Hi,
Unfortunately, I will have to miss tomorrow's class, I'm attending my best friend's wedding.
Regards,
Irit
Unfortunately, I will have to miss tomorrow's class, I'm attending my best friend's wedding.
Regards,
Irit
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
apologies
hi , i would like to apologize
i will not be able to arrive to this weeks class due to miluim duty
how do i know what my make up assignment is ?
eyal
i will not be able to arrive to this weeks class due to miluim duty
how do i know what my make up assignment is ?
eyal
Performance Dashboard
Here we will post summary measurements on the class performance based on our collaboration efforts, learning effectiveness, project success, etc.
Previous Apologies
-
Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the first lesson due to an exam I had to take at the same time.ReplyDelete
My apologies,
Sarit -
Hey,ReplyDelete
Unfortunately, I will have to miss part of the class today, I have a preventive driving course (נהיגה מונעת) so I will leave the lesson at 16:50
Regards,
Linor -
Hi,ReplyDelete
I could not attent the first class of the semester due to an exam.
Best Regards,
Gili
-
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Not a Company, But a Community
Herb Kelleher is the chairman and co-founder of Southwest Airlines. The company was quite successful since its founding due to its low costs and great customer service. Kelleher considers his employees to be the most valuable asset that the company possesses. To him, investing in the employees is more important than pleasing the investors or the customers because if treated well, they will actually satisfy customers better. To the chairman, the company should be as innovative with its employees as it is in developing products. With talented people in the right culture the contribution is not only in the company’s best interest but also helps other employees.
Creating a community in the workplace can provide workers have a joint effort in contributing to the company’s cause. Also, giving employees autonomy to make their own decisions empowers them.
Creating a community in the workplace can provide workers have a joint effort in contributing to the company’s cause. Also, giving employees autonomy to make their own decisions empowers them.
Breaking the bureaucratic hierarchy:
Working in a corporation is constantly accompanied with fear of losing the job. This fear can lead to a hard working employee but one that does not invest time in it. In addition, it suppresses creativity in the workplace. In today’s projects, where many teams are involved, it is hard to find gratitude and appreciation for your work. It is hard to see the outcome of the time and work you put into a project.
In a conventional corporate hierarchy, people are subjected to a lot of information received by emails that mostly contain a negative tone. This makes doing a good job a difficult task.
Working in a corporation is constantly accompanied with fear of losing the job. This fear can lead to a hard working employee but one that does not invest time in it. In addition, it suppresses creativity in the workplace. In today’s projects, where many teams are involved, it is hard to find gratitude and appreciation for your work. It is hard to see the outcome of the time and work you put into a project.
In a conventional corporate hierarchy, people are subjected to a lot of information received by emails that mostly contain a negative tone. This makes doing a good job a difficult task.
Radically, Subversively Responsible:
Linden Lab is best known for creating and supplying the architecture for Second Life, a virtual game company where users can interact with each other. For example, a teenager in Brazil can build a virtual café and pay his family’s bills. The game makes most of its money by selling and charging a monthly fee for virtual land. Linden Lab’s approach to community is especially innovative and very different from other corporate hierarchies.
It is innovative in the way it promotes recognition for the work of others. Linden Lab’s Rewarder approach is very unique and places the responsibility for determining bonuses directly in the hands of the staff themselves and not in the management’s control. Every associate receives a portion of money they must distribute to those who contribute the most to the company. Being recognized and boosted by one's peers is a motivation to an employee to continue working hard.
Allowing people to volunteer for a project that they choose is another innovative idea led by Linden. They did this by letting the engineers choose their work from a database of tasks. They used a self-reporting tool called A&Os where employees share their achievements of the previous week and their objectives for the upcoming week.
The community also influences the company's direction and decision making using the Rewarder software. They are asked to allocate points to the projects they believe will most benefit the company and those who contribute to this successfully receive a bonus.
Lessons from Linden
Transparency fuels accountability. Everyone knows each other's score. One's achievements are public knowledge.
Purpose goes beyond financial objectives and it fuels people’s ambition and drive. Linden’s claimed purpose is to “advance the human condition”. Linden lets the community decide, and everyone has a role.
The User’s Guide To Building a Purpose-Driven Community
Even one person can do quite a bit to advocate and implement these innovative ideas. It is possible for one person to help a responsible company bring out the best from its community. Susan Johnson proves this point. Ms. Johnson worked for Seventh Generation and was responsible for their accounts in about five thousand stores. The company relied on sales brokers to represent their brand. These brokers, however, represented other brands. Johnson had to educate them about the company's products so they could properly sell them to customers.
Whole Foods stores are stuffed with products. The shoppers wheel their carts around the store and shoppers dipped into the center of the store where the products from Seventh Generation were displayed. While standing before an audience composed of grocery-team leaders from California she found herself not only introducing them to Seventh Generation, but also the entire “Living Home” sector. Listening to her they realized that consumers who buy organic produce would necessarily want cleaning products that are nature friendly. Sales soon improved. Johnson decided to invent a new role for herself by launching full-blown educational initiatives advocating for “healthy, living home” and for Seventh Generation. Due to their poor sales it would be hard for them to let their top sales director go. Therefore, they let her pull together a trial program while continuing to achieve her sales goals.
