Hammering-Reaction Science Laboratory

Nurture the Intra-preneur Within You

2011-05-27T23:48:00.003-04:00

Being either corps members or alumni of Teach For America, we represent a new generation of professionals that embodies the independent work attitude:

creative
risk-tolerant
unafraid of authorities
seeking meaningful work

These are the same entrepreneurial qualities that many self-starters and intra-preneurs possess. Rather than letting these qualities go to waste, we can sharpen them and apply them to make us more successful in our career endeavours. When I was at University of Wisconsin-Madison, I attended a week-long summer entrepreneurial boot camp program (Ref. 1) that was designed for graduate students in sciences and engineering. With its densely packed daily schedule and a mountain of reading material, this boot camp felt like the Summer Institute. I learnt a great deal during this week-long program:

doing quantitative market research
writing a business plan
presenting an elevator pitch
reading financial statements

It whetted my appetite for more. In the semesters following, I took an entrepreneurship class at the business school and competed in a state-level business plan contest. While I don’t currently own any start-up businesses, I still apply those same entrepreneurial principles at work to improve the quality of training service that my department provides internally and to customers. I also freely offer feedback and assistance to anyone who is interested in starting a business.

If you are interested in learning the ropes of business development, you have many resources. For example, the Kauffman Foundation offers three FastTrac courses (Ref. 2) that help entrepreneurs to hone their business skills. Business schools near you offer entrepreneurship and management classes as well, and these places are great starting points for business networking.

References:
1. Wisconsin Entrepreneurial Bootcamp: http://www.bus.wisc.edu/web/
2. Kauffman FastTrac: http://www.kauffman.org/entrepreneurship/FastTrac.aspx

(Originally published on 27 May 2011 on TFANet)

The Career Fair Phenomenon (for STEM)

2011-04-18T13:43:00.001-04:00

Teach For America-Atlanta hosted an opportunity fair to provide alumni and corps members with insights on various career opportunities in and outside the classroom. Being an advocate of spreading TFA influence across all career sectors, I volunteered to talk to attendees about pursuing a science/engineering career post-corps commitment.

I should have done my due diligence about the opportunity fair. Every other presenter was representing a public or charter school and arrived with banners and signs, brochures and T-shirts; I was the only presenter working outside the education community, and I only had my business cards. Hardly any fair attendee saw me or wanted/needed to talk to me.

At that moment, I rediscovered three lessons that I had previously learnt empirically:

1. If you want a career in engineering, technology, or sciences, you need to apply to graduate school.

Engineering and technology firms will never send recruiters to a TFA career fair. It is simply not worth their investment to come to a TFA fair when they can easily pick up several hundred eager applicants' résumés from a university career service center (although Cisco lets hired candidates defer employment while they are in Teach For America, you don't see Cisco recruit corps members at TFA opportunity fairs, do you?). To get the attention of a company that you want to work for, you need to put yourself where the company casts its net.

2. Start planning your exit strategy from teaching and build your professional network.

Teachers attract teaching jobs like magnetic south poles attract north poles, because highly qualified teachers are hard to recruit and retain. Therefore, opportunities that present themselves to you at fairs and conventions will ALL be education related. Lucky for you, no matter what field you choose after your corps years, someone else will have done that transition. Opportunities absolutely exist for you that are outside teaching. You only have to seek out the people who have done it and ask, "How did you do it?" and "What advice could you give me?" Look around: this is what the career blogs and the Career and Leadership Center are for.

3. Speak up for what you look for and pitch the hard skills you possess.

I don't believe all that every fair attendee wanted was to teach in a new school or to start a new charter. Why were there only education organizations showing up at the opportunity fair? The answer is all in the balance of demand and supply -- your demand and our supply.

If you don't ask to meet alumni or recruiters in the field or the company you want to get into, then we won't know to come to you. At the same time, your opportunity fair is a networking event, not a hiring interview. Pitch yourself, ask for advice, and build connections instead of brochure collections. Even if I don't know what opportunities I have for you, I might know someone else who does. Making referrals was how I got into graduate school; it's also how I am at my current position.

(Originally published on 23 March 2011 on TFANet)

Yuri's Night Space Party - 50th Anniversary of First Manned Space Flight

2011-04-02T21:14:00.005-04:00

Plan A:
Find a bar that has a mechanical bull. Ask the owner to dress the bull in the style of a Vostok rocket. Ride and say, "Yee-haw!"

Plan B:
Rent a vertical wind tunnel. Dive and pose for photos. Remember to wear a goldfish bowl.

Plan C:
Join a PVC barrel and a firing chamber together. Load up a spud. Mix propane and spark. Aim for low-Earth orbit!

