A Musing/Thoughts

I just read an article about how emails have become unproductivity tools and I absolutely agree. Emails have been great for communicating with people quicker than letters, but it does get used quite inefficiently these days. And sometimes I find myself spending half a day just responding to emails (One day I’ll post about this Abraham Lincoln-ish habit I have).

Gmail grouping emails as conversations has been heaven-sent from the day I began using it. However, sometimes I need information from a specific email message but it’s buried under 40 other emails.

So I’m looking into other tools that could help teams collaborate better.

Dropbox is an great for putting up documents online but doesn’t allow for proper discussion.

Google Groups: It’s the best so far, by allowing me to preview previously read responses. But something about the interface compels me not to leave it open all the time, like I do with FB and my email account

Facebook Groups: Nearly everyone uses FB and receive updates on their phones. However documents and conversations get buried easily, making it hard to find information especially in an active group.

Twitter: 140 chars or less.

I’m thinking about using Collaboration Spaces or something similar as a “members resources” page..but it’s more for “knowledge sharing” than discussing projects online.

Ultimately, I like reverting back to face-to-face meetings, with someone using a whiteboard to drop ideas on.

I wonder if there’s a page for that yet. In the meantime, Lifehacker has an awesome article on how the whiteboard helps in team meetings.

What tool(s) do you use to keep up with your team?

I think one of the biggest challenges most organisations face is sustainability, both in terms of membership and leadership.

I’ll cover my thoughts on leadership first because well, I think you need to have a great leadership team for a sustained membership base.

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People come up to me with great ideas quite often..and then expect me to execute them because I’m a “leader” and I “know how to do it”. The truth is, I usually don’t have a clue when I start out on my projects and I only do it because I feel like if I don’t, nobody will. Or they will, 10 years later.

What I do is, I start with an vague idea from stuff I read/hear, then some research and end with a review. So as I roll down this path, it’s only becoming less foggy because I’m learning all the time.

This to me is the model of leadership I’m looking for in my peers; You don’t have to know exactly what you’re doing, but you need to make an effort to learn. And that’s what I’m choosing to centre this new Rotaract Club on. I want this learning environment to be our brand. I want people to join us because they share this mentality or because they see how great this environment is so they want to be infected by the learning bug too.

When I look at organisations that successfully engage their members this way, it tends to boil down to 2 main components: Passion and Mentors. Being around a group of people passionate about what they’re doing is really uplifting, and it makes me want to get more involved and DO things. However, doing things isn’t always straightforward. There are processes and regulations in place that need to be followed. For example, a simple BBQ may require a permit depending on who’s attending and where you’re holding it. Plus you need someone with Food Handling skills and an estimate of how much food would be enough..and the list goes on.

These processes can be hard to navigate, especially when you don’t even know they exist. For the average young adult, there isn’t much incentive to figure out the system. In fact, that becomes a huge deterrent instead because we fear the repercussions. “What if I fail because I overlooked something?”, “Am I breaking the law?” and “Can I get sued?” become questions that dominate our thoughts when we don’t know what we’re doing.

That’s how we end up with people with great ideas that never see the light of day. Imagine then if we provide the tools to these individuals,whether it’s advice from (slightly more) experienced people or notes on past projects. We can inform them of the processes or at least point them in the right direction. With mentoring, we then become a platform for people to carry out passion projects.

And this is where the board comes in. That’s the next post!

I just spoke to someone about the challenges of starting up and maintaining a Rotaract Club, and he asked “Why not join a Rotary Club?”

I understand where he comes from. Rotaract IS a hard organisation to manage. 18-30 years old move around a lot. We’re busy trying to climb up the corporate ladder. We’re trying to juggle work and our social lives. We want to make a difference but too often are scared to take the lead…usually because we don’t know how. Young adults willing to be called leaders are in short supply. So, when we have a couple Rotary Clubs in the area that are specifically geared to young adults and their interests, PLUS have the backing of more experienced Rotarians to guide them, I can understand why people think we should just join Rotary.

