links for 2009-02-27

• The "Infallible" Leader: How to Survive When You're Not Perfect
  From Interaction Associates: Leaders don't get it right all the time, which sometimes is a big let-down when the person stepping into a high-profile leadership role has widespread support as the best qualified candidate for the job.
  (tags: leadership)

links for 2009-02-26

• NY Times Article Skimmer
  prototype design
  (tags: web-design newspaper nytimes)
• How Do Committees Invent?
  By Melvin E. Conway: That kind of intellectual activity which creates a whole from its diverse parts may be called the design of a system. Whether the particular activity is the creation of specifications for a major weapon system, the formation of a recommendation to meet a social challenge, or the programming of a computer, the general activity is largely the same.
  (tags: systems-thinking whole-systems)
• 10 Business Words to Ban
  (tags: writing)
• Deliver a Presentation like Steve Jobs
  (tags: apple presentations powerpoint)
• drawings by Craig Frazier | words by you
  (tags: illustrators)
• Quick Turnaround Usability Testing, Part II
  (tags: usability-testing customer-experience web-design)
• Washington Post website: design issues
  From Edward Tufte: To begin, here is Conway's Law: "Any organization which designs a system . . . will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure."
  (tags: web-design newspaper-design redesign)
• Classrooms adding 'M' for meditation
  From Sacramento Bee: Math tests, soccer matches, the cafeteria bully. Grammar diagrams, global warming, dad losing his job. Now add this to some 8-year-olds' schedules: a second- period class on dealing with stress.
  (tags: positive-emotions stress)
• The Book Cover Archive
  (tags: design book-covers)

links for 2009-02-25

• The Most Important Part of Your Strategic Plan
  Public skepticism regarding institutions and organizations of all kinds is at an all-time high. Trust, which many once took for granted—especially with respect to some of our most venerated for-profit, nonprofit, and government institutions—is now at a premium.
  (tags: trust strategic-planning customer-experience)
• 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites
  We all make mistakes running our websites. However, the nature of those mistakes varies depending on the size of your company. As your organization grows, the mistakes change. This post addresses common mistakes among large organizations.
  (tags: web-design brand-strategy)

links for 2009-02-18

• Recovery.gov
  a website that lets you, the taxpayer, figure out where the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going. There are going to be a few different ways to search for information. The money is being distributed by Federal agencies, and soon you'll be able to see where it's going -- to which states, to which congressional districts, even to which Federal contractors. As soon as we are able to, we'll display that information visually in maps, charts, and graphics.
  (tags: transparency economics down-economy obama)

links for 2009-02-17

• International Somatic Movement Education & Therapy Association
  (tags: somatics)
• Clinical Somatics
  (tags: somatics)
• Somatics Educational Resources
  From Novato Institute for Somatic Research and Training
  (tags: somatics mind-body)

links for 2009-02-07

• Zinio: Photoshop User magazine
  (tags: magazines photoshop)

links for 2009-02-06

• Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership
  From Harvard Business Review: New studies of the brain show that leaders can improve group performance by understanding the biology of empathy.
  (tags: neuroscience leadership emotional-intelligence)
• How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity
  From Harvard Business Review: Behind Pixar’s string of hit movies, says the studio’s president, is a peer-driven process for solving problems.
  (tags: innovation creativity pixar)
• Delivering on the Promise of Nonprofits
  From Harvard Business Review: Nonprofit leaders face unique challenges in achieving results, but a growing number are showing it can be done—by rigorously confronting questions related to strategy, capital, and talent.
  (tags: non-profits brand-strategy customer-needs)
• The Other Climate Crisis
  From ChangeThis: Human organizations are not at all like mechanisms. They’re much more like organisms. They are made up of people driven by feelings and motives and relationships. Most people who work in organizations know that it’s their relationships with the other people in it that influence their contributions and loyalty or otherwise. Organizational charts show you the hierarchy, but they don’t capture how the organization really works or what it feels like to be in it.
  (tags: systems-thinking)
• Leading with Agility
  From ChangeThis: Learning Agility, which has four dimensions—Mental Agility, People Agility, Results Agility and Change Agility—is a key to unlocking our change proficiency. In fact, research studies by CCL, Mike Lombardo of Lominger, Robert Sternberg and his colleagues at Yale University, and Daniel Goleman point to Learning Agility as more predictive of long-term potential than raw IQ. Learning Agility is a complex set of skills that allows us to learn something in one situation and apply it in a completely different situation. It is about gathering patterns from one context and using those patterns in a completely new context so that we can make sense and success out of something we have never seen or done before. In short, Learning Agility is Change Mastery—the ability to learn, adapt, and apply ourselves in constantly changing conditions.
  (tags: change learning-organizations personal-mastery)
• This is Your Buyology
  From ChangeThis: I have spent years talking with brand fans; from obsessed Harley Davidson riders to young Japanese Hello Kitty admirers (one of whom, incidentally, owns more than 12,000 pieces of Hello Kitty merchandise), to devoted Irish Guinness beer drinkers. I’ve, time after time, been struck by the apparent parallels between the power of religion and of brands over followers. But, in reality, would such a claim possibly hold up? Is it possible that some brands have managed to create their own religion by, coincidently or deliberately, adopting triggers and tactics from the world of religion? The question became an obsession for me.
  (tags: branding)
• Don’t Script, Improvise!
  Businesses built to operate in the Networked World are as different from the Industrial Age models as a computer is from a multi-plane camera. Networked organizations are more biological than industrial. They resemble their employees more than their employees resemble them. They are highly adaptive, mobile, open, sensitive to their environment, and ultra-responsive. They continuously evolve, nurtured by a steady stream of intelligent input from inside and outside the organization. In a networked organization, where good ideas originate is not half as important as how–-and how frequently—those good ideas become reality. Good managers don’t try to control their brand’s narrative but, rather, to foster an environment in which it can be liberated, expanded and unleashed across networks. The emphasis is not on following a script, but on improvisation.
  (tags: innovation creativity improvisation)
• The Aesthetics of Management by Marty Neumeier
  From ChangeThis: Okay. Everyone knows you can apply aesthetics to the curve of a fender, or the typography of a web page, or the textures in a clothing line. But it can be even more effective when you apply it to decision-making, upstream strategy, or organizational change. When you use the principles of aesthetics to address wicked problems, you can more easily navigate through the fog of complexity. Aesthetics confers a kind of visibility. Let’s look at a few of the principles that artists have used successfully, and see how they might apply to management.
  (tags: design design-theory management)
• Positive Psychology Conference - Jan 24, 2009
  Applying the Science of Positive Psychology to Improve Society at Claremont Graduate University
  (tags: positive-psychology)

