Fuel For Discovering Sustainable Innovation

Vic Desotelle — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:12:22 +0000

Prof.M.S.Rao asked:

(STRENGTH IN SYNERGY)TEAM SPIRIT

BY PROF. M.SRINIVASA RAO

Andrew Carnegie said, “Team work is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results”.

Formation of homogeneous group out of heterogeneous for achieving organizational goals and objectives can be defined as team work. Working in teams is a fun and frolic. Team work touches upon our hidden talents. It is here people communicate more freely and work together in a team resulting in more efficient and effective results. It is nothing but synergy of strengths of diversified people. Every individual is blessed with unique qualities, abilities, talents and skills and when they work in teams with passion, we can expect unique results. Although numerically one plus one is two, but in team work it gives rise to more than two. It is here where people of diversified backgrounds and faculties come together to do their best forgetting their egos, differences of opinions, views and ideas so as to keep the objectives of the team paramount. Effective team work develops team spirit, flexibility, openness, adjustability and adaptability.

Characteristics of an Effective Team:

Basically a team must possess four elements such as purpose, duration, structure and membership. The leader or the manager must be very clear in his or her goals and objectives to avoid ambiguity. He or she must be a risk taker for conducting such an exercise. Creation of conducive and relaxed climate is an imperative to get desired results. The entire members are to be interdependent and independent to make the team building exercise relevant. There should be a provision for positive and creative ideas. All members must be free to air their opinions and ideas. There has to be collective responsibility and accountability.

How to Build an Effective Team?

It is basically the team leader or manager who should create. He must know group behavior and must be good at group psychology. He must build the team so as to achieve the organizational goals and objectives which are measurable, realistic and attainable. He needs to be an excellent jockey till the race is completed. Resolving conflicts in the team, encouraging relevant meetings, sharing goals and objectives, creating a conducive climate, clear demarcation of the roles and responsibilities , providing adequate training, strengthening bottom lines, communicating effectively and efficiently – a powerful team can be built. There is a team facilitator who provides required guidance and support to the team members. An efficient team member can become a successful team facilitator and then as a team leader. The leader must build members who believe in smart work rather than hard work.

There is a subtle difference between smart work and hard work. For instance, there are two teams each containing three members and are asked to cut two different trees of same size shape and width. The members of team A immediately took their axes and started cutting the tree at the root as the time frame fixed is one hour for both to complete the task. Whereas the members of the team B took around 15 minutes to grind their axes and then they began cutting the tree. And they could cut it with in 15 minutes of starting the activity and finished with in 30 minutes by cutting at the base of the tree. The team A began cutting the tree but failed to do with in an hour and took more than that to fell the tree. Here the difference between the team A and B is: The team A did not plan well, coordinate well and on the other hand they worked very hard but could not achieve the result with in the time frame. It is a clear indication of hard work and their sincerity can not be questioned. Where as the team B, planned well, coordinated properly, ground their axes, worked smartly and got the result much before the deadline. It is a clear indication of smart work. And in this growing technological and competitive world it is not the hard work but the smart work that counts.

Merits of Team Work:

According to Herb Kelleher of South West Airlines – “Team play is a fundamental concept ….. If you want to succeed, if you want to win, you have to play as a team.”

The results can be maximized and expedited due to the strength in synergy. When the team members consult one another during the process, they learn to come out openly and learn to respect others’ ideas. Members start believing with each other shedding their inhibitions and hesitations. The outcome will be in exponential proportions. There will be supplementary and complementary of skills and abilities. At times, the team members come out with ideas which they themselves never thought of, from their subconscious minds. The member also realizes his strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis other members and tries to overcome his weaknesses and strengthens his strengths.

People working in teams develop using two letter word ‘we’ instead of one letter word ‘I’. Stephen Covey, in his book, ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effectively People’ wrote about the terminology of synergy and it is one of the greatest habits across the successful people in the world.

Working in groups or teams promotes esprit de corps (loyalty), camaraderie, and problem solving ability. People, when work in teams develop the ability to resolve the conflicts amicably. Due to the physical proximity in teams, the members derive job satisfaction by various means and they gradually develop multitasking abilities. By way of discussions and dialogues, bags of information are generated and team members become more knowledgeable. It is here cooperation replaces competition with in the team members. Ability to stay focused is an efficient trait; the members tend to hit the bulls’ eye accurately. No repetition of the work takes place as all are aware of what is going on right under their noses.