Plan D:
Pour a vodka river. Line up fireworks rockets alongside. Then light a match...

From Machines to Humans - A Graduate School Story

2011-03-28T03:32:00.002-04:00

Engineers are not your usual lot to write for a business blog. When you think about it though, there are many similarities between engineering and business that make an engineer ideally suited for writing about business. For example:

Engineering prefers to maximize safety margin; business prefers to maximize profit margin -- er, that doesn't sound right.
Engineering works on cold hard products; business works on human emotions and incentives -- wait a minute: bad example.
Engineering stresses material and energy efficiency; business stresses organizational and operational efficiency -- now we are getting somewhere.

I'll tell you how my career identity changed from engineering to business. It all started with a class I took in graduate school...

When I finished teaching high school students, I went back to graduate school to study how to design and teach machines. Robotics, it is called. I was happy as a clam. Then one semester I decided to take an Entrepreneurship for Engineers class. The instructor, Teresa Esser, asked us to bring our résumés to class and give a 30-second pitch about ourselves and the first job we would seek upon graduation. I wanted a process control engineer position, I said to everyone. When she returned my résumé, she had crossed out my employment objective, circled everything related to teaching, and wrote next to them in red ink, "SALES!!" There was no way I could be good at sales--I was too analytical--I protested. Besides, I didn't even like the word "sales" in a job title. Yet Teresa insisted that I had a proficiency in communication not found in most engineers and that I had great opportunities in sales.

I didn't take Teresa's advice seriously, though I never forgot it. After I finished my degree and started working for an automation hardware/software company, my engineering supervisor saw my first technical presentation and asked, "Would you like to join the Training Department?" I accepted because, frankly, I felt natural doing it and I missed working face-to-face with people. Over the last two years of leading seminars and innovating training offers, I came to realize: Customer training is not about introducing customers to my hardware; customer training, same as classroom teaching, is about scaffolding on what the customers are familiar with, earning their trust in me, building their self-esteem and confidence when using my hardware, and helping them to improve their efficiency and productivity. Oh, isn't that what sales is about? Maybe that was the opportunity Teresa meant for me, I rationalized.

That is my graduate school story. I am still an engineer--a knowledge engineer--and I work in the business world. I have a question for you though: What is your idea of a career in business?

(Originally published on 28 March 2011 on TFANet)

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Final Shuttle Launches - Joy Making

2011-03-21T18:04:00.002-04:00

First Stop: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
The basic admission itself necessitates a two-day visit. If you take a guided tour, have lunch with an astronaut, experience the astronaut training program, or visit the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, you'll need an extra day or two.

Next Stop + 5G: Zero-G Flight
The closest thing to being in the outer space is to take a zero-G flight. If you aren't an undergrad running your micro-gravity experiments onboard a Vomit Comet nor a teacher in Northrop Grumman's Weightless Flights of Discovery Program, you can still have your shot at 0G--plus you have 5G in your pocket.
URL: www.gozerog.com

Beach Stop: Cocoa Beach Surfing
Even if you are a late bloomer, there are plenty of surfing schools in Cocoa Beach that can help you to look good on a surf board. I would do it if only water can work out its disagreement with me... (I know how to swim; water disagrees.)

Roadside Stop: World's Largest Alligator Invading Christmas Town
How will I ever explain this? Er, see for yourself: www.roadsideamerica.com/xmas/2.html

PS: Orlando, FL, is home to the world's largest entertainment McDonald's and, half-mile down the road, a European gourmet McDonald's. I wonder: Can I get mayonnaise with my fries?
URL: www.roadsideamerica.com/story/19952

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Final Shuttle Launches - Your Stay

2011-03-21T07:10:00.006-04:00

Cardinal rule #1: Even in the Space Age, Shuttle launch still uses tropical island time -- it is always late.

A dead battery. A wet glow plug. An albatross chasing a fish. Anything can halt the count down or scrub the mission. Prepare to stick around for a few days.

While you are at it, arrive a couple of days early, too. When else might you tour Kennedy Space Center and see the Shuttle gleaming on the launch pad, almost within your arm's reach?

Cardinal rule #2: Be rich, or find a couch.

