Pressure is on for engineers to communicate face-to-face

MIT created this undergraduate program focused on “people skills” in response to industry pressures to produce engineers who are as skilled at communicating face-to-face as they are at writing complicated computer codes on their own.

A great industry example of why the courses in myLearning are VERY applicable to your job!

Read the report here.

All Things Workplace: Purge The Victims and Villains Syndrome

All Things Workplace: Purge The Victims and Villains Syndrome.

Do You Think We Are a Rock Band?

Companies use all kinds of metaphors to describe their business. “Like a ship”, “like a family”, “a military unit”, etc.  I think the coolest workplace metaphor is “Like a Rock Band” and here’s why:

• We allow ourselves to be different.
• We do work that we and our clients think is really cool.
• We inspire people with what we do and who we are.
• We have a great time and give our audience a great time.

Do you think our workplace is like a rock band? Do you get to feel like a rock star on the job? Does what you do create admiring fans?  Comment below.

~Kristin

How To: Be the Manager Who Knows How to Develop and Engage Your Team

Source: All Things Workplace Blog

Evolution of the Web, and You.

HMTL gave us a way to structure forms and content. XML gives us a way to mash content from any two different sites together, in a way that disregards structure and gives us what we want, when we want.

You’d better know, it’s changing your life.

Most of us travel through the web through series of links, like lilly pads across a pond. We link, we watch video, we read, we learn, we investigate, we meet people, we stalk old acquaintances, we tweet, etc.

Were you doing this stuff 1 year ago? 2 years ago?  Did you do all this 5 years ago?

Our lives have rapidly changed with the speed of Web 2.0, and there’s much more to come. But think, for a minute, about the impact this has on workplace culture.

Specifically, think about your the Millennial generation co-workers. If you don’t have any yet, you will. Their worlds center around the rapid explosion of XML.  Go to any college campus and ask them how often they check email. You’ll be shocked when you hear their take on “such archaic communication.”

Millennials don’t email. They don’t place phone calls. They text. They Tweet. They Blog. They Microblog (ie Tweet). They Videoblog. They update status messages. They Digg it.

It won’t be long before you’re working side-by-side with some Millenials, if you aren’t already. How will you communicate with them? Will you expect them to use your familiar, comfortable forms like email, phone calls, meetings, memos, or one-off conversations? Do you think they’ll attempt any of these? Will they attepmt to speak your language?  Or will you attempt to speak their language?

If you aren’t already thinking along these lines, I suggest you do.  Success of you, your team, your department, your company, and your industry is heavily reliant upon the creativity, innovation and freshness that incoming Millenials will bring to the workplace over the next 10 years.

The world is changing faster than ever before, and if you think you’re “with it”…. think again. You’ve already missed the next development, just in the time you spent reading this post.

~Kristin