Traveling Light Blog

I recently created a webinar for entrepreneurs in WebFWD’s incubator program. I focused on free ways to leverage your natural energy patterns individually and as a team. Since start-ups have only time, a little money, and energy, I believe any free edge an entrepreneur can gain is an edge the entregpreneur should grab.

These energy patterns and tools apply to anyone who needs to sustain energy in a high-pressure work environment, though. Luckily, WebFWD makes their webinar files public within weeks, so you can now attend a replay any time: http://blog.webfwd.org/post/20967241169/energy-a-startups-most-precious-resource.

While you’re there, check out the supremely cool, diverse open source companies in the program: Big Blue Button, CASH Music, Entropy Wave, IHeartCode, Open Photo, Meemoo, Symbiota, and Tomahawk.

In just one month, I’ll begin mentoring the brilliant entrepreneurs in Mozilla’s start-up incubator, WebFWD. WebFWD supports projects and companies that align with the Web principals outlined in Mozilla’s Manifesto. We’re in the early stages of shaping my role, so stay tuned for more details. Learn more about the WebFWD Mentors here: https://webfwd.org/about/mentors/.

Web FWD is new and exciting, but going to their San Francisco office feels like coming home. They are in the former Hills Brothers coffee plant complex where I worked during my tenure at Nestlé. I feel like I should be swiping a Nestlé security badge every time I walk through the courtyard, and I could swear I still smell coffee roasting over in the Commodities group.

After a slight delay, Dr. Aaron Anderson’s new book from Stanford Press, Engaging Resistance: How Ordinary People Successfully Champion Change is now available. Dr. Anderson has tackled the challenge of providing an empirically based explanation of resistance to organizational change and why some change agents succeed while others fail. Hurray!

I’m quoted in the book, which is quite an honor. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time I’ve been cited by a scholar.

Can’t get enough advice about how to optimize meetings and eliminate unproductive, wasted meeting hours? Selby Group is once again featured on ADVANCE for Respiratory Care’s site, and my tips apply to all businesses, not just those in healthcare:

ADVANCE for Respiratory Care

We’re coming out of an era of fear, hoarding, and playing it very safe. Now that the job market is improving and optimism is on the rise, people are getting antsy for better opportunities, and leaders will have to work harder to keep them. At the same time, leaders tell me they need to lead the effort to get the right people into the right roles if they are going to meet their company’s strategic initiative goals.

This is both a risk and an opportunity. Luckily, the same action will help you to meet both goals.

The best way to address this is to shift your mindset away from playing it very, very safe. In fact, the safest approach now involves taking some risk in how you assign roles.

It’s time to stop looking for a perfectly-fitting square peg for that square hole. Instead, look for the 80% fit and move people into those roles with a development plan to grow into the additional 20%.

Though it seems counter-intuitive, if you are effectively moving people into different roles, you’re actually not going to get the perfect match right away, but it will create more stability in the long run.

I’ve just come across increasing evidence that my perception on the eagerness of employees to leave for a better opportunity is consistent with a larger trend. A recent Wall Street Journal study indicates that over a third of white-collar professionals are underemployed in the sense that they can do their jobs in their sleep even though the jobs are stressful.

With no interesting stretch or challenge for several years now, they report that when the job market improves (and it’s already improving for skilled, college-educated professionals), they’ll leave their current employers in a heartbeat.

Leaders have had a big tactical luxury for two years now in that they could keep nearly everyone doing the jobs they could already ace, producing — tah dah! – instant optimal productivity.

However, with few people learning brand new skills or having new stretch assignments, leaders also didn’t have to deal with the inevitably inefficient process of learning, growing, and making mistakes.

Some leaders already understand this, and it shows in their plans for 2011. In a Mercer Management study comparing top talent retention strategies for 2011 vs. 2010, 35% of companies indicated that they’re going to invest in training and career development. This item didn’t even make the top three list for 2010. That represents a very, very big shift.

Are you in the 35%? If not, the tactical luxury of the past two years will eventually give way to a strategic nightmare. Get ahead of it now, while the year is still young.

Dr. Aaron Anderson is about to release a new book from Stanford Press, Engaging Resistance: How Ordinary People Successfully Champion Change.

I’m quoted in the book (well, assuming the quote survives the final edit), which is quite an honor. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time I’ve been cited by a scholar.

