Have you been MOOC-ed yet?

I recently enrolled for a MOOC course offered by Coursera called Elearning and Digital Cultures #edcmooc. While I have designed and developed several online training interventions for various organizations, this will be my first 'formal' learning experience as a student of an online course delivered using the MOOC platform. The course officially starts in 2 days. However, the flurry of activities has been going on for the last 2 months - google plus, facebook group, twitter, blog RSS feeds, spaces, Pinterest etc are just some of the many options that have been devised by the participants to connect and learn together. I am excited about the course and I am looking forward to broaden my learning horizons and bring back into my training design some of the best practices of online learning.

But for now, I am just thinking about all these platforms/groups/spaces. As I scroll through the messages on the Facebook group - one of the many options to connect, this is the word cloud that is generating before my eyes:

To me, this is a reflection of what Barry Schwartz calls 'the paradox of choice'. In his talk, Barry says," With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all".
I agree. 
For this particular MOOC course, participants are from all over the world (last information source said - over 260,000 sign-ups to date). This wide variety of audience has a varying degree of comfort and competency with respect to online learning and/or online collaboration tools/platforms. While some of us have been blogging, using twitter and google+, wikispaces for a while, for so many this will be their first experience of online learning and collaboration. Given that the course did not have any pre-requisite (though it did encourage participants to explore various social learning platforms), it is an overwhelming stage for the technologically and/or the socially-challenged. My advice to everyone faced with unlimited choice is to choose what is most comfortable for you. In this particular case, the facebook group is perhaps going to be the easiest to use for many. 

Having said that, participating in a MOOC course will probably help everyone explore other options that were previously out of their comfort zone. So, it is going to be learning before 'the' learning. And that is good. Perhaps some participants are feeling disillusioned and overwhelmed right now but this phase will pass. Consider the MOOC course to be a platform for learning and collaborating not only about the course content but also learning about learning itself. 

More on my experience with MOOC will come later. For now, I know I have been MOOC-ed! 

Why Should Managers Teach?

I recently read an article in CLO titled, "Those who manage teach." It is a powerful statement and I completely agree with it. I have always believed that managers are the first line of teachers. Also, whether you know it or don't - whether you want to or not, every manager is a teacher. 

While many managers focus on the project goals: time and cost, some managers do something more - they also teach consciously. In my view, that's the difference between a good manager and a great manager. I gratefully acknowledge the contribution of my supervisors who taught me instead of just managing me and I am happy to say there were many!

How are managers teachers? 
Well, to start off, managers are the first role models for any team member. A team member expects the manager to do what she says. If managers don't walk the talk, it is not correct to expect the same standards from the team. But that's just one aspect of being a good teacher. 
A manager works with her team on a daily basis. Learning opportunities are available in every meeting, every conversation and every project. So whether a manager realizes it or not, she is teaching in every interaction. To consciously teach, a manager has to plan for training and learning and take the responsibility for mentoring and coaching. 
However, in all this I realize that not all managers can be good teachers. And there is nothing wrong with that. But managers who are not good teachers still need to take the responsibility for team and individual learning and delegate this task to others who are more skilled in the area. But more importantly, after delegating, they must continue to take interest in their team's learning process.

Why should managers teach?

• Managers should teach so that they are able to share their insights, best practices, failures and experiences. These learning points are far useful towards greater productivity and efficiency of the team than any technical or functional skills. 
• Managers should teach to show their team that learning is work and work is learning. She needs to create opportunities for learning, should not be afraid to allow her team to make mistakes and should be genuinely interested in transferring knowledge and skills - and pack it all in everyday work.
• Managers should teach to develop a continuous learning culture and inspire and foster new ideas and innovation.
• Managers should teach to contribute to their own profession and help build better managers. Managers who teach are the best way to ensure that the profession is constantly recharged with fresh energy and a steady stream of budding managers is always on its way. 

As managers, we need to remember: when we teach, the greater learning is ours. 

