October 14, 2005
take me seriously!
My latest endeavor is a blog about things a bit different than that I would normally post here. I realized that while this blog is fun and a great place for me to interact, rant, share and connect on a casual level with friends and interested people, it's not the best forum for my professional ideas. As a marketer, my #1 product is really myself and as a result, I needed a place to be able to better showcase my talents and my thought leadership.
Sooo that said, help me spread the word about Creator of Circumstance!!
Posted by crystallyn at 09:12 PM | TrackBack
May 14, 2005
Critical Thinking for Managers: A Manifesto
I just ran across this in my files and hope that someone else will be able to benefit from it. I created this manifesto as one of my tasks in my Critical Thinking class when I was working toward my M.A. in Critical & Creative Thinking. I wanted a manifesto that would be useful for me throughout my working life.
CRITICAL THINKING FOR MANAGERS ~ A MANIFESTO
Introduction
Smart companies around the globe are dependent upon active critical thinkers in order to develop, produce and disseminate their goods and services. Managers in a position of creating change within their organizations need to learn, exhibit and teach critical thinking skills to their colleagues and employees.
Learning without thinking is labor lost; thinking without learning is dangerous. ~ Chinese Proverb
The Manifesto
1. Development of positive thinking dispositions is key.
a. Be curious and questioning
b. Think broadly and adventurously
c. Reason clearly and carefully
d. Organize one’s own thinking
e. Give time to thinking
f. Pose and explore problems
g. Critique and test theories
h. Seek multiple perspectives
i. Be judicious and reflective
2. Actively cultivate these thinking dispositions among your colleagues and employees.
3. Create a safe environment where employees feel that their opinions, ideas and the work that they generate is valued.
4. Consistently engage in metacognition—thinking about your thinking and related actions.
a. Reflect upon your actions, thoughts and plans, both task-oriented and strategic
b. Practice constant evaluation of projects and goals
c. Be ready to change based upon new input and reflection
d. Learn from your mistakes and your triumphs
e. Recognize your emotions and their effects on thought and action—both your own and on others
5. Encourage employees to reflect on their work and behavior, encourage individual accountability and expect people to make decisions at their own level. Help them to choose and explore problems of their own choice.
6. Embrace and foster an attitude of strategic spirit.
a. Build and use thinking strategies to solve problems and achieve goals
b. The ability to plan and set goals is crucial. Identify and recognize challenges, create a strategy and carry it out. Do it again.
7. Empower your employees to do the same.
8. Set standards by which to measure results. This helps bring focus, formulate plans and goals.
9. Recognize and rely upon higher order knowledge. Go beyond the facts, look for evidence, do further inquiry.
10. Always look for opportunities of transfer—the ability to take existing knowledge and strategies and apply them from one context to another. Identify connections and reusable components.
11. Become a model of critical thinking for colleagues and employees. Your examples and demonstrations of good thinking techniques will drive awareness and help foster change in attitude and behavior.
12. Look for opportunities to explain your method of thought to employees. Help them understand the bigger picture, the challenges faced and the steps in creating the plan and in execution of that plan.
13. Actively seek interaction with other departments and members of your organization in order to gain new insights, ideas and critical feedback.
14. Encourage both positive and negative feedback from colleagues and employees on your plans and actions. Seek to understand and incorporate their point of view. They have personal, practical knowledge that may prove invaluable.
15. Understanding is often acquired through practice. Sometimes lots of practice.
16. Encourage collaborative thinking and multiple sources of input for yourself and your employees. Engage in brainstorming activities, team projects and involve yourself in committees.
17. Become a model for open-minded thinking. Look at the big picture—beyond the situation at hand. Engage in synthesis. Draw connections and analyze a likely string of events. Look for multiple perspectives.
18. Provide opportunities for your employees to contribute and have influence in new projects and in other areas of the organization.