But that doesn’t mean Rotaract should be taken out of the equation. Rotary organises a bunch of programs that target under 25 year olds and there needs to be a place to keep them involved in the Rotary family. Rotary making an effort to be more encouraging/open to younger members is great but that’s not enough.

Speaking from experience as a former Interactor, sometimes it’s too daunting to get more involved with Rotary once you “graduate” from these programs. Even though we had a relatively young Rotarian advisor (he was ~30 years old with a full head of black hair), I still saw them as the “old group”. And that group fell into the same category as my parents so there was no way I was going to hang out with them. I remember feeling that generation gap would be too much and I would be misunderstood or my voice wouldn’t be heard.

But one day was enough to start changing that perception when I attended an Interact Board Training Day. For the first time, I met Rotaractors who led the training session, and they were fun and vibrant and made me realise that there’s more to come after Interact. And I wasn’t the only one. EVERY SINGLE BOARD MEMBER felt that way and that was why we made an effort to visit Rotaract when we graduated from high school. 

The fact was I wasn’t mature enough to stay in contact with Rotary once I left Interact. But getting involved with Rotaract, especially as my views of “older people” changed, has made me more inclined to become a Rotarian in the future.

TL;DR: Rotaract is a bridge between Rotary and its youth programs. Without it, we stand to miss out on engaging a huge group of Rotary alumni.

Here’s another reason why I’m so keen on getting a Rotaract Club in the CBD happening: Even though I did not stay with Rotaract at 18 because I was too busy enjoying the freedom a car gives, a year later, that interest was rekindled. But this time, I was overseas and there wasn’t a single club in my area. So for 4 years, I wasn’t involved with Rotary at all. I wanted to but I didn’t want it enough to travel 40 minutes out of the city every other week. And I still had the impression that Rotarians = old people so there was no way I was going to meet up with them once a week.

So many Rotaractors travel around the world. In fact, a whole bunch of ex-Interactors travel too. If you’re lucky, they would contact a local Rotary Club to say hi and get involved. But chances are they won’t. I definitely didn’t as an 18 year old. A bunch of Rotaractors on working holiday visas haven’t. Neither have my ex-Interactors friends who are in town. In fact, half the team I’m working with at the moment have been part of a Rotary program overseas and haven’t been in touch with Rotary since they got here.

TL;DR: International Rotaractors are a great resource, with the experience they bring from their home club and with their desire to make a difference in the communities they’re visiting. If we don’t have a community-based Rotaract Club in this city, this becomes a missed opportunity.

I’m trying to start up a new Rotaract Club in my area and while there a few documents out there to help out with the basics, they don’t really address the intangible stuff. Like how to create a leadership model that is sustainable. Or how to evaluate ourselves so the club doesn’t become stagnant.

I’ve never started a club up from scratch before and it kinda scares me. I worry that I’ll mess up, that my vision won’t translate to the rest of the team or that I’ll be perceived as the Queen B for not listening to them enough. 

At the same time, I’m super excited to be doing something like this. It’s brand new territory and there’s so many opportunities to learn new stuff and try out new things.  It’s something that’s been on my heart for several months now and actually going forward with it has me feeling all fired up. And I might blog a bit about the process if *fingers crossed* I find it rewarding ;)

At the moment I’m reading up on leadership stuff, writing out plans, and asking for advice from other Rotaractors and leaders I look up to…all of which will probably be reflected in the upcoming posts. Stay tuned!

I came across an article on Ursala Burns, the CEO of Xerox and I’ve never nodded my head so much when reading a profile. Here’s a couple points I liked:

One area where she has not calmed down is when people don’t speak up on matters where their expertise can be valuable. This was a point she reiterated later on when sharing her advice for young women in the professional space. “If you’re sitting around the table but you say nothing, that’s a lost opportunity.”

While may people may be intimidated at first, she continued, “Move beyond that and say something about what you have to offer. The reason you’re there is because you have something valuable that can be added.”

