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Sunday, August 19, 2007

Decision Makers - R U Wise or Otherwise!

NB. If you are wise, you will enjoy reading the following post by Chris, called Mr. and Mrs. Average.

RAW STYLUS

PERSPECTIVES ON STRATEGIC ALTERNATIVE MARKETING

Aug 10th, 2007 by Chris Hoskin
See how you compare with the UK’s IT and Business Decision makers in these Silicon.com surveys.

Do you think a business blog can be a good way for companies to communicate with their customers?
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What is the biggest expenses claim you’ve ever made?
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When you are on holiday, how often do you check your work email?
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How long have you been with your current mobile phone provider?
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How do you interact most often with your boss?
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How many emails on average do you get in your inbox per day?
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How would you describe your normal stress level at work?
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Who is in charge of IT risk management within your organisation?
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Would you be happy to go through biometric security checks in airports?
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Have you ever visited a virtual world?
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How much time in the office do you spend using social networking sites each week?
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By 2015, your working week will be…
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How often do you work from home?
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Are you worried about potential health risks associated with using wi-fi?
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Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Not Working at Work is Common

Celebrating Work by Not Working
By Mary Lorenz, CareerBuilder.com writer

Some people need their daily YouTube fix even more than they need their 10 a.m. coffee break. If you’re browsing the Web on company time looking for the latest in viral videos, you’re not alone. A new MSN-Zogby survey of 3,800 office employees nationwide reveals that engaging in non-work related activity at the office is far from uncommon. continue reading


See also:
Emails stress out 1 in 3 at office

London, Aug. 13: Emails are causing unprecedented levels of stress among office workers as they struggle to cope with an unending tide of incoming messages. A team of researchers has found that one in three office workers who use computers regularly suffer from email stress.

The deluge of emails also affects the performance of people at work, researchers belonging to Glasgow and Paisley universities said. Computer scientist Karen Renaud of Glasgow University, with psychologist Judith Ramsay of Paisley University and her colleague Mario Hair, a statistician, surveyed 177 people, mainly academics and those involved in creative jobs, to see how they dealt with emails received at work, the Observer reported.

Pressure to check and respond quickly to emails makes some employees check their email inboxes up to 40 times an hour. The research team also found that office workers checked their emails more often than they admitted in a survey. Almost half of the 177 participants said they looked at their email more than once an hour, with 35 per cent claiming to check every 15 minutes, but monitoring equipment fitted to their computers showed it was more often.

The research revealed that 34 per cent of participants felt “stressed” by the sheer number of emails and the obligation to respond quickly, and a further 28 per cent were “driven” because they saw them as a source of pressure. The team characterised just 38 per cent as “relaxed” because they did not reply until a day or even a week later.

“Email is the thing that now causes us the most problems in our working lives. It’s an amazing tool, but it’s got out of hand. Email harries you. You want to know what’s in there, especially if it’s from a family member or friends, or your boss, so you break off what you are doing to read the email. The problem is that when you go back to what you were doing, you’ve lost your chain of thought and, of course, you are less productive.

People’s brains get tired from breaking off from something every few minutes to check emails. The more distracted you are by distractions, including email, then you are going to be more tired and less productive,” lead researcher Karen Renaud said. <source>

Monday, August 13, 2007

Applications Now Being Accepted for Emerging Leaders 2008

The American Library Association is now accepting applications for the 2008 Emerging Leaders program. The program is designed to enable 120 new librarians to get on the fast track to ALA and professional leadership. Application deadline is Wednesday, August 15. [nsls.info]

PS. Info courtesy: Rachel @ Beyond the Job

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Using Mentoring and Coaching for Knowledge Management LO29961


by Sujatha Das
"While information entails an understanding of the relations between data, it generally does not provide a foundation for why the data is what it is, nor an indication as to how the data is likely to change over time. Information has a tendency to be relatively static in time and linear in nature. Information is a relationship between data and, quite simply, is what it is, with great dependence on context for its meaning and with little implication for the future. Beyond relation there is a pattern, where pattern is more than simply a relation of relations. It embodies both a consistency and completeness of relations which, to an extent, creates its own context.

When a pattern relation exists amidst the data and information, the pattern has the potential to represent knowledge. It only becomes knowledge, however, when one is able to realize and understand the patterns and their implications. The patterns representing knowledge have a tendency to be more self-contextualizing. That is, the pattern tends, to a great extent, to create its own context rather than being context dependent to the same extent that information is. A pattern which represents knowledge also provides, when the pattern is understood, a high level of reliability or predictability as to how the pattern will evolve over time, for patterns are seldom static. Patterns which represent knowledge have a completeness to them that information simply does not contain.

Wisdom arises when one understands the foundational principles responsible for the patterns representing knowledge being what they are. And wisdom, even more so than knowledge, tends to create its own context. These foundational principles are universal and completely context independent." Continue reading