How to subtract when things aren't adding up

"To attain knowledge, add things every day; to attain wisdom, subtract things every day." Lao Tzu

It is ironic that all our life we focus on addition - adding more figures to our salary, adding more stuff to our homes, adding more of everything that we can. But most of our happiest moments happen when we 'have things' that money cannot buy for example being with people we love, exploring natural beauty and enjoying clean air and fresh water. 

There are significant examples in our own life, in the lives of many others, in business, and in design about the power of simplicity - the value of less. So, this post is about subtraction - it is about my own attempts to edit my life and hopefully inspire the same thinking in my readers.

Here's a story about my tryst with subtraction. It is a simple story but it is my story. I have always been a heavy luggage variety when I travel. Recently, I had to travel for a week and my immediate tendency was to add everything to my luggage. However, this time around we (my spouse and I) added a constraint to the travel - no checked baggage. That constraint immediately forced me to think small and pack less. When packing, I focused on the essentials, packed for multi-use, and during the trip did some laundry. The luggage was much lesser but I didn't miss anything on my trip. Result was that there were no delays associated with waiting to pick up the luggage on both the legs of our journey and we were out of the airport, stress-free, in less than 30 minutes! Unexpected and so fulfilling. However, this first-time editing of luggage wasn't easy. My first instinct when I started to pack was still to add stuff. But then I stepped back and consciously removed and re-planned. They say all big changes have humble beginnings; it is true. This was a small step towards packing less for travel but it led to big leaps in my head about trying to get more with less. My efforts to do more with less continue.

Here are some articles and talks that helped me get started. 

• A wonderful talk by Graham Hill on why 'less is more' and how having less makes us more happy. Graham says we must edit ruthlessly, think small and make multifunctional. 
• The article titled "Six Simple Rules For Doing Better With Less" talks about Matt May’s stimulating new book, The Laws of Subtraction, which offers six rules, and scores of examples, of doing better with less. 

1.    Law #1: What Isn’t There Can Often Trump What Is  -“When you reduce the number of doors that someone can walk through, more people walk through the one that you want them to walk through.” — SCOTT BELSKY, founder and CEO of Behance and author ofMaking Ideas Happen

2.    Law #2: The Simplest Rules Create the Most Effective Experience -“Keeping it simple isn’t easy. By exploiting subtraction in innovation, we’ve been able to create an environment of freedom and creativity that allows us to thrive.” — BRAD SMITH, CEO, Intuit

3.    Law #3: Limiting Information Engages the Imagination -“Subtraction can mean the difference between a highly persuasive presentation and a long, convoluted, and confusing one. Why say more when you can say less?” — CARMINE GALLO, author of The Apple Experience

4.    Law #4: Creativity Thrives Under Intelligent Constraints -“Here’s the key to the conundrum for managers who want to stoke the innovation fire: That close cousin of scarcity, constraint, can indeed foster creativity.” —TERESA AMABILE, author of The Progress Principle

5.    Law #5: Break Is the Important Part of Breakthrough -“If you kill the butterflies in your stomach, you’ll kill the dream. Embrace the feeling. Save the butterflies.” — JONATHAN FIELDS, author of Uncertainty

6.    Law #6: Doing Something Isn’t Always Better Than Doing Nothing -“When we’re faced with the greatest odds against us, often we need to edit rather than add.” — CHIP CONLEY, cofounder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and author of Emotional Equations

• A post on The Power of Subtraction that lists five laws of subtraction for business leaders. But the concepts apply to everything.  

I read this somewhere, “When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.” It cannot be said more simply than that. All one needs is some conscious focus and the willingness to let go. There are so many things we can subtract from our lives on a daily basis - chaos and clutter, useless activities and meetings, unproductive conversations, negative thoughts and negative people, bad habits, etc. The list is endless. 

We have the power to subtract to make life more meaningful. I have realized that I may not be able to let go of everything in my life but I am not longer afraid of making small changes because these do have big impacts.