links for 2009-02-05

• Arts in Crisis
  a Kennedy Center program designed to provide planning assistance and consulting to struggling arts organizations throughout the United States
  (tags: down-economy arts-management)

links for 2009-02-03

• Tim Brown on creativity and play
  From TED.com: At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't). Brown is CEO of Ideo.
  (tags: creativity play ideo)
• A Great Time For Museums? Yes, Says The Guy In Charge.
  Michael Conforti, president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, who argues "that this financially perilous period is 'a great time for art museums.'
  (tags: museums down-economy)
• The 'black swan' tips for living
  by professional skeptic and complexity theorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan)
  (tags: complexity skeptics)

New reading in Positive Psychology

Speakers at the Applying the Science of Positive Psychology to Improve Society symposium at Claremont Graduate University are touting their new books.

Cameron, Kim (2008). Positive Leadership: Strategies for extraordinary performance. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. "Shows how to reach beyond ordinary success to achieve extraordinary effectiveness, spectacular results, and what Cameron calls 'positively deviant performance' — performance far above the norm. Citing a wide range of research in organizational development and psychology as well as real-world examples, Cameron shows that to go from successful to exceptional, leaders must learn how to create a profoundly positive environment in the workplace."

Diener, Ed (2009). Well-Being and Public Policy. Oxford Press. Presents the case for national measures of subjective well-being to be used for policy purposes. Available April 2009.

Diener, Ed and Robert Biswas-Diener (2008). Happiness: Unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing. This father and son team presents scientific evidence revealing that happiness is not overrated, and is good for people's health, social relationships, job success, longevity and altruism.

Dutton, Jane E. (2009). Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations: Building a theoretical and research foundation. Psychology Press. "The goal of this book is to forge new ground on identity research through cutting edge compilation of articles by leading identity scholars. Identities will be looked at the individual, dyadic, group and organizational levels. The goal is to stress the positive and have the authors concentrate on what is beneficial, valuable and good in some way." Available May 20.

Fredrickson, Barbara L. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking research reveals how to embrace the hidden strength of positive emotions, overcome negativity, and thrive. Crown Press. The author lays out 10 forms of positivity — joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe and love — and provides scientific evidence to illustrate her findings that maintaining a 3:1 positivity ratio of positive thoughts to negative emotions creates a tipping point between languishing and flourishing. The book includes compelling case studies, concrete tips, a Positivity Self Test and a tool kit for decreasing negativity and raising the positivity ratio. Available Tuesday, January 27.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja (2008). The How of Happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life you want. London: Penguin Press. "Offers a comprehensive guide to understanding what happiness is, and isn't, and what can be done to bring us all closer to the happy life we envision for ourselves."

Rath, Tom and Barry Conchie (2008). Strengths Based Leadership: Great leaders, teams, and why people follow. New York: Gallup Press. Using data from Gallup's StrengthsFinder program, this new version provides specific strategies for leading with your top five strengths and enables you to plot the strengths of your team based on the four domains of leadership strength revealed in the book.