Employee turn over is thorny issue in all sectors of the industry and it can be minimized by inculcating team spirit as people do not feel to quit their organizations when they develop good relations with their colleagues. Optimum utilization of time and available resources can be ensured. There will be enhancement of qualitative work and the recognition of hidden potential amongst the employees.

Team Spirit as a Skill Tested In Interviews:

When the students go for employment, the employers look for the team spirit. The employers will be on the look out for this trait and they try to examine whether the candidate possesses this characteristic. Non possession becomes a major liability and the candidate gets rejected. The psychologists and other interviewing officers try to find out this ability by posing questions from different directions and dimensions and when the candidate demonstrates constantly then only there is a possibility to get into the slot. All organizations whether it is civil or military organizations lays great emphasis on this quality.

Soft skills are a cluster of many skills and abilities and it is said that possession of team spirit is one of the major skills. In order to inculcate this quality, the students must learn to work in teams’ right from their childhood itself by participating in sports, cultural activities, in academic careers to avoid displeasure at the time of interviews. To put it in the words of Stephen Covey, “Strength lies in differences, not in similarities”.

T H E E N D

Kansieo.com

Vic’s “Be The Change!” Twibes Twitter Postings

Vic Desotelle — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:49:21 +0000

Vic’s “Be The Change!” Twibes Twitter Postings

Go to http://www.twibes.com/user/DiscoveryFuel

+++

Or join the group at http://twibes.com/BeTheChange

D.F. Site Project: http://DiscoveryFuel.com/bethechangeproject

Vic Desotelle — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:14:53 +0000

Anirban Bhattacharya asked:

The regard that website design from UK invokes is something that inspires any web design company for development of such aesthetically rich websites, which remain feather light and hence lightening fast. Website design expertise in UK embraces cutting edge technology called Silverlight that enables features such as vector graphics, animation and audio-video playback into a website without really compromising on its agility and adaptability.

What is Silverlight?

To introduce, Silverlight is a web browser plug-in by Microsoft that can be programmed to create and support rich and attractive web applications. It empowers any web design and development process with its multiple key principles, including,

Web deployment: Once Silverlight plug-in is installed on a user’s system, all Silverlight applications hosted across World Wide Web can run on user’s system without needing installations.

Silverlight manages web page deployment by using its XAP package, which is a bundle of compressed code, data files and applications’ manifest. The XAP package must be referenced by a Silverlight application on a HTML page to be enabled.

Platform Libraries: Each Silverlight plug-in comes with a built-in set of files constituting the code and other resources for the web applications. Better known as Platform Libraries, these files extend the overall scope of web design and development with HTML and JavaScript.

The files and resources inside the libraries include, a graphics library, .NET common language runtime based code execution, networking services, data services, User Interface and storage services.

Collaborative design and development: Recognizing co-existence of application logic (developer) and graphic design (designer) in modern web applications, Silverlight application model provides mechanism within to allow concurrent proceeding of web designing and development in a project.

Cross Platform Compatibility: Silverlight web applications once authored, run smoothly across different platforms, operating systems and browsers without any code modifications etc., as Silverlight is empowered with .NET common language runtime and complimentary platform libraries installed within each one of its instances.

Security: As Silverlight allows use of Silverlight applications without installations, developers can easily restrict their applications suitably to eliminate any security threat to user’s system.

Caffeinated Content

Vic Desotelle — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:38:15 +0000

Pedro Gondim asked:

Group counselling is a challenging and dynamic form of counselling that requires all-round professional skills from counsellors. It implies that any challenges a counsellor may find in helping an individual can potentially duplicate, triplicate, or vastly multiply – however, the more intricate the challenge is, the higher the rewards. In this article, we define the basic elements of group counselling and provide several guidelines – after all, the core prerequisite of understanding group dynamics is not only part of the counsellor’s professional framework, but part of a much larger perspective: the framework of life.

The Importance of Groups

“The ubiquitousness of groups and the inevitability of being in them make groups one of the most important factors in our lives. All day long we interact first in one group and then in another. We live in a dwelling as part of a group, we learn in groups contained in the same classroom, we work in groups, we interact with friends in groups, and we spend much of our leisure time in groups. Our family life, our leisure time, our friendships, and our careers are all filled with groups. In fact, if a being from outer space conducted a study of the people of Earth, group membership would probably be the dominant characteristic noted.” (Johnson & Johnson 1997)

There is no uncertainty in the fact that our personal identities are intrinsically related to the groups we have been involved with throughout our lives. For this reason, it is important to comprehend the concept of group dynamics, and the relevance that group relationships has in each individual’s lives. Investigating group dynamics is a measure to better understand individual behaviour – or like an old proverb implies: “Tell me who you walk with, and I will tell you who you are.”