19. Emphasize facilitative questioning for yourself and your employees. Take a step back from your own agenda. Listen carefully and work to genuinely understand what the other person is experiencing. This will help you look closer at beliefs, values and assumptions that may underlie and drive behavior. Paraphrase and reflect ideas back for the best understanding.
20. Nurture key problem solving skills:
a. focus on the question or problem
b. analyze arguments, ask and answer questions of clarification and challenge
c. make observations and judge reports
d. deduce and judge whether arguments are valid
e. make and evaluate judgments
f. engage in suppositional thinking
g. define terms and judge definitions
h. attribute unstated assumptions
i. integrate other critical thinking dispositions in making and defending decisions
j. proceed in orderly manner appropriate to the situation
k. be sensitive to feelings, level of knowledge and degree of sophistication of others
l. employ appropriate rhetorical strategies
21. Understanding there are a variety of thinking styles:
cognitive, attitudinal and emotional aspects
and multiple intelligences:
visual/spatial
bodily/kinesthetic
logical/mathematical
naturalist
musical/rhythmic
verbal/liguistic
interpersonal
intrapersonal
will help with metacognition in addition to fostering better relationships with colleagues and employees.
22. Be aware that cultural differences can affect how people think critically and solve problems.
23. Instill in yourself and in others Costa’s 16 Habits of Mind :
i. Persisting
ii. Manage impulsivity
iii. Listen to others with understanding and empathy
iv. Think flexibly
v. Engage in metacognition
vi. Strive for accuracy and precision
vii. Question and pose problems
viii. Apply past knowledge to new situations
ix. Think and communicate with clarity and precision
x. Gather data through all senses
xi. Creating, imagining and innovating
xii. Respond with wonderment and awe (enjoy! Be curious!)
xiii. Take responsible risks
xiv. Find humor
xv. Think interdependently
xvi. Learning continuously
24. Cultivate a positive and determined attitude toward your life and work. Demonstrate persistence in the face of failure and confidence despite uncertainty.
25. Outlaw the idea of “I can’t.”
RESOURCES
Some of the findings and ideas behind this manifesto can be gained from the following texts:
Shari Tishman, David N. Perkins, and Eileen Jay, The Thinking Classroom: Learning and Teaching in a Culture of Thinking (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995)
Arthur L. Costa (editor), Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking, 3rd edition (Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2001)
Posted by crystallyn at 09:09 AM
May 11, 2005
tiddly widdly
So I've become a convert to the latest craze that is going around the web... Getting Things Done (GTD).
The book, by David Allen, is being talked about all over the place. If you check out Technorati, you'll see that there are 335 posts from 102 blogs that match the GTD tag. Going through the del.icio.us GTD tags could take you all day. Normally I'm not a total bandwagon jumper but all those people are really onto something here.
What is it? There are lots of sites that explain how GTD works. So I'll just sum it up--it's an incredible organization system for tasks and projects.
The cool thing--it's completely changing how I work. Working in marketing, I usually have a gazillion projects with numerous tasks that are associated with those projects. Keeping track of them is a constant challenge and I always live in some fear that something is going to fall off the huge plate that I'm juggling around. No more! Well not as much anymore at least! GTD is such a smart and easy way of understanding what lies in front of you. It's a nonlinear way to organize, which is perfect for the massive multitasker. It took me a few hours to put it all together at work but now everything is so fluid it is freaky!
There are a lot of great tools popping up everywhere that are making GTD fans happy--Backpack, Airset, Trumba and others, none of them even come close to what the GTD Tiddlywiki is doing for the way I'm working. It's absolutely phenomenal. I've tweaked it all around to suit my GTD needs, changing some of the categories and the menus. One thing I am doing is creating a dump file organized by month so that once a major task is complete I can archive it so I have a list to look back on for my monthly reports. I love that it is an offline tool and that I can take it easily with me on my USB stick (i.e. WikiOnAStick). I didn't even have to install any software, which means that my IT department won't flip out.