Preorder it now and Selby Group will donate 6.5% of the purchase price to McKinley School in San Francisco.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that there was no issue of Traveling Light earlier this month. I was enjoying a mini-vacation with my sister, my parents, and their best friends, Dea and Don Brown. We were relaxing in Orange Beach, AL. I had no idea Alabama had such beautiful, powder-white beaches.

Here I am with my sister and my folks on the last day of the trip. I look like I’m about to jump into the camera!

A few days after I returned home, Mom and Dad and Dea and Don participated in the “world’s largest wedding ceremony,” joining 410 other couples renewing their vows at a local watering hole owned by Jimmy Buffett’s sister.

What fun! My parents are a continuing reminder that the couple that plays together, stays together, and Kirk and I are following their lead.

If you missed the Association for Psychological Type Conference in Dallas, you can order the CD’s at http://www.aptinternational.org/Publications/Conference-Recordings.aspx. This includes my concurrent session Personal Fulfillment and Financial Security: Hidden Secrets to Have BOTH.

Want a chance to not miss it this time around? If you’re a facilitator, trainer, or OD consultant, read on. I have personally seen Jill facilitate, and it is amazing.

THE BAY AREA ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE EXTENDS A SPECIAL INVITATION TO THOSE INTERESTED IN DISCOVERING “SO WHAT?”

Meaning Making – debriefing skills for facilitators and trainers.

This is a special workshop presented by Jill Chivers, APTi board member and internationally known consultant from Australia.

Friday, November 13, 2009: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
CPP, Inc. Office
1055 Joaquin Road, 2nd floor. Mountain View, CA 94043

Debriefing skills are essential for any facilitator. This session will explore the essentials of creating meaning and lasting value out of group processes, exercises, games and activities.

If you’ve ever conducted a workshop or training session and were left wondering what it all meant, then you can be sure your participants have, too. If you can’t help participants discover what the implications and applications are, the value of group processes, activities and games is vastly diminished if not completely lacking.

This workshop will help you guide participants through the crucial questions of “so what?” and “now what?”

This session takes us through a process starting with…

Pre-Briefing – where it all starts. If you set it up from the beginning, it makes it a lot easier to debrief it at the end…. then into

The Process – an effective model to take your participants along the journey of learning: from doing to reflecting to sharing to interpreting to applying…. followed by

Debriefing – processes, resources, questions, facilitator-centric essentials. An

exploration of some of the many and varied tools at your disposal

Exercises will be used to bring out the magic of the content.

$45.00 per person (includes refreshments)

Preregistration is recommended. Checks and questions can be directed to Julie Wright at 2314 Sweetwater Drive, Martinez, CA 94553; jcw42002@yahoo.com; 415-264-0217 (cell).

Jill Chivers (ESFJ) is passionate about and skilled in working with people. Jill’s work with people has included the front line through to CEO level and people with diverse backgrounds and cultures. Jill designs and delivers impactful and innovative learning initiatives and events that lead to real shifts in how people think, feel and behave.

Her extraverted and energetic style is engaging, and Jill has received repeated feedback that she creates a safe and open learning space that motivates.

Jill has an MBA and is certified in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) both of which she uses in unusual ways. Jill is a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF) through the International Association of Facilitators; and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Professional Facilitators

Jill has created the unique downloadable video program, I’m Listening Now, (http://.imlisteningnow.com) which provides a listening ear whenever you need it.

Mark your calendar for October 14 at noon Pacific Time. I’ll be presenting my unique webinar Recession-Proof Your Career: How to Avoid the Three Massive Mistakes Made by Talented Professionals. This webinar will be marketed to 24,000 leaders and business school students, but only 40 seats are available. Sign-up details to come as soon as they are available.

The webinar is sponsored by CareerApple, a terrific site founded by business maven and all-around cool gal Sunita Sayana. CareerApple is an internet-based career discovery and transformation service that helps people find and excel in their optimal career choice. They will help you discover your ideal career choices, explore those career choices with their profiles of real people across industries and take action through their information packed resources such as webinar and articles from experts in the industry. Go to http://www.careerapple.com/ to learn more.

I’m now on Twitter. Currently my ID is JenniferSelby (not JenniferSelbyLong), due to constraints on name length which bias against those of us with long names!

I’ve just begun to post my first tweets.

Follow me and I’ll follow you. I can see how this could become additive…