Hotels, motels, campgrounds and short-term rentals are all booked for the Shuttle launch weeks already, all the way from Titusville to Cocoa Beach. Even a hole in the wall will cost you $100 to $150 a night. You have better odds finding a vacancy in Melbourne to the south or Orlando to the west. They are up to 60 miles away.
Hotel listing URL: www.space-coast.com
Vacation rental listing URL: www.vrbo.com

If you don't mind the idea of sharing your home with travelling strangers, you may look for couch-surfing opportunities. It is unpredictable, and it requires a great deal of flexibility. Your host's house rules apply.
URL: www.couchsurfing.org

Just a hunch: If you stay in Melbourne, you should have less morning traffic going to Titusville; if you stay in Orlando, you'll probably be caravaning with the rest of the Space Shuttle pilgrims. After the Shuttle launch, prepare to spend 4 hours on the road. If you are crashing at someone else's that night, be sure your host doesn't have curfew.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Final Shuttle Launch - Your Registration

2011-03-20T12:01:00.019-04:00

When Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off, spectators camped out two days ahead of time to get a good open view. Early indication is that the crowd viewing Space Shuttle Endeavour's launch in April will be 50% larger than Discovery's viewing crowd. The number of attendees of the final launch, that of Atlantis in June, is going to be beyond imagination. Given the popularity, how can you secure your place to witness the momentous final lift-off of the Space Shuttle Program?

1. Register for your chance to buy a launch ticket:
Kennedy Space Center's on-site viewing (~ 6 miles from the launch pad) of the Shuttle launch is ticketed in advance. You need to sign up for email notification at least 2 months before the launch, register for the ticket lottery within a 7-day window some 47 days (based on Endeavour's registration process) prior to the launch, and wait another 10 days before you know whether or not you get to buy the ticket.
URL: www.kennedyspacecenter.com/space-shuttle-launch-viewing-tickets.aspx

2. Register for your chance to join the NASA Shuttle launch tweetup:
150 spots in the VIP area (~ 3 miles from the launch pad) are reserved for lucky NASA tweetup participants. A British broadcast journalist, call sign @SpaceKate on Twitter, was one of them. When Discovery's launch was recurrently postponed from November to February, Space Kate stayed behind in America for 4 months and lived out of a suitcase that's packed for a week-long trip.

To win a spot at the NASA tweetup, you have to register 35 days (based on Endeavour's registration process) prior to the launch, and the window opens for 24 hours. You will be notified a week later. Your chance of winning the final NASA Shuttle launch tweetup spot will probably be less than single digit.
URL: www.nasa.gov/connect/tweetup/

3. Buy a launch ticket from tour operators:
You pay 3 times as much for a viewing ticket, you must make your purchase within the first hour of those tickets' release, and--oh--you won't be able to get through either by phone or on the web, because these tour operators don't have the IT infrastructure to handle the inundating traffic. But if you manage to get a hold of the order processing server's direct link to the VIP Causeway viewing package (not the viewing from KSCVC package), then you have yourself a deal.
URLs: www.floridadolphintours.com and www.graylineorlando.com/shuttle/

4. Off-site viewing:
Titusville (> 12 miles from the launch pad) is the best location to view a Shuttle launch outside Kennedy Space Center. Prepared to camp out along the shore like you would for a Black Friday sale. Space View Park and over/under the Max Brewer Memorial Parkway bridge are great, and there is a restaurant under the bridge at the end of the pier. You definitely need a VHF radio, a book, and possibly a chair. If you are not under the bridge and in the shade, you'll also need a giant hat and sunblock.
URL: www.launchphotography.com/Shuttle_Launch_Viewing.html

Have you seen the launch of a Space Shuttle?

2011-03-14T20:38:00.003-04:00

Photo: The final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, viewed from 20 km away with zoom.

This is the end of the Space Shuttle era. You have two more shots at seeing a Shuttle launch: Endeavour is lifting off in mid-April for the STS-134 mission to the International Space Station, carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer with it; Atlantis is launching in late June.

If you have a Twitter account, then it's time to dust it off. You have less than 1 day to register for the chance to see the main engine ignition from the press area (where the giant countdown clock is): http://go.nasa.gov/134tweet (registration cutoff at noon EDT March 15). If you don't, well, you can always join me under the Max Brewer Memorial Parkway bridge and see the launch from far, far away.

Does the end of the Space Shuttle program mean that America will no longer need its astronauts, that you will never get to work for NASA? Certainly not. It means that we are moving toward the privatization of space travel. NASA will be able to focus its resources to lead research, and teachers will continue to be NASA's ambassadors for scientific education outreach. With private ventures taking over the development of human space travel, one day designers of rockets and space-planes may be in as much demand as designers of electric hybrid vehicles. That's the future to look forward to once the Space Shuttle program ends.

Earl's 3 Lessons About Starting a Social Entrepreneurial Venture

2011-03-12T20:59:00.004-05:00

When I took the volunteer president/CEO position to revive the dormant Metro Atlanta Chapter of AmeriCorps Alums, I did what every other non-profit organizer thinks he/she needs to do right away: build a full-fledged board of directors, pursue 501(c)(3) status, and carry out every activity through grants and volunteers. It was an insightful but also miserable year of leadership experience.