Groups and Dynamics: Basic Elements

“Since content and process must be balanced to have productive group dynamics, a question that arises is ‘How?’. One answer is to think of the group as a system, a set of elements standing in interaction. Each element in the system is affected by whatever happens to any other element. Likewise, the system is greater than the sum of its parts.” (Gladding 1999)

Similar to mathematics theory, the dynamic interactions which occur within a group, along with the external influencing factors upon that group, pose challenges to controlling and interpreting group outcomes. When dealing with groups, the primary objective (whether a group is formed to develop a project or a group united by the need to tackle an analogous problem) is to ensure that the group is healthy and productive. As such, core communication skills which are based on interpersonal communication theory are applicable for groups – promoting good communication between group individuals creates a safe and productive environment for the group to work. For counsellors, planning prior to conducting a group session is essential. Planning ensures that the counsellor is considering: (a) his/her audience’s socio-cultural background; (b) the communication needs of the group individuals and; (c) the type of interaction which is most effective for his/her audience. Pre-planning also diminishes the possibility of communication flaws, which may result in interpersonal conflict – the most undesirable (and awfully propagating) element in a productive group.

Groups and Counselling: A Matter of Approach

There are several definitions of groups which vary from a sociological perspective, according to common goals, interdependence, interpersonal interaction and other criteria. In many occasions, groups may be formed by undemanding circumstances. What does that mean? It means that dealing with groups does not only involve acknowledging the group behaviour as a unit, but also identifying each individual’s response to that group behaviour. This concept is important, particularly in counselling.

According to Smith (1945) “we may define a social group as a unit consisting of a plural number of separate organisms (agents) who have a collective perception of their unity and who have the ability to act and/or are acting in a unitary manner toward their environment (p. 227).”

Counsellors as group leaders and/or facilitators need to adopt a structured approach in their relationship with group individuals. For this to happen, they’ll need to follow certain communication rules which are basic requirements for conducting group counselling sessions. Here are some guidelines in a nutshell:

1. Use selection procedures – sometimes it is simply not appropriate to put individuals together in a group, simply because they share a particular behaviour pattern or problem.

2. Adjust group size according to manageability. Adopt a co-facilitator, if required.

3. Establish group rules and expectations early in the formation stage of the group.

4. Maintain a strong element of flexibility and be prepared with a number of contingency plans.

5. Know your group. Acquire an understanding of your group prior to developing your program.

6. Enjoy the journey of group work – the highs, the lows, the setbacks and the accomplishments.

7. Reflect on your group work skills and allow each group to be your teacher.

Groups and Counselling: Counsellor Insights

“Group counselling for me was in the form of support groups for users (U) of substance misuse and also their significant others (SO).

One particular time when I was facilitating the ‘U’ group or ‘Users’ of illicit substances, this girl who claims she could not relate to people, had special relationships with mice. She turned up one particular day with a mouse crawling around the inside of her clothes and poking its face out of a sleeve one minute and then a neckline the next. The other members of the group didn’t notice until one girl let out a huge scream when she turned to this girl to ask her something only to come face to face with the mouse.

We were then obliged to include this change of event for participating members in our group to the mouse. There were ten people present and eight stated they couldn’t care less, however, two stated that if she insisted on carrying the mouse on her then they would not be able to attend. It was decided that the owner could bring the mouse along in a separate container and keep it next to her on the floor so other members would not be alarmed at it poking its head out at inopportune times.

The group successfully continued with other members becoming more involved with the care and maintenance of this girl’s pet mice. However, it was later discovered that she had approximately 30 living at her home and each week she would bring a different one as a special ‘outing’ for a treat.” (Kathleen Casagrande – AIPC Education Adviser)

“I remember an experience I had with an anger management group for eight-year-old boys. Fresh out of university, naive to the energy and tenacity of primary-school aged children, I designed a structured and detailed anger management program to facilitate in a local State School. Armed with extensive worksheets, individual activities and group work exercises, I self-assuredly arrived at the school. Directed by the School Principal to collect the children straight from their classrooms, I made my way from one Grade Four class to the next, until I had collected all six of my group participants.

My participants had been selected by their teachers and School Principal to be included in the group due to “challenging behaviours”. I learnt very quickly that facilitating a group of “challenging” eight-year-olds was not as simple as I had first imagined.

