Broadband Anybody or Pissing in the Wind

As we continue to explore the valley o f our economic ‘crisis’ there is no sense of having reached the lowest point nor have we a strong sense of having a Sherpa to guide us out. I have a lingering fear that must be expressed in words just to prevent thinking about it as the Australia Day holiday nears commencement. Yes, I take this holiday seriously as I do Anzac Day. I am an Australian by choice.

There must be an investment in broadband in Australia. Yeah Yeah Yeah— was there not a recent tender for the provision of improved broadband services in Australia- you know the one Telstra tried so hard to win with a 2 page submission? We cannot afford politicians to play politics nor business persons to use their leverage to extract maximum wealth. The web has a community commons nature and importance. Yes- this means some public control as opposed to free market stewardship.

It is a fact that ‘infrastructure’ now includes broad band as well as structures we build and maintain. Our country must ready itself for the next upswing that will include enormous investment in energy and related technologies. This will demand greater innovation, collaboration and knowledge capture that is increasingly reliant upon broad band connectivity. We are going to speak, email, share, capture, design and commercialise our intellectual property via the web. The web will not play a supporting role in the cast of infrastructure elements supporting social wealth. The web (is) will be the key enabler to advance our society and its communities.

In my own experience I am teleconferencing more, travelling less. I have an account with a web conferencing service that is now in use multiple times per week as previously I would have endured one or two hours on a 737. Australia will one day need to evolve to a country that sells innovation and knowledge as opposed to earth’s resources in raw form. Australia will come under increasing scrutiny if we insist on harvesting the remains o f previous geologic ages in the hopes of creating wealth to satisfy our insatiable gluttony.

So much talent- so hard to expose and promote.

The Alignment Imperative

One of the key elements that contributes to the success of a learning technology platform is the alignment between the technology and the organisational strategy. It has been my experience that many learning strategies are developed and executed in some degree of isolation from the organisational strategy. In some cases the project team implementing the learning technology does not possess an understanding of the organisation’s strategy and its cascade of objective and tasks down to individual level.

There are a range of reasons for this lack of understanding. In some projects the team responsible for the technology implementation is comprised wholly or in large part by contractors. In others it is simply a case of ineffectual communication from board and senior executive levels. In any case the implementation of a learning platform as part of an organisational development and/or learning strategy will be compromised or short lived without proper strategic alignment and the establishment of metrics both as performance measures and useful output for decision making and planning purposes.

In the past few weeks I have been working to develop a workshop to assist project teams in establishing strong strategic alignment linking learning strategy and system implementation to an overall organisational strategy in a chain comprising supporting goals, team objectives and individual tasks.

Recovering from Productivity Overload

It sounds weird and it is……I am now in recovery from a bout of productivity obsession. I think it began with an innocent experimentation with GTD and continued through numerous blogs and books; some good and some not so good.

Sure, there were some good times along the way. I have a great deal of admiration for the analog folks at DIY Planner. If you have not visited this site it is worth looking at if you still find a pen and paper preferable to a keyboard. I enjoyed the blogs by Mathew Cornell as he shared his personal growth journey to becoming a Productivity Consultant. Mathew offers incredible value with his insights into personal productivity. I believe Leo at Zen Habits takes the whole idea of productivity to a new level and combines this with some great common sense for life design.

The world of productivity is rife with systems and tools. I do not like thinking about how much money I have spent on gadgets and software. I was an early adopter of both electronic and paper based productivity systems. I have reverted between the two with sickening frequency up until about six months ago when I laid my beautiful Filofax to rest on my library shelf.

But alas I had to break free. There were too many lost minutes reading the latest blog, exploring a fee software demo or devouring yet another book on productivity. About two weeks ago I received what will be my last productivity book. Total Workday Control by Michael Linenberger has been the silver bullet that completed my productivity growth path. Finally I have found an answer to the frustration I have experienced trying to force fit Outlook into a productivity tool to suit me. It is a big book that is comprehensive and delivers great depth. I am very grateful that I finally broke down and purchased the book after hesitating on the first edition. The second edition covers Outlook 2007 as well as previous versions.

I still admit that an electronic solution has been hard for me to use. Outlook and other software solutions are very prescriptive and do not allow the free flow of ideas and doodles that used to fill my Filofax pages.