Archive for the ‘Tools’ Category

Sometimes One Quote Sez So Much

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

From LinkedIn’s CIO group discussing “What Are the Things We Hate About IT?”…

image: icons.mysitemyway

It is not so much a wonder that people hate IT,
it is a wonder organizations
still find people to take the abuse.”
— Kevin Wood

Get Real…Stop Cheating Yourself

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

OK, we’re gonna use one trash-talk about one thing to make a point about something else…Let us know if it works.

In this YouTube clip, filmmaker David Lynch trashes the experience of watching a movie on your phone. No matter how good phones become, even those that start w/ “i,” we agree. People; popcorn; surroundsound; the images enveloping every part of you; experiencing the created world as the filmmaker envisioned it — that’s what we call watching a movie!

We’ll let David Lynch send you a wake-up call, in his own eloquent way, about experiencing a movie. We’d like to draw your attention to the fact that using the best tools for the best experience is always critical — whether it’s for entertainment or work. When your company produces crap project management tools, why subject yourself to that? Why not use awesome tools produced in the open-source marketplace. When your company tries to control your experience of how you build teams or how you communicate or how you perform evaluations or how you report your results with less-than-awesome (AKA: crappy) tools…why subject yourself to that?

Using the best tools for the job…(“best” as defined by “helping you do YOUR best”)…is supercritical. As Mr. Lynch might say IF he were an organizational design expert, “You’ll be cheated…It’s such a sadness…Stop using the company’s fucking tools…Get real!”

Is “Right Tools to Do One’s Best” a Right?

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

photo: howstuffworks.com

I am sitting in a hotel room in Parma, Italy. CNN is on in the background, talking about Finland legislating mandatory Internet access for all its citizens. 1 Mb broadband Net access is a citizen’s RIGHT! Access to 21st century tools is now becoming as critical to one’s health and welfare as running water and electricity, sez friend of HW, social media consultant Deanna Zandt, during the CNN interview. Net access is becoming critical to all of us in the industrialized world. Which leads right into all that Josh and I are writing about in Hacking Work

One of the key practices that single-handedly can build or destroy an organization and its people: Access to the best and right tools to do the job, to understand the job, the goals, the strategy and others and to communicate to others. Are user-centered tools (the user being the worker) a most basic and fundamental right of every corporate citizen?

With the right tools anybody can do anything and everything. Without the right tools, we are all hampered, diminished, and our ability to succeed is greatly reduced. Without the right tools, all work is harder and little of it is smarter. With the right tools, anything is possible. What do you think? Are the right tools to do one’s best a right?

Top 40 Useful Sites To Learn New Skills

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

Awesome resource! Check it out!

photo: links999.net

Corporate Training Sucks

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

Raveena: I’m a corporate trainer. I tell my trainees that, due to budget constraints, much of what I provides “sucks.” So I send my trainees to free online sources outside of the company. Then, after testing them on what they learned, I validate their certificates in required courses they never attended. Result: They consistently learn more this way.