Author: Don Kasprzak

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Pat holds a BA in Economics and Spanish from Claremont McKenna College. He is President of the Table Group, and previously worked at Bain & Company, Oracle Corporation and was a former Vice President of Organizational Development at Sybase.

Regardless of where you work, even if your are a one person consultant or new startup, you will benefit from Pat’s book. This is about engaging people to achieve outcomes. Should this be your consultancy or new product, your future will in part be influenced by the people you engage.

This is a long time bestseller for a damn good reason. In fact, we see teams as a group of individuals striving to achieve success in perfect sync with one another and their individual daily tasks. However Pat is able to analyze the fundamental causes of why teams fail, their projects do not result in closure and the impact of organizational politics

Pat outlines identifies five interrelated dysfunctions that can undermine team performance which hinder team effectiveness and performance:

Absence of Trust:
Perhaps the most difficult to confront within any team is their unwillingness to trust one another regardless of how long they have worked together.

Fear of Conflict:
Teams without trust will result in limited discussions on their project contributions. The free flow of conversations is required to be successful. You must engage your team at 100 percent.

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Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Teaching with AI

Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson.

Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson

Bowen holds a PhD from Stanford in musicology and humanities. Watson holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Virginia Tech.

The general aim of the book is to address AI in education. Regrettably the book takes very broad brush stokes on a fast moving technology. As a result, they have missed an opportunity. It appears to many that a rush of books addressing AI in education has been underway since the introduction of ChatGPT.

Unfortunately the book misses key, critical requirements for AI integration into workflows, business thinking, and how practical strategies for faculty to leverage AI within the classroom.

The book is divided into three sections:
First, Thinking with AI is very much a basic AI 101 course with broad overviews to how work, literacy and creativity will be shaped by AI. Second, Teaching with AI is focusing on how AI will assist faculty but is not able to address how facutly at a private four year college would be for factuly teaching at a public two year college. Again, lots of broad brush strokes. Finally, Learning with AI is exploring the feedback and how AI can design assignments for students, how AI will change student writing and also assessments.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter by Harvard Business Review.

HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter by Harvard Business Review

Do you work within an organization that is meeting driven? Sometimes it can seem that every decision regardless of place in a project requires a face to face meeting, in person or online. Many times however results can be addressed via email.

Yet when meetings are indeed the best course of action, this book provides the overlooked simplicity to transform the ‘regular’ meeting (which is often ineffective into very productive working sessions.

This book does in fact address very common challenges employees face. In fact many can say first hand they have experienced meetings that felt made little effort for the amount of time set aside for multiple employees.

There are very valuable lessons to learn that can empower employees to move the needle. If you feel this sounds a bit off, then perhaps you cannot recall how a well planned meeting by anyone well verses in running meetings and controlling the discussions by simply presenting an agenda will leave you wondering why have you not engaged well run meetings all long?

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Building Better Organizations

Building Better Organizations: How to Fuel Growth and Lead in a Digital Era by Claudy Jules.

Building Better Organizations: How to Fuel Growth and Lead in a Digital Era by Claudy Jules

Claudy holds an MS in Organization Development from American University, an MS in Management from University of Maryland College Park and a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University.

Initially he led Google’s Center of Excellence on Organizational Health and Change. He moved to Managing Director at Accenture Strategy, then jumping back as an advisory for Alphabet’s CapitalG. Today is a Partner at McKinsey.

Here, Claudy reveals a rather essential read for organizations to discover or better understand how a playbook can help drive success when deploying well designed digital strategies that positively impacts the organization, employees and ultimately their customers regardless of market.

Regardless of the length of engagements with digital transformations, organizations simply must get their elements planned correctly. This obviously begins with strategy. The organization must have the right leadership in place to drive digital transformation. They must also have or develop employees with the talents to make the transformation a success. Much of this can fail if the organization’s culture will not support change. This is especially true in today’s new digital transformation by AI.

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Education Ransomware Reading Technology

Latest Read: Fighting Phishing

Fighting Phishing: Everything You Can Do to Fight Social Engineering and Phishing by Roger A. Grimes.

Fighting Phishing: Everything You Can Do to Fight Social Engineering and Phishing by Roger Grimes

Roger holds a BA in Accounting and Economics from Old Dominion University. A former Principal Security Architect at Microsoft, Roger was a computer security columnist at InfoWorld. Today Roger is a Data-Driven Defense Evangelist at KnowBe4.

This book is not only mandatory reading for every IT organization’s team, but even individuals must learn to protect their personal accounts and valuable data safe sophisticated social engineering and phishing attacks.

This book is well regarded within the cybersecurity community. This is a practical guide to understanding and defending against phishing attacks. Roger is in fact, outlining how an in-depth approach is required, now more than ever, to deploy a robust defense against social engineering and phishing threats.
Anyone can acquire the understanding of how critical defenses must be in place today. So, just search for ‘phishing attack’ to clearly understand how organizations still fall victim to these attacks which continue to be the entry into organizational networks and systems.

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