Archive for March, 2010
Posted on March 2, 2010 - by Vic Desotelle
Studies on Communication Problems and Best Practices in Outsourcing
In the first of four-part Best Practices Series 2009 released by Outsourcing Center titled’Four Communication Best Practices frequently neglected in Outsourcing Relationships’, fifty six buyers who took part in the study noted that communication issues arise from :
2. Agreeing ( or not ) on the significance of’noise’ or customer’s’s feedback/complaints
Service supplier’s failure to hear the buyer
The secret to having a successful outsourcing relationship is to reach a shared understanding of one another’s goals. To reach this, service suppliers and buyers must adhere to the four communication best practices that are frequently overlooked in outsourcing :
1. Service suppliers must take the’noise’ into account. They pay so much attention on meeting the requirements that they fail to look into what customers consider the deliverables, so it is the buyer who ends up dealing with customers’ beefs. Suppliers have to understand that’noise’ is important in building an outsourcing relationship.
two. Create a communication plan for the period after the transition phase. The relationship generally runs smoothly at the start of the project when both parties understand one another’s goals.
Outsourcing contract should be’crystal clear’. To avoid conflicts, there has to be no room for vagueness or enigma when it comes to the outsourcing contract.
Mutual trust must be established. Buyer and service supplier need to demonstrate that they truly listen and understand one another. For service suppliers, concentrate on the purchaser’s issues and make efforts to resolve them. The same goes to buyers. Communication entails 2 or more parties, and having mutual trust is important to conquer the problem.
this study is a clear indication that communication is more than just talking to the service buyer or supplier. It is about understanding each other’s issues and concerns and coming up with solutions which will work for both parties. Culture and interests may vary, but shared understanding of objectives must be established in order to develop an outsourcing relationship that’s both enduring and profitable to service buyer and provider. The main thing is for buyers and service suppliers to keep the best practices in communication in mind to avoid issues.
By: Tommie Pope
About the Author:
Microsourcing is one of the leading Outsourcing Companies in the Philippines.
Posted on March 6, 2010 - by Vic Desotelle
Collaboration “IS” the New Government
My twine.com webbed a good one today. Although extremely simple, this video triggered a BIG insight for me.
Imagine a new definition of government. Rather than provider of fixes, it becomes a convener of ‘we the people’ and we generate our own solutions. This act shifts a STATIC ‘government’ institution into a DYNAMIC ‘governance’ system. The governing body becomes a manager (or governor) of the ecology of interactions that happen by us the people. Collaboration then becomes the vehicle that acts as this governor, as it enables the flow of action and change. In this way, collaboration and governance become almost synonymous.
What does this do? Well. We no longer have to wait for government to get on board to see the change we want. Instead the governing body builds the infrastructure that allows connection and decision-making to happen. Decisions are no longer made by them. Instead they are made by us and they merely create tools and processes (many via the internet) that allows everyone much more access to the learning and decision-making process. This then becomes a healthier form of control. Rather than government directing and making the decisions, it instead becomes an enabler and ‘governor’ (as it was meant to be) by acting as policy makers but with a different understanding of the meaning of ‘policy’. Now, government monitors rather than polices the outcomes that occur when publicly induced design occurs. Government evolves along with the society by being entwined in the overall feedback system. They become watchers of the difference between consciously derived guiding principles and actual applied experiences that occur in communities of practice.
This diagram shows how the interaction between PRINCIPLE, PRACTICE, and POLICY. It shows that none of these three can sustain the system on its own but each must instead act interdependently with the other two. Here, the policy box is government, or in other words, the convener of a dialog between principle (which is generated out of desire, need, vision, and design possibility) and practice (which is how the design is experienced in the real world). Policy becomes a way to keep the FEEDBACK going between these two subjects the same way a governing value acts on a pipe – too much or too little puts the system into instability. The people inside the government do not make the decision to adjust the flow of choices. Instead, they create and maintain the channels (or policing) that allow the collaboration process to INFORM itself. This is a self-generative behavior and occurs via the interactions between the engagement of the people involved in each of the principle, practice, and policy domains.
Yes, Collaboration “IS” the New Government.