Agreed! A lot of my friends stay silent at team meetings because they worry they’ll say something wrong but usually it isn’t. Instead it offers an opportunity to provoke thoughts and to present a new view the team may not have thought of. 

Often the solution, especially with people from Gen Y and Z, is to speak with them one on one after meetings to get their point of view. We hesitate to share them because we’re often told we don’t have a wealth of experience or knowledge behind us, so we don’t want to appear stupid. IMHO though, the lack of experience is an opportunity to innovate ;)

Point #2:

She continued, “What I had to do was tell a story. Anne used to tell me this all the time. …Story-telling is a big deal and I’ve become chief story teller at the company. I’ve become better at trying to give context and clear words about our future.”

I haven’t thought of leadership that way before but it’s so true. The best leaders I’ve worked with have vision but are also able to explain it in a way that engages me and gets me excited about being part of their project. That’s the model of leadership I try to emulate but chief story teller is a really good description.

Full article here: 
http://www.theglasshammer.com/news/2013/03/26/ursuala-burns-discusses-impatience-and-story-telling-at-catalyst-awards-luncheon/

In uni, my lecturers always repeated this mantra: “Always keep your stakeholders informed, especially if it’s bad news that will cause delays in delivering the project. More often than not, they’ll be more forgiving if they’ve known about the delays way in advance.” 

I’ve since taken “stakeholders” to include the team + leaders I work with, because the success/failure of the project reflects on us as well. I strongly believe that it’s important to keep the team informed of your progress and not wait till the next meeting to let them know there’s a problem.

While this principle has been inculcated in me, it seems that not a lot of my peers are aware of it. I was running a little project with a few acquaintances and getting them to report back to me by the deadlines was quite difficult. I ended up having to call them up every time only to hear that they weren’t making much progress with their work and that’s why they hadn’t bothered to call me. They weren’t aware that it was much better to know there’s very little progress, rather than not knowing what was going on at all.

So while some commenters in this article complain that it’s very basic, I call it essential reading for leaders: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/the_dirty_little_secret_of_pro.html

I woke up this morning to the news that Google Reader will be closing down on 1st July 2013. 

I’m a bit sad that they’ve chosen to close down a service that works and is really popular (as opposed to Google+) but oh well, time to move on. 

My friends are recommending I check out Flipboard and Rockmelt but I might not have a compatible device. Lifehacker also has more alternatives:
http://lifehacker.com/5990456/google-reader-is-getting-shut-down-here-are-the-best-alternatives

I used to watch shows like Mega Disasters that would simulate devastating natural disasters and how civilization might react to it. Or rather, how it would could potentially wipe out civilization as we know it. But somehow, in the midst of all that doom and gloom, I never quite thought that they would actually happen. I guess it’s because it had this “worst case scenario” feeling to it and so it felt like it wouldn’t come true.

That’s also how I felt about solar storms, and the possibility of it knocking out our electricity and communication systems. Until I read this:

In March 1989, a solar storm caused Canada’s Hydro-Quebec power grid to collapse within 90 seconds, leaving millions of people in darkness for up to nine hours.

Hmm..interesting. So it has actually happened before! The article goes on to say:

Cannon said GPS systems would be disrupted for several days if their satellites were hit by a superstorm, putting satnav systems out of action and forcing ships and planes to navigate by more traditional “dead reckoning” methods, said Cannon. He advised motorists to keep a map handy in their cars.

Radiation in the upper atmosphere after a superstorm could affect the electrical systems and microchips in aircraft. But according to space engineer Keith Ryden of the University of Surrey, “we’re not talking about aircraft dropping out of the sky.” The radiation dose for passengers on a plane after a superstorm would be the equivalent of three chest CT scans – well below harmful levels.

Hah now I’m dying of curiousity to know how exactly solar storms could affect aircrafts. If they’re not dropping out of the sky, will they be redirected from their originals routes? Will the pilots still be able to read their equipment? Hopefully we’ll find out soon.

Original article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/07/solar-superstorms-uk-engineers