Yap 3.0

5 Reasons for using the RACI (or RASCI) model as part of change management

robinyap — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:27:09 +0000

Remember the RACI model? Used for organizational change management processes identifying roles and responsibilities of individuals especially when there’s a need for increased integration, collaboration, and general interaction amongst different departments. I like to go through this exercise now and then because of these five reasons:

1. Ease of use. It’s low tech and low cost – it can be completed anywhere. Remember these quick steps:
• Identify the activities
• Identify the functional roles
• Assign the RACI codes
• Identify any gaps or overlaps – for example, where are two As or no Rs
• Distribute the chart, incorporate feedback
• Reach agreement with all involved stakeholders

2. Reflect on our value-add as individual contributors, manager of people, manager of projects and member of a team. We’re hired for a reason. We’re in our departments for a reason. We have projects that we work on for a reason. It’s good to reflect on what those reasons are.

3. Improvement is fundamental to why we use RACI (or any other alternate models stemming from this). Remember what mom used to say “there’s always room for improvement” – applies in the workplace as well.

4. Increase accountability of the parties involved. . Sometimes in getting focused on the minutia of the day-to-day we may have team members forgetting the bigger picture. This is an exercise in reminding everyone their accountabilities.

5. See the bigger picture. As leaders we strategize. We forecast. We budget. We see how our actions move our corporate culture. This exercise will assist in aligning those strategies with the tactical activities that drive them.

Most of you would be either in the middle or about to start business planning, maybe take an hour or two to go through a RACI (or RASCI) model as it is a good way to remember common goals aligned to common mission and vision of the organization.

Also Marco Cattaneo, professor at Charles Sturt University in Australia, produced this ARCI/RACI video explaining further what we’ve discussed above.

*BTW I sometimes doodle so I can focus more intently in meetings - yes I'm a kinesthetic-visual-spatial learner all at once. I've been told by colleagues that I should start posting those times when I doodle and identify which meetings they refer to. This is one of those moments.

Start the long weekend early

robinyap — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:01:32 +0000

We’ve all learned in management school that great caring managers show outwardly that behaviour to their employees in both the big ways that impact them and their peers and the little things that matter. Whenever there’s a long weekend, its a nice gesture to send everyone home early so they can be with their loved ones and enjoy the long weekend with them. My email today to my team, for example, looks like this:

It’s the long weekend and you know what that means… early start of your weekend. For those able to, head home at 3pm today (or if you’re on ‘work at home’ today, stop looking at that BlackBerry at 3p) and enjoy a relaxing weekend with your friends and family.

Enjoy your time off. Stay cool, stay dry. Refresh and relax.

Notice there’s a caveat of “if you are able to” because sometimes your team may not be able to due to project deadlines, meetings with clients, etc. that cannot be moved but the gesture is important and I encourage my fellow leaders to do the same.

It’s in the bag – my 72-hour emergency kit

administrator — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:50:27 +0000

With the earthquake this afternoon, its never too late to make sure you have a packed emergency kit. This works not just for earthquakes but for many unexpected emergencies as well. Since I practically grew up in California where we had earthquakes for breakfast, thought I’d share with you what I have on my 72-hour backpack for 2 people to get you started on yours. I replace these regularly for freshness of the products.

Bottled water and water purifying tablets
Fruit and Granola Bars
2 pairs of work gloves, leather gloves, and a box of disposable clear gloves
2 emergency blankets (or you can get those fancy foil looking ones)
1 box of 10 disposable dust-masks
Tissue boxes
Clothes for 2 people for 72 hours
Toothpaste with disposable toothbrushes
2 emergency rain poncho (they are not fashionable but they are functional)
2 towels
whistles
hand crank flashlights and radios
pen and paper
swiss army knife and matches
pepper spray and First Aid Kit (includes gauzes, bandages, scissors, etc)

I’m sure I may be missing something here, so please add your items and together we can have a complete kit.

The Government of Canada’s Get Prepared website has further information about this that you may find useful. Keep safe and healthy.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreychan/3959338395/

Your Swag is You! Comparing Conference Swags (Giveaways, Freebies, and what not)

administrator — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:03:10 +0000

From the Networked Learning Conference in Aalborg Denmark May 2010

From MESH 2010 Conference in Toronto, Canada June 2010

If you look at these swags (giveaways, freebies, whatever you want to call them) you can immediately identify all the marketing focus and weight of these conferences, correct? But does popularity of the conference mean cache in the industry? Can conference content be determined by the amount of swag one gets? If funding for travel is not an issue, which of these conferences will you go to barring no difference in content but your decision to go is purely by swag content?

Why do you ask should I just look at swag and not the content? Because this is one way of providing an external representation of one’s organization and in looking at this can we determine importance of one’s marketing strategy through these choices. What can be learned from this? What companies are choosing which conference they market to. In fact, you can even look at this from the marketing companies themselves who are used to produce these trash-or-treasure trinkets as they prominently provide company name logos on the products they sell from their websites. How do these partnerships work together to push each other’s products above the noise?