Posted on March 8, 2010 - by Vic Desotelle
Advancements in e-Learning
Advancements in e-Learning
Examining some trends in e-learning will enable us understand why and how e-Learning will continue to be a driving force in business and industry, as well as in the arenas of education. This will help us anticipate education and knowledge on demand. With e-Learning, the possibilities for getting knowledge and information out to the learner at an accelerated pace is viable. This article gives an overview of the advances in e-learning.
In the rapidly growing field of education, training and learning definitions and terminologies have changed. The industry has drifted from using such terms as “technology-supported learning, distance learning and distance education” to “online learning and Web-based training” to “e-learning.”
Today, e-learning allows us to train and develop our workforce continuously, to capture, share, and manage knowledge and skills of the students and professionals who work in our organisations, colleges, and universities, and to get the right information to the right people, when and how they need it.
e-Learning Business Approach
Organisations deploying e-learning for one set of business reasons are finding it to be an essential part of their operating strategy. Deployments of enterprise-wide e-Learning are used for increasing sales effectiveness, improving organisational competency, and building richer customer relationships.
Integrated e-Learning Suites
The e-learning universe is large and diverse, consisting of three major categories: content, technology, and services. In many cases, a comprehensive e-learning solution consists of components of each, integrated into e-Learning “suites” aimed at solving a particular business problem, such as sales or product training.
Blended Learning
Advancement in e-Learning involves blended learning programmes, designed to integrate e-Learning with traditional training methods to increase overall effectiveness. Blended learning preserves the necessary consideration of how people learn, offers options for learning, improves learner retention, increases completion rates for learning programmes, and has been shown to produce measurable savings in learning offerings.
Integrated Learning
There is a tendency towards a seamless transition from one learning activity to another. The trend is towards the integration of these activities or delivery mechanisms. Look for seamless transitions from live group activities to individual exercises, from self-paced learning activities to live and back again, from activities in smaller groups to activities in a larger learning community and back again.
Learning Management System (LMS)
A few years ago, Learning Management Systems were said to be able to “do it all” for the internal workings of an organisation. The fact is that no one product can do it all, and it is not reasonable to assume one would be able to do so. True knowledge delivery solutions need to connect suppliers, business units within your organisation, and customers external to your organisation. The LMS is only part of any solution. The trend is to look at the bigger picture of knowledge delivery solutions that address enterprise-wide learning needs from the inside out.
Conclusion
These five trends in e-learning are intended to provide you with a framework to consider the e-learning needs of your establishment. In the months and years to come, smart organisations will bring together executive decision makers from all parts of their company to understand the corporate needs for e-learning and make purchase and buying decisions based on an understanding of today’s business needs and tomorrow’s requirements for growth and evolution.
Caffeinated Content
Posted on March 14, 2010 - by Vic Desotelle
Alice’s Mirror and the Great White Elephant
A story of conflict and healing in human interaction & collaboration
With compassion in his voice, he said (something like) you can be too sensitive. The energy with it was almost as if the conflict was not that big of a deal, and more in your mind; as if it wasn’t real enough. Since there are some similarities between you and me in the area of ‘sensitive’: Do you think we are too sensitive? In what ways? How might we blow things up bigger than they really are? Or how much of this is others projecting the unseen ‘white elephants’ that arise in the room and shoving them onto our backs? Hec, I usually just want to return her to her herd.
It’s hard giving up something that one likes, but I’ve been here before and things don’t change, so I end up alone – either while in the group, or because I feel a need to choose a lesser of two evils, to leave the group. Usually it’s about this white elephant that no one will acknowledge. I love the white elephant. It’s a misunderstood soft but wounded feminine energy that this elephant represents … And it’s a dark feminine energy that rides her. Ahhhh, there’s the conflict.
And this elephant just wants the weight off her back. She just wants to play (participate) and be reclaimed/accepted by her community, but is guided by the reins of her unconscious master. I wonder where her herd is that she longs for? And where does the rider belong; certainly not on this white elephants back.
Somehow she keeps getting lost in the safari, or is it abandoned?, misguided?, forced to leave? (by others, by self?) In that vulnerable place she is bridled. Or when lost on her own, the poor animal gets surrounded by a mash-up of uninitiated bulls that have clustered together from other elephant tribes. Desperate to claim their masculine nature, but un-fathered – their energy is abusive, manipulative, and of war.