As I set about conducting an ice-breaker exercise, I had one child tip over his table, another pretend to faint as he fell to the floor and yet another throw pencils into the ceiling fan! I knew this was about testing the boundaries but it was much more than I had anticipated!

It took several sessions to build rapport and establish rules with this group of eight-year-olds. We didn’t complete every group activity or worksheet I had planned. Sometimes we’d start the session with a run around the oval, sometimes we’d play bingo under a tree, but we worked together to finally establish an effective group process and the participants established great friendships amongst themselves.

As the weeks progressed, the group became more and more focused on the tasks at hand. Participants slowly became interested in offering their input, sharing their story and sometimes even offering help to each other.” (Karyn Blanch – AIPC Project Officer)

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Growth Myth: How Sustainability is Linked to Poor Economic Design

Vic Desotelle — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:31:34 +0000

The future of HUMAN sustainability is directly linked to the models that we have created to manage our social systems. And our inability to connect with exponential growth concepts is about to take the whole thing down in flames.

I highly encourage you to watch Chris Martenson’s ‘Crash Course‘, which covers a slightly different set of 3E’s: economy, energy, and environment. Chris builds a clear and concise description of money and its relationship to the decline of the world’s economies, based on our lack of understanding of how ‘exponential’ growth works. He also ties failing money systems to the earth’s limited resources and energy production. And he talks about how the Federal Reserve’s ‘right’ to freely make money keeps our poorly designed financial system going – until now.

I ask you: How do we best bring this knowledge to our communities so that we can redesign the system before the inevidable collapse? Learn for yourself by watching and learning at the link below. Thank you Chris for a well done program. See http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

Vic Desotelle of Discovery Fuel

Vic Desotelle — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:39:25 +0000

Vern Burkhardt asked:

Insights for Individuals and aspiring inventors:

- All of us have the potential to be more creative; we just need to learn the secrets of group genius.

- One does not succeed by luck or being blessed with a rare good idea.

- Success comes through many small sparks and by drawing on collaboration over time.

- Collaboration exposes one to new and unexpected ideas, making it more likely the mind will engage in the richest types of conceptual creativity — combining distant concepts, elaborating concepts by modifying their core features, and creating new concepts.

Role of Conversation:

- Conversation is the driver of group genius.

- Conversation generates innovation if the “Yes, and” approach is used – we accept the other person’s suggestion and build on it further.

Insights for Organizations:

- The failure of many organizations to encourage collaboration explains why improvisers who seek group flow (a particular state of heightened consciousness) often avoid large companies, and instead join small start-ups or work for themselves.

- Organizations which encourage improvisational teams innovate more effectively. Most innovative teams spend less time planning and more time acting — instead of planning, they improvise.

- The leader of a collaborative team has to establish a relaxed environment within which group genius is more likely to happen. This is in contrast to the traditional view of the team manager who breaks down a given task, keeps everyone on schedule, and coordinates the team members, thereby stifling Group Genius.

Collaborative Webs:

- To be successful and realize our full creative potential, we must move beyond the linear creativity mindset and tap into the power of collaborative webs.

- We must shift away from an ownership mentality to a collaborative approach in which managers allow innovation to emerge from a web that includes their company, their customers, their suppliers, other key business partners and even their competitors.

I recently had an opportunity to ask Dr. Sawyer about some of the interesting ideas and observations he included in his book.

Vern Burkhardt (VB): Your book is devoted to describing Group Genius. If you were describing this concept to someone who had not read your book, what would you say?

Dr. Sawyer:

We often think that creativity is reserved for special people, the “creatives” or geniuses who somehow have better ideas than the rest of us. But this belief in the lone genius is a myth—especially today, when successful innovation is always based in collaboration and in social networks. All of us can tap into the power of collaboration to enhance our own creativity, and my book shows us how.

VB: In your book you state that there is a link between group flow and creativity, especially at work. And yet in many work environments there are inherent impediments to creativity such as tight deadlines, long hours, and too much time spent in the planning stage rather than moving to executing. Why do you think that so many organizations have not realized that creativity is a key to their survival and therefore made some fundamental and necessary changes to encourage innovation?

Dr. Sawyer:

Group flow is a state of peak performance that groups reach, when the members blend together just right, and the environment allows a certain kind of focus and concentration on the work. Having a strong vision and shared goals makes group flow more likely. Groups that are in flow often work longer hours, but it’s because they are having such a great time, not because they’re being forced to work hard to meet a tight deadline.

