Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

How Unexamined Mindsets Will Not Close the Gender Gap at the Top

What skills do you need to advance beyond the middle management/roles in an organization? Right after you think about that, consider the skills we typically talk about when we say we want to help women advance. If you are wondering what that 33% is and its relative importance, you have guessed rightly that it's critical and that managers and leaders rarely consider it when it comes to coaching women. That green box represents business, strategic, and financial acumen. It means having the ability and gaining the experience to understand where the business is going, to scan the industry and market... Read more →

The Realities of Scaling and the Unintended Consequences of Habits

Making Sense: From learning to pay it, to trying to get it, attention has been the “it” concept of marketing and business. How will technology be the answer? Attention: A Muscle to Strengthen. The Atlantic: Sood is a physician, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, no less. There he recently founded the Global Center for Resiliency and Wellbeing and is now taking to the Internet to teach people how to train their minds for a better life. One of the core elements of Sood's practice is helping people to “create intentionality.” He describes the approach plainly: choosing where... Read more →

Love and Attention

A body of work takes time, creativity, and it takes putting yourself into the building of it. I was talking with someone the other day and they asked me about this blog, how much money I make with it. As if that were the only measure of worth. Love is a greater measure, and it is intrinsically tied to a kind of attention. If we looked at the root cause of many of the issues and problems we face today, we might well find that it is a deep thirst for love that sits behind them. Yet love is ours... Read more →

Why Should we Connect?

Every social network is a little different, and I use them differently. Chances are you do as well. More than two years ago I spelled it all out in how I participate in social networks - some of it for G+ will need updating, but the basic premise is still valid. When I talk to peers and colleagues of various ages (this is not generational) I learn that some use Facebook only for family and sometimes friends, that chat apps are were the action happens, Twitter is for work and sometimes content/news discovery, email gets mixed reviews - from getting... Read more →

Resources and Guides to Simplify Experiences

I am getting ready for 2020 and in addition to rethinking old patterns of problem solving and co-collaboration strategies, I work hard at closing the gap between my skill envy of tech and development and graphic design through creative learning. I consider user experience to be at the intersection of the two. On a good day, before talking about what needs to change on a site, I tend to look at what could be working better through light heuristic analyses. So I am always on the lookout for useful resources that will help me simplify experiences and make it easier... Read more →

Getting Ready for 2020

“The notion of a career has changed. Whereas we used to have a career ladder, now we have a career jungle gym. Success in a career is no longer a simple ascension on a path of steps. You need to climb sideways and sometimes down; sometimes you need to swing and jump from one set of bars to the next. And, to extend the metaphor, sometimes you need to spring from the jungle gym and establish your own turf somewhere else on the playground. And, if we really want the playground metaphor to accurately describe the modern world, neither the... Read more →

Influencing Panel and Speaker Decisions at Events

“Put a kid in a candy store and they will attempt to pluck all the colorful, sugar-coated, highly shiny objects in sight. When it comes to events, we are often like the kid in a candy store -- looking at the shiny subjects. Of course, intellectually we know nutrition comes from elsewhere, yet we want to snack on yummy celebrities and easy to talk about (and do, please) topics. We want the emotional blanket of rubbing shoulders with all the other cool kids who are in it for the point-scoring value. See and be seen.” I wrote what good event... Read more →

Divergent Thinking in the Age of Convergence

According to Sir Ken Robinson, divergent thinking is an essential capacity for creativity. It's the ability to see lots of possible answers to a question, lots of ways to interpret a question, or to think laterally, as Edward de Bono would say, to see multiple answers and not just one. Last week, to answer the question can creativity be taught? we examined how creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. In this RSA Animate video (it cuts off at the end, it's not you), Sir Ken Robinson says that we start school topping the charts for... Read more →

Fakers, Work, and Misfits

Making Sense: By the looks of it, the very definition of work is ripe for change -- along with still stale hiring practices. The Fakers. Vice: “We keep it, and we can assign it to other members,” he said. “Once they finish using our services and land our job, then we have an awesome website we can use, so it trickles down.”Of course, Schmidt says there are some limits to the kinds of references he’s willing to give, no matter the price. Antiwork – a radical shift in how we view “jobs.” Contributoria: Work’s assumed virtue has always been about... Read more →

Discussion on the Ethics of Algorithms

Does the algorithm solve the human bias problem, or does it compound it? Are there unintended consequences associated with heavy reliance on algorithms for decision-making? How do we decide where to draw the line? For example, Facebook's year-in-review collections of most memorable images automatically posted to users news feeds created unintended consequences. A great way to celebrate a birth or a new job, a somber way to be reminded of the loss of a loved one. USV opened a thread on this topic: Recommendation engines and algorithms create positive feedback loops that reinforce a desired behavior by replicating the conditions... Read more →