Another layer of questions that I have is how social networking is incorporated into this whole marketing mix? If you look at the swag videos, were the website URLs the main focus of the tag lines of these products or is it just the product itself with a brand? If you compare this with the latest commercial for hotels.ca for example, you will notice that they are pushing their customer service phone numbers rather than just the website URL. What does that tell you about mixing marketing channels?

Ok so this post has a lot of questions as I try to look at layers of media and marketing that is being put forth right now and see if there are any patterns and correlations. When you’re in your strategy sessions for the coming fiscal year, try the exercise above as you may find that looking at how the trends are occurring before you not just within your industry but as a whole can give you a glimpse of how you need to address the needs of your future clients.

Creative leap sparked by a trip to Vigeland Park, Oslo

administrator — Sun, 09 May 2010 11:20:29 +0000

When traveling to new cities I always try to find time go to museums, parks, and suggested tourist spots by tourism websites, guides and bloggers. I do this for a couple of reasons:
(1) understand why certain artifacts are identified to be important for that culture
(2) for fun, of course (!)
(3) learn more about the city and its inhabitants
(4) search companies with stellar customer service, and
(5) seek out great food (at the end of the day-satiating gastronomically will win over
most anything when traveling, at least for me)

Then see how I can integrate this experience to enhance my work and personal life. Isn’t that what you do when you travel?

So in Oslo, this is what I did. My Frommer‘s guide said to check Vigeland Park and I did. And while I was enjoying the view, I thought I’d share this with you through the above video. What struck me immediately with this was the enormity of human activities that have been depicted in bronze and iron. Lifestyle, gender, relationships, and human emotions were intertwined. Does this represent the culture of the Norwegians? I thought. Maybe. Will knowing this perspective enhance my experience while I visiting? Definitely! I sought to investigate further by correlating these depictions with those in their museums coupled with what I’ve read about their culture (from the Vikings onto the 21st century) and how that shaped their ability to relate to foreigners like me in both academic, professional and hospitality settings. I also got to know more about their tradition of “russ” (participant to traditional Norwegian videregående skole) where teenagers wear these red jumpsuits that can be signed by anyone and they were giving these cards (they looked like trading cards) about themselves to whomever wants them (example outfit photo on left). I thought of security of these teens since personal information was being shared but apparently that wasn’t an issue in this country. Then I looked at how this tradition came to being. Then the next thing is what I shared with my team as a creative leap …

How about creating an eLearning module wherein a similar russ tradition (sign here or comment there) ala graffiti becomes part of a learning engagement activity? Looking at online graffiti programs, I came across the Graffiti Creator that was easy to use and can be easily incorporated into existing online material. Voila! A trip to Oslo resulting into the development of a fun exercise for the learners.

Now its your turn to tell me your creative leaps ~

Live mindmapping the Networked Learning Conference 2010 (#NLC2010)

administrator — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:25:52 +0000

You’ve read about my live blogging postings from years back and even presented a paper about it. Live blogging sessions have become de riguer in these conferences although at the Networked Learning Conference 2010 (#NLC2010) it only seems like about 5% of the attendees are using a device. Is this cultural or economic or just pure lack of electrical plugs in the session rooms?(!) Whatever the reason, it is interesting to investigate.

Due to parallel sessions live-Twittering can become linear so an idea by my colleague Joost Robben is to develop a live-mindmap. He is in one session and I’m in another and together we can add the themes being discussed in the sessions we are viewing and be able to see connections immediately. Although we continue to live-Twitter the conference, this mindmap provides an additional dimension especially for the visual learner.

So if you are at the conference, do participate in this live mindmap. For those reading the mindmap, post your comments here on your thoughts on the themes that are occurring in these sessions.

Fishbowl keynote dialogue at the Networked Learning Conference 2010 Aalborg, Denmark

administrator — Mon, 03 May 2010 08:21:37 +0000

At the Networked Learning Conference, keynote speakers Dr. Etienne Wegner and Dr. Yrjö Engeström along with Dr. Chris Jones and Dr. Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld were setup in a fish bowl discussion format discussing about Expansive Learning and Knowedgeability in landscapes of practice (activity theories, networks, and communities of practice) and how their concepts impact Networked Learning as well as how knowledge representation is reified.

How was this fishbowl dialogue setup? Due to the globally represented audience, each keynote speaker first provided a typical stand up PowerPoint representation initially. English was the language of choice. When they were done, they sat in a semi-circle format with extra chairs allotted for the audience.

Anyone from the audience was invited to take one of available chairs and participate in the dialogue
At specific times, another set of audience participants were invited to tap one of the individuals on the shoulder and they’d take their seats to provide their perspectives and continue the dialogue going
Keynote speakers were not tapped (their wisdom was the catalyst of the dialogue in the first place)

Topics discussed: Modulating knowledge, accountability of knowledge experts to the academic and practice worlds and following other experts, trust and collaboration across organizational boundaries (Engeström) , communities, arguments revolving around the fact that collaboration is not necessarily part of community of practice activities (Wegner), vocabulatory development in a community, collective care within the community of practice as a disease of a community rather than a fundamental characteristic (Wegner), expanding learning, legitimate peripheral participation, situated learning, problem-based learning v case method in business schools to make them more agile through the use of expansive learning method.