To become more innovative, companies have to implement some very difficult organizational changes. One of the most difficult is to realize that innovation can’t be managed in the traditional top-down manner; there’s always an important element of improvisation, unexpected developments, failures and dead ends, so that the best ideas emerge from the bottom up. And managers are trained to stay in control and to always know what is going on.

VB: You give numerous examples to support the myth of the lone genius of historical inventors, and that the truth is always a story of group genius. What do you think are the lessons for people who want to make their living by generating new ideas and inventions?

Dr. Sawyer:

If your goal is to be a traditional solitary inventor, who comes up with patentable new ideas and then licenses them to companies that will make them, I think that model is fading away. The last time that model dominated innovation was the early 19th century. The big shift away from the “lone inventor” model was Thomas Edison, who innovated by creating the first modern research lab, hiring lots of experts, and combining them in effective teams. (The people who worked in Edison’s lab, those who came up with most of the ideas that we now credit to Edison, were quoted as saying “Edison wasn’t really that good of an inventor.”) Most innovations today originate in collaborative teams.

I always say that the best way to have good ideas is to collaborate constantly. You have to talk to people every day, and make sure they come from a broad range of backgrounds. The best way to be more creative is to join together with others, in the kinds of teams that I described in my book.

VB: In describing the seven characteristics of creative teams you state that successful collaborative teams practice “deep listening”. What do you mean by that and how can one learn to do deep listening?

Dr. Sawyer:

Deep listening is a concept that I first heard about from improv theater actors. What most of us do in conversation is that we listen only half way, because we’re already thinking about what we want to say next. But if you do that in an improv theater performance, nothing new and original will ever emerge. New ideas emerge from conversation when each person’s response is a direct elaboration of what just came before; and, you can’t really know what will be the best thing to say until you fully heard what was just spoken.

VB: You state that collaborative conversation accelerates the innovation process because the sparks happen in real time. Since this is the driver of group genius what are some practical steps an organization can take to encourage this type of conversation?

Dr. Sawyer:

Many companies are doing this right now. One key piece of advice is to create environments that foster spontaneous, unplanned encounters. Office furniture companies like Steelcase and Herman Miller are way out in front on this, and they’ve custom-designed new floor layouts that are designed to foster these creative conversations: by, for example, designing an office floor using a hub-and-spoke layout, where the hubs are spaces for meeting and getting coffee and the spokes are the walkways. The intent of this layout is that anytime you need to walk somewhere, you have to pass through one or more hubs, increasing the chance that you’ll bump into someone. Google has a famously large sweeping staircase, and has installed wall outlets all the way up the staircase just to encourage people to sit on the steps with their laptops, so that they’ll have more encounters with the other folks who are going up and down the stairs.

VB: Perhaps related to the previous question, could you explain what you meant when you stated in your book that creative people have their most significant insights while in a flow state and that the most common place people experience flow is in conversation with others?

Dr. Sawyer:

That’s from research by Professor Mike Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term “flow” to refer to a state of peak experience, when you’re fully focused on the task and you lose track of time. The most creative people love their work, and they do it because it helps them attain this flow state. Csikszentmihalyi has done a lot of experimental and observation study of the flow state; and when he interviewed people about flow at work, they ranked “conversation with others” as the most common situation where flow occurred.

VB: You say in Group Genius that it’s a law of innovation that successes cannot go up unless failures go up, and therefore there is a need to create an organizational culture that cherishes failure. How can we best go about “cherishing failure”?

Dr. Sawyer:

This is a tough issue! No one likes failure. But the law I refer to says that successful ideas are correlated with the sheer number of ideas, and that no more than one in ten ideas result in a successful product or service. Some companies actually have a “museum of failure”—like Alessi, the Italian design company, and IDEO, the Silicon Valley design firm.

VB: How would you recommend a Chief Executive Officer, or perhaps better still a group of motivated employees, promote the right culture and values to make an organization collaborative?

Dr. Sawyer:

I wrote my book to answer this question, so I’m not sure I can give a short version! There’s a lot that has to be done, and it has to start at the top of the organization—only the CEO can foster a culture of openness, communication, expectation for innovative effort, and acceptance of failure.

VB: You make a strong case for the death of “brainstorming” as a way to encourage creativity in groups, and yet it seems to persist in many organizations today. Why do such myths persist in organizations?