Radical doesn’t necessarily have to be risky. In this case they kept Johnson as a sales director and invested some money to test her hypotheses, thus reducing the risk. They were also conservative by starting small with a modest budget. The team's first step was to benchmark other companies that had innovated around education.
Johnson led a volunteer group. The result is that people tend to be more passionate about their work. The project was a big hit and the demo improved by changing the name and changing the video.
In conclusion, in the 21st century, as society becomes more demanding, as the markets become tougher to sustain a business in, Herb Kelleher suggests that the change must come from within. Insisting that the focus of energy should be inward to create a fair and beneficial work environment for your employees.
Linden Lab is best known for creating and supplying the architecture for Second Life, a virtual game company where users can interact with each other. For example, a teenager in Brazil can build a virtual café and pay his family’s bills. The game makes most of its money by selling and charging a monthly fee for virtual land. Linden Lab’s approach to community is especially innovative and very different from other corporate hierarchies.
It is innovative in the way it promotes recognition for the work of others. Linden Lab’s Rewarder approach is very unique and places the responsibility for determining bonuses directly in the hands of the staff themselves and not in the management’s control. Every associate receives a portion of money they must distribute to those who contribute the most to the company. Being recognized and boosted by one's peers is a motivation to an employee to continue working hard.
Allowing people to volunteer for a project that they choose is another innovative idea led by Linden. They did this by letting the engineers choose their work from a database of tasks. They used a self-reporting tool called A&Os where employees share their achievements of the previous week and their objectives for the upcoming week.
The community also influences the company's direction and decision making using the Rewarder software. They are asked to allocate points to the projects they believe will most benefit the company and those who contribute to this successfully receive a bonus.
Lessons from Linden
Transparency fuels accountability. Everyone knows each other's score. One's achievements are public knowledge.
Purpose goes beyond financial objectives and it fuels people’s ambition and drive. Linden’s claimed purpose is to “advance the human condition”. Linden lets the community decide, and everyone has a role.
The User’s Guide To Building a Purpose-Driven Community
Even one person can do quite a bit to advocate and implement these innovative ideas. It is possible for one person to help a responsible company bring out the best from its community. Susan Johnson proves this point. Ms. Johnson worked for Seventh Generation and was responsible for their accounts in about five thousand stores. The company relied on sales brokers to represent their brand. These brokers, however, represented other brands. Johnson had to educate them about the company's products so they could properly sell them to customers.
Whole Foods stores are stuffed with products. The shoppers wheel their carts around the store and shoppers dipped into the center of the store where the products from Seventh Generation were displayed. While standing before an audience composed of grocery-team leaders from California she found herself not only introducing them to Seventh Generation, but also the entire “Living Home” sector. Listening to her they realized that consumers who buy organic produce would necessarily want cleaning products that are nature friendly. Sales soon improved. Johnson decided to invent a new role for herself by launching full-blown educational initiatives advocating for “healthy, living home” and for Seventh Generation. Due to their poor sales it would be hard for them to let their top sales director go. Therefore, they let her pull together a trial program while continuing to achieve her sales goals.
Radical doesn’t necessarily have to be risky. In this case they kept Johnson as a sales director and invested some money to test her hypotheses, thus reducing the risk. They were also conservative by starting small with a modest budget. The team's first step was to benchmark other companies that had innovated around education.
Johnson led a volunteer group. The result is that people tend to be more passionate about their work. The project was a big hit and the demo improved by changing the name and changing the video.
In conclusion, in the 21st century, as society becomes more demanding, as the markets become tougher to sustain a business in, Herb Kelleher suggests that the change must come from within. Insisting that the focus of energy should be inward to create a fair and beneficial work environment for your employees.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Grammar Checkers
In order to improve the community's writing communication skills, we suggest the following tools:
1. Grammar.net’s Grammar Checker -a free standalone application.The application is grammar wise. this one is a standalone application and not a browser plug in, it also has a nice vocabulary feature named "Thesaurus".
After installation you can invoke a grammar/spell check simply by marking the desired text and pressing the "Ctrl+g" key combination on the keyboard, spelling mistakes are underlined in red while grammar errors are underlined in green.
2. Ginger extension for Chrome,which is actually better at guessing the correct words when those are misspelled, it passively checks for mistakes while you are typing within an input field in your browser.
You can use them both, it's always nice to have a second opinion.
Also, you can read this on how to ask questions in English.
1. Grammar.net’s Grammar Checker -a free standalone application.The application is grammar wise. this one is a standalone application and not a browser plug in, it also has a nice vocabulary feature named "Thesaurus".
After installation you can invoke a grammar/spell check simply by marking the desired text and pressing the "Ctrl+g" key combination on the keyboard, spelling mistakes are underlined in red while grammar errors are underlined in green.
2. Ginger extension for Chrome,which is actually better at guessing the correct words when those are misspelled, it passively checks for mistakes while you are typing within an input field in your browser.
You can use them both, it's always nice to have a second opinion.
Also, you can read this on how to ask questions in English.
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