Sunday, October 10, 2010 Power of Getting Back to Basics  A decade ago, Brockton High School was a case study in failure: only a quarter of the students passed statewide exams and one in three dropped out. Then, Susan Szachowicz and a handful of fellow teachers decided to take action. Through a restructuring committee, work with the teacher's union and bringing all the teachers slowly on board, they emphasized reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym. When requests got too difficult, the restructuring committee responded with "Let me help you." And success is there, starting in 2001 and continuing today, showing that a 4,100-student school can overcome all odds and offer a good education. Read More >>
back to top  Saturday, October 9, 2010 A Law for Cooperation  What do you call a lawyer who helps people share, cooperate, barter, foster local economies, and build sustainable communities? That sounds like the beginning of a lawyer joke, but actually, it's the beginning of new field of law practice. The evolving nature of our transactions has created the need for a new area of law practice. We are entering an age of innovative transactions, collaborative transactions, crowd transactions, micro-transactions, sharing transactions- transactions that the legal field has yet to cover. Attorney and author Janelle Orsi describes the emerging field of "sharing law" that reflects the emerging social systems based on sharing. Read More >>
back to top Friday, October 8, 2010 A Call for Another Way of Living / Godfrey Reggio:  A gem from the man behind the film, Koyaanisqatsi: "To be is to fly the flag of one's own shadow. That's what I try to tell students who are graduating, 'Don't let your diploma be your death certificate.' It's endemic for all of us to get caught into mass ways of living, yet we have the gift of life. There is no limitation on that other than the real power of limit, and limits give us power. It's like isometrics. We don't have to be the models of what is offered to us by the left, by the right, by society. We have the ability to be unique, because originality is who each one of us is. That's our vocation." Read More >>
back to top Thursday, October 7, 2010 Leadership Lessons from a Dancing Guy  Watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and glean some lessons: A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. The first follower is critical in showing everyone else how to follow. The second follower validates. A movement must be public. After the nth follower tipping point, it becomes risky not to follow, and more join in. And the commentators take-away from all this: "We're told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective. The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow." Read More >>
back to top Wednesday, October 6, 2010 Student Changes Lives, One Hug at a Time  For two years, University of Miami student Kemy Joseph has been wearing signs around his neck with uplifting messages like "U R Awesome," and "Persevere." He recently celebrated his second anniversary of spreading goodwill by spending 15 hours on campus giving high-fives and hugs. His goal: to make 800 people feel a little bit better in one day. "I tell them they are not alone. We go through the same turbulent times, and the most important thing is that we are all in this together," Joseph remarks. Despite a hectic schedule, the humble grad student still makes time for high-fives, hugs, and handing out chocolates on a Thursday night. His family calls him "Mr. Awesome". Read More >>
back to top Tuesday, October 5, 2010 The Myth of Multi-Tasking  The rise of the social web has created a flood of information over the past few years. With this influx of life and data streams comes a desire to stay on top of it all. For many people, this means multi-tasking. While it's intuitive to think that handling so many tasks at once makes us more productive and efficient, multi-tasking actually does quite the opposite. According to Stanford Professor Clifford Nass, those who multi-task often seem less able to distinguish relevant from irrelevant, manage their memory, or switch from task to task. So, in the age of Twitter, email, and text messaging, what is one to do? Do one thing at a time, for 15 minutes each, Nass offers. "Then, take a quick scan at all the streams, and decide which one you're going to allocate the next 15 minutes to." Read More >>
back to top Monday, October 4, 2010 The Monday Night Soup Master  For some, Monday night is about football. For others, it's dance class or a favorite television sitccom. But for Richard Semmler, it's an evening of soup and service. After serving Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter one year, Richard Semmler thought, "Why not serve every week?" Since that fateful day ten years ago, Semmler, a mathematics professor, has been a steady Monday-night anchor at his local soup kitchen. He lives modestly and even works two additional jobs so he can earn enough money to give away half his income every year! Read More >>
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Joining the ranks of celebrities who are sort of vegan, Bill Clinton has announced that to lose a bunch of weight and get his ticker in better shape, he's adopted a plant-based diet. Now, instead of snack foods and burgers, he's a sort-of-pescetarian. Specifically, he's dairy and meat-free, "occasionally treating himself to a little fish. He eats lots of plants, drinks almond milk with protein powder, and is a new man because of it. He even weighs what he did in high school. But that's not why he did it. "I did it for my heart," he states, pointing out that 82 percent of the people who have gone on such diets have had a full recovery in heart health. [ 
Ever wonder why some groups, companies, or communities flourish while others flop? Researchers say it's the influence of a 'consistent contributor'- "a person who always contributes, regardless of others' choices." "The consistent contributor looks for the collective good first and personal good second," explains Risk Management Professor J. Keith Murnighan. The consistent contributor can drive the actions of others, acting as a catalyst for cooperation by altering the perceptions and actions of their fellow group members. They initiate cooperation, leading the way for others to follow suit. "Our research results counter what economists predict," says Murnighan. He points out that rational choice theory can actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy when everyone in a group is suspicious of each other's motives. But in a larger group, if someone consistently acts as a friend, it's easier for others to act as friends and everyone benefits." [ 
Feeling stressed or overwhelmed? That may be a good thing. In several recent studies, social scientists have zeroed in on why paychecks alone can't explain the link between work and well-being. The findings suggest that, although people often yield to idleness, deep down they seek excuses to stay busy, because busyness is happiness. Even trivial tasks make us far happier than no tasks at all. In one study involving Legos, participants who found their task meaningless demanded about 40 percent higher wages than those who witnessed the fruits of their labor. [ 
Time just passes by, regardless of how we feel about it... right? Not according to Philip Zimbardo. He's been studying how people think of time for decades and has some amazing findings. For instance, did you know your cultural background could determine how fast you walk? Or that children's use of technology makes class pass by more slowly? Here's an animated look at how our time-orientation shapes our families, careers, and happiness. "Many of life's puzzles can be solved by simply understanding our own time perspective and that of others," he states. [ 
You might've used Craigslist to sell that old bike, or to look for another job or housing opportunity. But how about using it to save your dad's life? That's just what three sisters from New York did. After Jennifer Flood's dad was diagnosed with kidney disease, she and her sisters posted an ad on Craigslist... for a living donor. One year, four months, and one hundred responses later, a woman from California donated her kidney. Today, both are alive and well. So well, in fact, that the Flood sisters have started their own nonprofit to help other patients find kidney donor matches! [ 
When one finds food, others immediately gather to help bring it to storage. When one gets wounded, the rest evacuate, re-group, and pull the injured to safety. There's no formal supervision, yet ants somehow accomplish enormous tasks. That's right, ants. Sitting at a highway rest-stop one afternoon, nonprofit founder Ndubuisi Ekekwe discovered that the way ants work together has profound implications on successful team structures and project management. Inspired by these insights, Ekekwe re-evaluated his leadership model, and eventually re-launched a project he had originally given up on. He identifies 6 elements that ants can teach us about leadership and good business: teamwork, trust, openness, diverse skill sets, diligence, and the flexibility to regroup. [ 