Dr. Sawyer:

In my book, I talk about “the illusion of group effectiveness”—brainstorming groups always think they’ve been creative. The myth persists because most managers don’t know the research about effectiveness in groups. I’ve been teaching a full-day seminar at our school of business, “Leading Innovative Teams,” to help managers understand how to get their teams to collaborate effectively.

VB: You observe that innovative companies reach out to their customers, and they also reach out to other businesses — even their competitors — to build collaborative relationships that lead to innovation. Despite the numerous examples of companies that have successfully followed this model, does this seem to be a paradox?

Dr. Sawyer:

Only certain kinds of collaborative partnerships work, and they have to be very carefully structured. Our overall economy benefits from this kind of network, even when specific individual companies fail, as long as the ideas and the expertise flow forward to other organizations.

VB: Some large organizations have implemented expensive and complex Customer Relationship Management systems and processes in order to improve customer service and presumably increase profits. In your book you say that the way to collaborate with customers is to foster links up and down the organization; not to channel customers through a sales contact or the customer service desk. Does that argue against the “traditional” CRM model?

Dr. Sawyer:

I think it does, to some extent. Cisco is one company doing something different, as I describe in my book…it’s a very different way of doing business. For Cisco, it might work only because their customers are other businesses…I’m not sure if it would work if your customers are millions of regular consumers. But some companies are finding success by opening up to a small subset of customers, the “lead users” who just love your product and know a lot about it.

VB: You said in your book that you spent two years in the 1990s performing with and collecting video tapes of many jazz and theatre groups, then spent the next 10 years studying these collaborations. You analyzed this data and examined a large number of case studies in the business world. Did you draw any conclusions about the ability of group genius along with its related creativity to solve many of the world’s social, economic and political problems?

Dr. Sawyer:

The complex problems that we face today can only be solved by working together. The pace of innovation has increased, largely because of new technologies that enable greater and more frequent collaborations (telephone, email, inexpensive jet travel, Internet), resulting in a higher standard of living and growth in our economy. I believe that we can channel the power of collaboration to solve pressing social and political issues, as well.

Conclusion:

In his book Dr. Sawyer provides many practical ideas on how to establish and foster a creative group. For example, keep the number in the group to the minimum number required in order to avoid “social loafing”, use a skilled facilitator, put in place group rewards, alternate work with frequent breaks, switch between group and individual activities, and include people with complementary skills who enjoy group interaction.

As the business environment becomes more competitive and unpredictable and with rapid technological change, improvised innovation will become more and more important. The successful organization of the future will run on group genius. Dr. Keith Sawyer concludes his book with “I hope this book contributes, as one small spark, to helping humanity attain its true creative potential”. It does, if we will listen.

Keith Sawyer’s book Group Genius was published by Basic Books in 2007 and can be purchased from Borders and Barnes & Noble, and from Amazon.com. For additional information go to this website.

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Vic Desotelle — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:55:53 +0000

Seavus Group asked:

BOSTON, MALMÖ, LONDON 16.07.2009 – After the successful introduction of the BETA vesion, Seavus Group proudly announced the official commercial release of Seavus Project Evolution. The results of the BETA testing period taught valuable lessons and set clear path for a successful commercial launch.

The team’s productivity in the past year resulted in delivering entirely new functionalities to Seavus Project Viewer, as well as in improvement of the existing ones. Seavus’ Viewer for Microsoft Project evolved in a powerful project collaboration tool, making major step towards collaborative project management.

In addition to the unique viewing functionalities of Seavus Project Evolution, the upcoming availability of the new features truly inspires team collaboration.

Project collaboration between project managers and team members is highly stimulated through task update, where team members update the task progress [actual work or percentage complete] and request approval from the project owner. This tool for task update is essential point in building a collaborative environment.

Issue tracking system prevents from or strongly minimizes perturbations in sensitive project flows. Issues can be associated with particular projects and tasks, and can be assigned to the responsible team member.

Creating and editing Wikis facilitates greater knowledge-sharing among the project team, and encourages project members’ participation and contribution to the project.

Seavus Project Viewer, MS Project Standard Add-in, Seavus Project Server and Seavus Web Client are elements of this suite.

The server is where both project managers and team members login to manage the task progress, track and report issues, and share knowledge through wikis.

A team member needs Seavus Project Viewer, and the Project Manager the MS Project Standard Add-in. Seavus Web Client provides you the freedom of accessing the projects from anywhere, and managing them same as if you were connected to the office network.

