons that could provide current and future challenges with solutions. It doesn't matter if the success is small or large just celebrate and learn from it.

Resilience then is an inside job, You choose it. The resilient leader takes care of things while paying attention to the well being of themselves and others around them. This then helps them to take action. Just like Darth did in Return of the Jedi. He chose to take care of the Emperor despite all of the challenges, change and emotional issues that were going on around him. Choose to be resilient..................search your feelings. it is a skill your looking for

That Learning Dude @LearningXDude

By the power of Facebook, Home has the power !!!

"Today, our phones are designed around apps, not people. We want to flip that around" - Mark (the power) Zuckerberg - April 4th 2013

Of course the first thing you can say is, the way they are going to flip it down Facebook way is by re-inventing their app....eh......I mean change it around people but I have to say I am intrigued

So what has it got to do with He-Man? Well nothing much but it has got a lot to do with the power sword......in the same sense that it doesn't......Confusing as always I know..... You see young Prince Adam (above) had an alter ego aka He-Man, kind of like what Zuck has in Facebook but I am still not getting to the point.....so. When Prince Adam wanted to transform into He-Man he grasped his trusty power sword and shouted those famous words..........

"By the power of Grayskull, I....have...the....POWER !!!!"

But the thing was, the sword never held the power, the power came from Grayskull, the sword was just the device to harness it. The Sorceress in Grayskull granted Adam the transformative powers and also communicated with him telepathically, in other word she took one thing, turned it into another and was able to communicate on a whole new way

Facebook Home is the new social and simple (their words) way to harness the power of your phone. In fact the phone is irrelevant, it is a new way to harness how you use your phone. You are and always will be the device and Facebook is your operating system.....even if they say they are not building that. This is Facebooks way of selling billions of phones without selling the phones. It gives them a massive foothold in the phone market initially on android but with the potential to sync one and all.

Now as I said, I am intrigued, I do use Facebook a lot and probably 90% (guesstimate) of the time on my mobile. I prefer to call it mobile rather than phone as 80% (another guesstimate) of what I use it for has nothing to do with the word phone in the traditional sense. Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the fact that home makes it easier to communicate via text, tugging on the acquisition strings of late mixing instagram and messenger etc to create a new look and feel to the social experience.

Now. I know that me liking it presents this as a little one sided and especially given my track record for thoughts on the iPhone........oh that reminds me I haven't mentioned IOS but in the same sense I haven't mentioned Twitter and Google+ etc so just to balance things up. Skeletor (shown above with new HTC First box) wanted the power that Prince Adam had from Grayskull, his plans were quite sketchy but roughly said 1) Kill He-Man, 2) Not get killed by He-Man...."you can't kill me He-Man" 3) Steal Grayskull, rule Eternia 4) Open Hip coffee shop.

Okay maybe not number 4.......yet.... but Facebook Home will have it's critics, the launch made no mention of killing anyone, but squeezing other social mediums is always a possibility. Android is open, soooooo open was the cry, we want everyone to be flexible, we are open too but in reality the Social is so disconnected it may be a while before everybody gets together at the party.

So if the others aren't careful they may miss out and Facebook home will be a real big win for Zuck and Android and if they are not really careful we could always grab an Americano at Facebucks.

That Learning Dude @LearningXDude