If you look closely, you will see a few unusual elephant warriors that seem to be of this turbulent tribe, but are merely seekers who journeyed into the group as they crossed paths. Afraid of this stranger, they know not who the real leader is, and project their dark masculine force in all directions, suppressing the needed insight that arises, seen in reflection through the new one’s presence. Then, when the dark feminine rider smells this musk energy on the rise, she pulls on the reins of her white elephant and leads it into the culminating battle. The pubescent masculine force becomes a gathering of wimps, confused by the intertwined light and dark feminine that overpowers with rage, killing the masculine acts.
In rage, the rider and elephant reach the looking glass. Wonder if the white elephant can see her own reflection in Alice’s mirror? No. She can not see herself. But the rider does. Although it’s too late, as the white elephant stampedes through (rather than step into) the mirror, and shatters it. Too late now for reflection. The rider bleeds to death as the bulls stand silently, and ignorantly helpless; longing and waiting for silence to return.
Ongoing emergent metaphors and questions arise that I’d like to dialog with you about, maybe next time we talk. The story is not clean nor perfectly clear, yet helps me to express my sense of it all better than a summary or review. And it holds its own healing for me, as I weave myth and act into a story to share – a potent potion that helps to return a realm of self and group identity that’s too often hidden – lost within the human psyche.
WHAT COMES UP FOR YOU ABOUT YOUR OWN ‘REAL’ INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS WHEN YOU READ THIS STORY?
For more on the subject of human interaction and collaboration,
go to http://tinyurl.com/FractalContinuums
Vic Desotelle
Posted on March 14, 2010 - by Vic Desotelle
Victor-Victim-Villain: The Obstacle That Keeps Us From Deep Collaboration
Victor (Hero)
Imagine something that you’ve never imagined before. Or, if you have imagined what I’m about to say: Imagine turning your implicit idea into an explicit act for change.
First question: How might this subject relate to the nightmare of a workplace that you are in?
My Point: Most, if not all, of our decisions emerge through this foundational culture-making model. Geeeeez. I really don’t get a warm fuzzy thinking that may be so! Do you? What might be another model that maybe could work just a bit better? I would say that, if we could become conscious myth-making creatures, then we could design ‘it’ (the model dynamic), rather than the other way around, where we have become the result of “it” designing us.
Here’s a gaseous cloud of possibility to consider …
Villain (Devil, Demon)
So. All models have rotation or spin. Thus each subject within a model becomes one of the others. For example, in my case, I (Vic) have become a ‘victim’ through the ‘victor’ (and its not just because of my name 
It seems that the victor-villain-victim archetypal interaction has (like all models) a dynamic movement that moves each subject into becoming one of the others. In this (shall we call it) “3V” case, the the victor becomes the victim, the victim becomes the villain, and the villain becomes the victor. And in our society, there is attention placed – not on the hero, but on (unconscious as it may be) are focused on being the villain being the hero. What’s with that?! Anyway, this is the spin – the archetypal movement in action.
Second Question(s):
In a (w)holistic view, do we need to allow the time it takes for each one of us to become the other? If so, then this must be a conscious act, does it not? Otherwise each of us (too often) gets caught migrating from one identity to another and falls into a polarized oscillation – bouncing back and forth (maybe due to DNA recapitulation?) to/from the identity we had for ourselves previously … and previously … and so on. Rather than moving (ahhhh spin action) to the next identity in the mandala-like triad within the archetypal configuration, we instead get kind of stuck.
An Open Conclusion:
Victim (Powerless)
What if we had an archetype for this dynamic – an archetype of archetypes (orrrrr archetype squared)?
Would this allow humanity’s failing displays of destructive expression to be able to move downstream
into other realms of possible life, form, awareness, and consciousness? Don’t know. Right now, I’m writing a book on ‘cultural misfits’, and it seems that this may be its charter – to transmute “objective isolated acts” into “subjective interdependent actions”. Why; you might ask? And what does this all have to do with COLLABORATION? (Or a lak there of?) Well. Call me and let’s have a dialog 831-454-8046, or email me below, or make a comment.
Just wanting to share today’s brain fart with you … LOL ! Mean time … Spin rules! … Hmmmmmm … Wonder what comes after that?
Vic
Be The Change !
-
Workshops & Blog Postings
Creative Commons License
DiscoveryFuel.com by DiscoveryFuel.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at VicDesotelle.com.