It's a really nice feeling to be able to know exactly all the work I have in front of me. I feel more proactive and even more excited about what I'm doing than I was before. The pressure of remembering everything is gone. If you, like me, have looked into countless methods of organizaiton for your crazy worklife and have never been able to quite find something perfect--pick up this book. And yes yes yes, check out the GTD version of the TiddlyWiki. Nathan Bowers and Jeremy Ruston have drastically improved my life within the space of the two days I've been using the GTDTiddlyWiki!
Posted by crystallyn at 06:01 PM
May 01, 2005
useful things
In Harvard Square, there is a great little store called the Museum of Useful Things (MUT) (which is nearly as cool as its sister store, Black Ink). In the store you can find all sorts of great things that are, yes, highly useful. Kitchen gadgets, cool cleaning tools, little things to organize your office, etc. Last time I was there I picked up this great little thing that keeps your kitchen sponge in one place.
So in the spirit of the MUT, here are some things that I consider highly useful...
everyday gadgets
The Drop Stop is awesome for keeping wine from dripping.
This bracelet fastener has saved me OODLES of time.
Joe gave me this wicked little Cross Ion pen for Christmas. I keep it on a keychain with my memory stick. Very handy in a pinch and it writes beautifully.
Super Cool/Handy Websites
43 Things ~ Map your goals out with this great community tool.
And another 43, this time Folders. Tips, tricks and "lifehacks." And the wiki (I recently added my coffee hacks--cleaning your coffeepot and novacaine)
And the excellent Lifehacker.
Also can't quite say enough about del.icio.us. You'll notice I streamlined my left nav and cleaned it up a bit. Now you can just click on my list of links to see what I'm checking up on here and there. Let me know if you are a del.icio.us user--I'm always curious to see what my friends are up to. Funny how links can say a lot about a person.
And Angela, you asked about Flickr...yes, its great! It's easy to use, great display capabilities and I like the community aspect--seeing when friends have new pictures and the like.
I'm also excited about the possibilities of Trumba...
I much prefer gMail these days. I have a ton of extra invites if anyone wants one. It is infinitely better than Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
The Mentat Wiki which is right up my alley as a recent MA grad in Critical & Creative Thinking. Tools, articles and information galore.
Software
Well, I have to give a strong plug (and yes, yes, I'm probably biased here) for AvantGo. Simply put, the best mobile web content provider around. They just keep improving. Now available for BlackBerry too so if you have a mobile PDA or a smartphone you don't really have an excuse. It's the best way to keep up with news and information when you are on the go. Even better, it's free!
Firefox ~ If you are still using Internet Explorer as your web browser, all I have to say to you is STOP! If you don't have tabbed browsing, you are missing out on the best way to quickly and easily use the Internet to your best advantage.
Open Office ~ The best free productivity suite you can find. If you can't/don't want to shell out $400 to Microsoft for its Office Standard Edition, check out Open Office. I use it for my writing--I like the organization of multiple chapters better than the way Word does it. It IS compatible with Microsoft, however, so if you create a spreadsheet in Open Office and send it to a friend who has Word they won't have a problem opening it. All in all a great, cool software suite and the best part is that it's free.
Picasa ~ Google's free picture album/sharing/editing tool. Best free software for quick fixes and the way it organizes all photos on your hard-drive is awesome.
The A-9 Toolbar ~ Amazon's search tool which is based on Google. You can easily search Google, Amazon or A9. The way it displays your searches is especially helpful, with thumbnails of images and other related searches that you can set up. Quickly search for your results on Creative Commons, NASA, Flickr, Feedster and a host of other great sites. One great thing about the toolbar is that you can easily track bookmarks between computers if you have a toolbar on each machine and are logged in. I keep a lot of my private bookmarks (bank, journals, etc) here--that I wouldn't want on del.icio.us.
iPodder --software to quickly subscribe and download Podcasts into your iTunes. Check out PodcastAlley to find podcasts galore. My current favorite? >Grape Radio.
Posted by crystallyn at 04:05 PM | Comments (1)