Monthly Archives: September 2012

Alumni Power

As I do a lot of networking, it’s amazing to be reminded of the power of alumni connections. It’s also fall and that means college football which fills huge stadiums all over the country with people dressed in matching sweatshirts, all cheering against their rivals. It seems that as the world gets busier and more fragmented, we appreciate connections to the past even more. Many people from my alma mater, Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, have “ring” stories. You see, the college has a very distinctive class ring and a very high percentage of grads actually order the ring and wear it. I’m not going to lie, I dug mine out and dusted it off recently so I could see if it would bring me good luck or make some connections. There are legendary stories of alums all over the world running into and getting help from each other. I didn’t have my life saved in the ER by an alum or anything but I know an ER doc so it could happen. I’ve had a couple of good examples in the area of networking which started with me reaching out to alums and I heard back from them right away and had great conversations and they were very helpful. I made an assumption that the reason people help each other in that situation is that they are paying it back – someone probably helped them the same way. But who knows, maybe there is a real connection that people feel. I heard from a friend recently that it’s that way with sorority sisters as well. My friend’s daughter is at a big university and she is pledging or rushing, not sure what they call it, for a big sorority on campus. I can’t think about that without thinking about Animal House and wondering if they are going to have a toga party and wind up on double secret probation. But, similarly, my friend sought out people she knew to find a connection to that particular sorority and she did. A couple of e-mails later, this complete stranger was writing a letter of recommendation for a freshman that she never met just because she was a friend of a friend. There are varying statistics out there about the job search and what percentage of people get a job because of a connection – the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which seems pretty reputable, says that 70% of all jobs are found through networking. In my search online, the first post I found was for Yale, they actually have the Yale Career Network, a job board, and their own web site called STAY at www.yale.edu/stay/ for networking. So, why does anyone submit their resume to a company online anyway? That whole process seems like a huge waste of time right? I think LinkedIn has done a brilliant thing by allowing you to search alumni and sort by the year they graduated and what industry they work in and where they live. That’s an incredible resource and should be leveraged to it’s fullest extent by colleges and universities as the great demographic shift makes the market even more competitive for incoming freshman. I guess Yale gets it, what about your college or university? So, put on your old alumni sweatshirt or ring or whatever and cheer for your team – and if someone on your team needs a little help, do what you can.

The acronyms are all wrong

There are millions of business acronyms. At my last company, someone went through all the trouble of actually developing an acronym dictionary for new sales people. That’s a pretty helpful idea isn’t it? We’ve all been in that meeting where things are moving fast and people are referencing acronyms that we don’t understand but we don’t want to interrupt and ask what we’re talking about because people will think we’re dumb. One of my favorite acronym conversations happened on Friends when Chandler’s boss said that the WENUS (weekly net usage) has not been good at all over the last few weeks and that’s going to create a bad ANUS (annual net usage). The acronyms were clear but unfortunate. I even have a good story from my past. My first job out of college was an Assistant Analyst, you had to be careful how you abbreviated that title, I was trying to shorten it once and came up with Ass. Anal. and realized I needed a new job.

Anyway, it seems that many of our system acronyms, although cute, actually allude to the systems themselves solving the wrong problems. Take the LMS or Learning Management System for one. A friend of mine posted a question on LinkedIn the other day about lessons learned from LMS projects. I enthusiastically commented that usability was overlooked for functionality. So, maybe it managed learning or reported on learning or connected learning data to employee data but what part of that is good for the learner? In my experience, very little. We actually had a group that went from two clicks to access learning on their old system to about six clicks in the new one. And don’t think that those six clicks were as fun as playing doodle jump either – they were confusing and you had to do things like “book a course” before you could “take a course” and then you had to “confirm participation” at the end in order to get credit. We also had to train people to use the system. Yikes. One time I did a series of usability sessions before launching an intranet site and when we asked about training, people emphatically said not to send them paper because they wouldn’t read it and not to invite them to training because they wouldn’t come. They were a little crabby but isn’t that how it should be? The new system should work better than before right? The LMS should help learners, the Content Management System should make content better and easier to organize, the Applicant Tracking System should help applicants. In my recent experience, all those acronyms are a lie. How about yours?

I love social studies

It’s my son’s first week of middle school. Yes, think Greg Heffley from the books/movies “diary of a wimpy kid.” Not that he’s wimpy per se but everyone is a little self conscious and freaked out by big transitions right? He has a longer bus ride, two locker combinations to remember, 6 different teachers, the trumpet to learn, he’s swamped. So, the boy comes home one day and he looks exhausted like I do after a day of corporate meetings and he says “I love middle school.” I was more than a little surprised but it was the next statement that almost floored me. The boy never expresses emotion and never loves two things at the same time. No, it’s not what you’re thinking, he doesn’t love a girl yet, I’m not ready for that. Instead he says, “and I love social studies because of my teacher.” Maybe it struck me extra hard because of the boy’s usual lack of emotion. Maybe it got to me because  loved social studies too or because it was the week of 9/11 and an important election year and I’m a little sensitive. It could also be the fact that social studies often gets forgotten in the middle of all often misguided and overblown talk of student achievement in the areas of math and reading. Whatever the reason, I was thrilled. It’s great to pay attention to social studies and as his teacher defined it, that includes current events, geography, politics, government, history and culture. After all, what good would mad skills in reading and math be if you don’t understand the world we live in. Later that same week, I attended an alumni breakfast for my alma mater. The new president was just rolling out the new five year strategic plan. Don’t fall asleep, stay with me. One part struck me after this experience with the boy. Let me sum up. One part of the plan focused on how much the world is changing in the areas of politics, technology and demographics and that it’s less important to collect credits in college and more important to build competence, creativity, and character. This week, I thank Mr. Larsen for doing just that with the boy.