Tag: change

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Change

Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times by John P. Kotter.

Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times by John P. Kotter

John holds a MS from the MIT and PhD in Business Administration (DBA) from Harvard. He has been a long tenured professor at HBS. He co-founded Kotter International, his leadership and strategy implementation firm. Leading Change published in 1996 was named one of the most influential business books of all time by Time Magazine.

While John introduced Leading Change in 1996, this book is moving the reader to accept our the world has moved from episodic change to a state of permanent, volatile flux. This falls into perfect alignment with modern IT’s Continuous Delivery.

The focus is on behavioral science, the barrier to organizational change is not bad management, but human nature. As a result, John presents two distinct “channels” for organizations. The Survive Channel: Triggered by threats is reactionary and negatively increasing anxiety. A Thrive Channel: Triggered by opportunities will drive curiosity, collaboration, and creativity. Yet John is outlining modern corporate KPIs and quarterly targets are shutting down innovations organizations need today in order to to stay relevant.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Upside of Disruption

The Upside of Disruption: The Path to Leading and Thriving in the Unknown by Terence Mauri.

The Upside of Disruption: The Path to Leading and Thriving in the Unknown by Terence Mauri

Terence is the founder of Hack Future Lab. He is a former Director at Saatchi & Saatchi and McKinsey, and columnist for Inc. Magazine’s Future Proof column. He is Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting professor at both IE Business School in Spain and an Entrepreneur Mentor in Residence at London Business School.

Terence is introducing the “fail principle” and seeking to move organizations to relook at failure as a source of data and resilience. He sees failure as a source of innovation.

Organizational leaders who embrace this will not only survive disruption but leverage this for long?term value creation. Terence is sharing his key message of “unlearning” by stating “good leaders learn, but great leaders unlearn.”

So Unlearning must be a deliberate act by leadership. This including challenging assumptions, removing obsolete processes and introducing new behavioral models. The major obstacle to agility is the organization’s culture.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Growth Mindset Workbook

The Growth Mindset Workbook: CBT Skills to Help You Build Resilience, Increase Confidence, and Thrive through Life’s Challenges by Elaine Elliott Moskwa with a forward by Carol S. Dweck

The Growth Mindset Workbook by Elaine Elliott-Moskwa

Elaine holds a PhD and did postdoctoral work at the Harvard School of Education. She trained in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) at the University of Pennsylvania. She helped to establish the CBT training program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Currently, she is president of the Academy of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies.

A certainly important follow up book to Carol Dweck’s breakthrough work. This is a well received workbook providing great lessons to embrace personal growth. This workbook holds clear and actionable exercises based upon Elaine’s work as a student of Carol and clearly excels at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

There is a mix of theory and actionable hands-on activities. This is based upon step-by-step guidance for shifting from a fixed to a growth mindset. Elaine is focusing on sustaining a growth mindset even when setbacks naturally develop. This should be recommended for anyone seeking to deepen self-awareness and develop lifelong mental skills. However to be fair Elaine is acknowledging this is not a substitute for clinical mental health treatments.

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Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets

Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets by Dzejla Medjedovic and Emin Tahirovic.

Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets by Dzejla Medjedovic, and Emin Tahirovic

Dzejla holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stony Brook University and currently serves as a Vice President of Data at Social Explorer. Emin holds a MS in Theoretical Computer Science from Goethe University and a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a faculty member at the International University of Sarajevo. Together, Dzejla and Emin are leveraging their expertise in algorithms, data structures, and statistics to provide insights into managing massive datasets.

We now live is a world beyond big data. Today data lakes at petabyte and exabyte scale are common. Zettabyte cannot be very far away. Unlike traditional data warehouses, data lakes in fact accommodate structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data from various sources.

Dzejla and Emin are certainly providing a complex topic in a friendly manner to make complex concepts easy to understand. Readers will learn about deploying the correct type of database solution for your organization’s applications. This was a very enjoyable book to read.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: Judgement Calls

Judgement Calls: Twelve stories of big decisions and the teams that got them right by Thomas H. Davenport.

Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right by Thomas H. Davenport

Tom Davenport holds a Master’s degree in Sociology and a PhD in Sociology from Harvard. He is Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College.

He is a Research Fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte’s Analytics and AI Practice. As a former visiting Professor at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and the Harvard Business School, Tom was well positioned as Co-founder of the International Institute for Analytics.

In exploring critical decision-making processes within organizations, Tom is presenting twelve case studies. Judgement Calls reveal how teams address complex decisions and how to improve those outcomes. Key components include collaboration, data-driven insights, and effective leadership. Readers will discover those frameworks and methodologies which can improve your organization’s decision-making by embracing a structured processes.

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