Both project managers and team members have the opportunity to work on a project in online and offline mode.

More extensive information can be found at Seavus Project Evolution’s Feature overviev on our website.

Designed for everyone included in the project work, Seavus Project Evolution eliminates the barriers to communication and knowledge-sharing.

Seavus Group welcomes you to experience the FREE TRIAL version now.

ABOUT SEAVUS Founded in 1999, today the Seavus Group is an innovative provider of information technology solutions, custom software development, project outsourcing and quality software products. Seavus is well positioned and highly experienced in providing project management products, enterprise-wide business solutions, system integration and support to our customers worldwide. Seavus’ headquarters are located in Sweden with offices in Macedonia, Serbia, Belarus, Latvia, USA, UK, and Netherlands. We currently have a staff of over 400 professionals.

With the Seavus global network of partners, resellers and distributors we are able to deliver high quality products and develop, deliver, implement and support projects around the world.

Kansieo.com

Vic Desotelle — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:56:38 +0000

Nahshon Mediros asked:

After the much-awaited high school class of 1985 reunion, you’ve caught up with the lives of your long-lost friends. Keep the momentum going and invite them to fun collaboration. Share photos and experience and just enjoy.

A Hang-Out In the WWW

Yes, you and your friends can hang out on the World Wide Web. No more AWOLs from work and incurring the wrath of the big boss. At home, you can chat with a group of friends and swap pictures, videos, and even maps to get to cool places for that grand getaways. That is, if you have group collaboration software to make your outings in the web fun.

All you have to do is use the email feature and organize your online group together. Schedule your meetings and get ready with the files or pictures you want to share. This is a great way to keep in touch with friends from high school and college without spending money on airfare, bus tickets, and hotel accommodations. A one-time investment on group collaboration software, which you can split equally with the group, will make it even more cost-effective.

A nostalgic trip back to those memorable schooldays can always spice up your day after a long grind at work. You can widen your network and find out where the class beauty and the football hunks are hiding. The more you invite, the merrier. It won’t cost you another penny to chat up long lost friends and they’ll love your initiative to create a virtual coffee shop.

All-Purpose Conferencing

With group collaboration software, you can organize webinars for your friends, and even use the technology for your sales pitch. You can help those waiting for a break by using the platform to sell their products to old classmates who may happen to be in league with the big time.

Here’s what you can do with your group collaboration software:

1. Show PowerPoint presentations of club project and activities.

2. Share files on project statistics.

3. Review files together and make those decisions.

4. Enjoy audio and video features.

5. You can share marketing tips and strategies in real time.

For the big meetings, all you have to do is get a webinar hosting service and additional features to cater to a bigger crowd. Just an advice – let somebody outside the group do the facilitation and moderation of the activity. You and the gang shouldn’t be encumbered with more work. You’ve got to enjoy yourselves and at the same time scout for business opportunities without having to worry about small details.

Take the Lead Now

Start collecting the email addresses of your classmates and ask people to contribute to your list of emails. When you have reached a critical mass base, send them emails detailing your plans. Try out a consensus using the group collaboration software – it’ll make the work faster and easier to do than counting hands.

Get more ideas from the group, then settle on the group collaboration software that fit your needs anytime and whatever group size. The returns will be more than you realize. Memories of the high school prom, those long exams, and the bloom of young love are memories to be lovingly cherished. So take those steps now.

Website content

Vic Desotelle — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:05:18 +0000

Carole DeJarnatt asked:

Do you have a roadmap to success? Are there any curves or bends you are not sure how to navigate? Have you considered joining or forming a mastermind group? Napolean Hill author of Think and Grow Rich wrote, “No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind.”

Some of the benefits of joining a group are:

~~Peer to peer network of individuals to brainstorm for advice and ideas

~~Set goals and create plans

~~Accountability from your network of peers

~~Articles and resources for greater success in business

~~Network with others of like-mindedness

Mastermind groups can be started around any type of group. The goals for the group are fairly common but normally set by the facilitator or agreed upon when formed. All the groups I belong are coming together to give and receive information from the others in the group.

I presently belong to a coaches mastermind group. My first meeting I attended I did not understand the format and did not participate to the fullest. One thing I learned though was that each person at the table had some of the same issues I did and were there to gain from experiences from others. We are not there to gain business from each other; it is all about the learning experience. Referrals may happen between some of the people who are attending, but that is not the focus of this group.