My insights from this experience:

Continue learning from the experts by constantly updating my own expert list thereby expanding my own subject matter network
Continue locating story telling opportunities in networks I’m part of, sharing my activities as they are enhanced by these interactions, and continue to actively participate in communities of practice as those interested and aligned with what I do will look at all these inputs to the various social learning technologies and knowledge creation media aggregately not independent of each medium.

My modification of this presentation format: Create AND use a backchannel (the conference provided a hashtag #NLC2010 and use Twitter but was not leveraged in this part of the session as a frontchannel though caveat here or at least a sidechannel-by having this run outside of the session but somewhere in the conference floor much like when sports events have a feed outside at the concession stand) The conversation, though fulsome and enlightening, limits the knowledge creation from contributions of those participants who may not be comfortable standing up in front of 100s of people and start speaking directly with the keynote speakers. They too have valuable input to the knowledge creation process.

How to host a guest speaker at your corporate learning event | My social learning presentation experience at Blackberry..er I mean.. Research in Motion [RIM]

robinyap — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:14:59 +0000

I was at the offices of the good people of Blackberry (Research in Motion) last week to present and facilitate a level setting session on Social Learning at their quarterly Internal Learning Forum [ILF]. Like at my presentation at the Canadian Society for Training and Development, I engaged my colleague, Joost Robben, to check in and give us a quick presentation on the process we’ve gone through in leveraging social networks to collaborate and ultimately developed our Social Learning Technologies model (see page 15 of this deck). Since I signed an NDA, I can’t tell you about their gorgeous facility nor topics we’ve discussed but I can tell you that my contacts there were gracious, courteous, and whose service were at par with world-class customer experience. At least that’s how they treated me. I even told them this as I’ve spoken at conferences, universities, and corporations around the globe and their Waterloo staff were welcoming and anticipate their speaker’s requirements. Below is what I can show you of the presentation deck I used.

Social Learning Presentation @ RIM

View more presentations from Robin Yap.

Quick tips when hosting a session with an outside speaker:

Prior to the session

Provide all the details of the session including people you are going to meet (if not for my contact’s email I may not be able to spell or pronounce properly people’s names), dietary requirements, directions to which building you are headed, dress code, etc.
Assist in the handouts and printing of the materials
Get approval from the speaker of the introduction you are going to be using
If there are reimbursements or any payments made, identify how this will be processed and turnaround times to set appropriate expectations
Get copies of the presentation and make sure they are on a stick
Remind speaker to provide business cards

At the Session

Anticipate your speaker’s needs
- Are there technical needs? Do they need speakers? Microphone? Teleprompters? Access to video conferencing equipment? Are you providing tech support on hand before, during, and after the session?
- Internet access? How are they going to log onto your wi-fi network? Have a readily available one time username and password
- Physical access to the building? Provide access to the building by giving the speaker a pass key or accompany the speaker throughout the event to ensure they don’t get lost and end up wandering through secured areas
- Provide a beverage and a snack. Speakers whose sessions last hours can get parched and a quick sip of water gets them going. You don’t want a speaker who will lose their voice along their facilitated session or presentation, do you?

Post Session Debrief

Publicly and privately thank the speaker
Provide a token gift as a gesture of your thanks. A Starbucks Gift Card is a good starting point, at least for a soy extra foam latte guzzling guy like me.
A nice handwritten thank you card along with your token gift will make you stand out from the rest of the hosts and they will speak highly of you to their colleagues
Ask the speaker if a feedback will be expected from the session then follow up with audience level 1′s along with qualitative and anecdotal assessments. Most speakers, including myself, always look to improve our speaking abilities as this is a skill we continue to hone, so constructive criticisms are a definite welcome along with accolades, if any. Organizations like ASTD, CSTD and Toastmasters provide the actual metrics to the speaker as these become training basis for the next time that speaker stands in public to present.

There are other important aspects of creating stellar speaker experience, what would those additional points be for you? Post your additional input below.

Hey I got a new WP theme!

administrator — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:42:38 +0000

Ok I have to clean this up a bit more but after a couple of stressful days and with the help of my friends AJ Morris and Phil Ingram, all I need to do is reorganize my posts, the layout, some colour changes, and voila! a new look of Yap 3.0.. check for that in the next couple of weeks. Considering I have a social learning presentation at RIM this week and a Networked Learning conference presentation to do with my buddy Joost Rooben a couple of weeks later, I will be focusing on those activities first.

At least I can blog again. Yay! So what’s new in your world?

Blog under renovation

administrator — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 02:07:15 +0000

Yap 3.0 is being renovated so I’m holding all my posts until the renovation is done. Look for a jazzier version of this site soon.