Last fall I had breakfast with a friend of mine. She is a small business owner who is struggling to find ways to market her business. She suggested we find others who were having the same problem and start a roundtable group. At the time I agreed but was in the midst of the holidays. Today I emailed her and wrote, “Let’s get started!” I believe in the power of a mastermind group and bringing multiple minds together to plan for greater things to happen.

I am now facilitating a mastermind group of small business owners local to our area. When first coming in the room some of the people are apprehensive and do not understand the concept or what it is about. After we had our introductions and I explained how it worked, we started tackling one of our first business problems and it opened the floodgate for everyone to relax and become a part of it. The group was started and we are launched.

I am sure as we progress there will be modifications along the way, but the greatest success will come from those who attend and participate. Membership is not for everyone. You have to be serious about building your business and be willing to share with and learn from other business owners.

Why not try a group yourself. There are several online and perhaps there are probably some local to your area also. Check with your local Chamber of Commerce. Some offer them as a benefit to their members. Learn from the experience of others and succeed in business.

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Vic Desotelle — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:49:27 +0000

Kate Mercer asked:

How Familiar are these Situations to You?

- An organisation adopts a new strategy. While paying lip-service to the change, key staff are still resisting the new direction, complaining and hoping that things will go back to the way they were before

- A team regards itself as a group of individuals who ‘happen’ to report to the same person. Though they are each doing their own job effectively, the synergies, economies of scale and innovation that it was hoped would come from bringing them together are not happening

- A layer of management is taken out of an organisation to empower the next level of managers to make quicker decisions, interface directly with their own customers and produce enhanced results. However, they aren’t stepping up to the new challenge, and are waiting for direction and seeking permission, just as they did in the old structure

- Two functional heads whose roles require that they work together closely, clash to the extent that they do their best to avoid each other. When they do have to work together there is friction, resulting in inefficiency and poor outcomes

- Conflict and ‘fingerpointing’ are arising because team members are not clear on the exact boundaries of their roles, and tend either to ‘tread on each other’s toes’, or to miss targets and deadlines altogether because it is not clear who is accountable for their achievement

Sound Familiar?

Do you see similar issues in your own business? They cost hassle and sleepless nights. But have you ever stopped to calculate what they are really costing you? The real cost is a brake on business results which, if not tackled head-on, becomes permanent because it becomes the norm – ‘just the way things are round here’.

Typically, the knee-jerk reaction is to fire people, move them ’sideways’, re-structure, tell ‘them’ to get their act together, hope it gets better by complaining enough, put them on ’special measures’ at appraisal time, or call a ‘cards on the table’ meeting – all expensive, risky and ultimately ineffective.

What does not usually happen is that all the people concerned with the issue get together and surface it fully in a series of face-to-face conversations in which they explore in depth how things got to be this way, and agree new actions and behaviours which permanently prevent the issues from arising again. This approach to creating great, results-producing teams, in contrast to the knee-jerk response, is inexpensive, very fast, and if done properly always produces outstanding long-term results.

Why does the Approach Work?

The approach works because it creates a necessary forum, managed by a facilitator, to identify and surface issues that have not been expressed before. If the platform for doing this had existed before, organisational issues would have been resolved already, or would probably never have become problems in the first place! A valuable outcome of this approach is the creation of a long-term organisational process for dealing with team issues whenever they arise in the future – ‘just the way we do things round here’!

The second reason the approach works is that it is based on consistent research findings showing that, with very few exceptions, individuals are always capable of producing outstanding results given the right skills and mindset. If individuals don’t have the necessary skills, organisations are very familiar with the process of identifying and addressing skill gaps through training. However, people quite frequently still don’t produce the results they are capable of. This is because what gets in the way is not just their level of skill, but equally importantly their mindset and the groupthink in the team – this approach tackles these head on.

What Is the Key to Success?

The key to the approach’s success is the toughest bit: telling the truth. The experienced facilitator encourages participants to uncover and face up to key, relevant truths that will unstick the team and enable it to move on. They might otherwise shy away from these issues, leaving them forever buried from view, but causing unacknowledged blocks to progress. The team cannot do this without the impetus from an outside facilitator; it would be like doing brain surgery on yourself!

You may or may not have the ‘right’ strategy, the ‘right’ product, the ‘right’ appointment, the ‘right’ new computer system, but as a business leader, whatever you give your team to work with, you need their full, unconditional commitment. The process I outline uncovers very quickly any barriers in the way of every member of the team providing this, and leaves the team with a new ability to surface and resolve issues quickly and permanently in future.

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