I wish I had met Earl Phalen beforehand. Being a serial entrepreneur, Earl shared his unique and practical advices with budding social entrepreneurs at the Changing Education Through Social Entrepreneurship panel:

(1) Build an advisory board.

Board of directors ≠ advisory board.

The board of directors has vested interest in the organization and legal liability for the organization's decisions and actions. In essence, think of members of the board of directors as the owners and guardians of the organization. You only invite experts who are perfectly aligned with your team and mission and can contribute to the growth of your organization to the board of director. Until then, keep searching for your candidates.

The advisory board takes no authority and no executive burden in the organization. Members of the advisory board make recommendations on strategies and opportunities and bring support to the owner. They function rather more like your mentors and your best friends while you are operating a start-up.

(2) Leverage another organization's 501(c)(3).

501(c)(3) status is expensive. The IRS filing fee is $400 to $850 if you do everything on your own, 20-30% higher if you hire someone else to do the filing work. It also takes a lot of paperwork and organization planning. In addition, you have to register for non-profit status with your state, which has an annual registration fee.

You may defer some of these upfront monetary and time costs by asking an established 501(c)(3) organization to act as your fiscal agent (aka pass-through agency), receiving grants and donations on your behalf. There may be a small cost involved, as your fiscal agent may expect to be compensated for its administrative expenses associated with your bookkeeping.

(3) Build a business model that looks more like a for-profit model.

A healthy balance book is the cardinal measure of how responsible your organization is and how well it performs. However, there is another incentive for running your non-profit like a for-profit business: enforceable individual accountability. When you contract out a work or hire an employee rather than rely on a volunteer, you receive the promise of a guaranteed amount of work time and the quality of outcome. You also have the ability to retain better talents for your organization.

(Originally published on 12 March 2011 on TFANet)

This concludes Gene's 3-part highlight of the Changing Education Through Social Entrepreneurship panel from the TFA 20th Anniversary Summit. The panel discussion video may be viewed on Vimeo.

3 Factors to Consider When Deciding Which Idea Is Worth Pursuing

2011-03-12T20:50:00.003-05:00

Being an entrepreneur is like playing with a chemistry set. You hope to produce something extraordinary when you mix your ingredients together, though you don't know for sure what you will get. If you understand the redox rules though, you just may have some inkling of what chemical reaction to expect. Similarly, if you know how to evaluate your entrepreneurial ideas, you just may be able to predict your success with some degree of confidence.

Before quitting your day job and diving headlong into your transformational idea, consider these three factors that will faciliate the success of your entrepreneurial venture:

(1) How will you identify a revenue model to sustain your social entrepreneurial venture?

Grant and charitable donations don't sustain your organization, much less support its growth. Here is why: Grant money is full of restrictions and requirements -- most available grants are project grants, and project grants may not be used to pay for routine operational expenses, such as salaries, telephone bills, or the paper and ink cartridge in your printer; charitable donation is scarce and at the mercy of the economy -- for example, from 2008 to 2009 U.S. charitable donations dropped $12 billion, and only 13% of charitable donations went directly into education. If you want your social innovation to be successful and scalable, you need an independent revenue stream.

Earl Phalen's organization Summer Advantage USA uses a fee-for-service model to implement its research driven, evidence based program to intervene on summer learning loss. Summer Advantage identifies school districts as the market for its program, and it competes for district contracts like other service providers do. A small profit margin is thus generated to run the organization while the program continuously develops to maximize its impact and competitiveness.

(2) What is your endgame? How is your exit strategy going to look?

Teach For America has a lofty endgame: One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. It is a an unambiguous pitch that everyone within earshot instinctively understands (albeit differently) and every potential investor will want to learn more about. Can you clearly articulate your endgame in 10 secons and make your stake holders interested in what you have to say after that first 10 seconds? What do you call a successful intervention and how do you measure it?

Louise Langheier's Peer Health Exchange has a clear endgame: It uses health education to teach students to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancies, addictions, and abusive relationships. This empowers students to make it through school and think about college. PHE can use a number of metrics to measure its success, from reduction of student health risk factors and increase of college enrollemnt to increase in college volunteers' commitment to public service.

(3) Where can you get the resources (human, financial, infrastructural, etc.) you need?

Disney World's monorail is human-piloted, and the driver's cockpit has arguably the best view. Do you know how the late CMU professor Randy Pausch put his father and his son into the cockpit for a memorable monorail ride? "All you have to do is ask," said Pausch.

Louise's success in expanding her program from New Have to the national level comes from maintaining high expectation and reaching out for the best and brightest experts in every field to join every level of her organization.

Earl learnt what he had to know about fundraising and education by asking the head of Harvard's fundraising campaign and the professors in the School of Education for mentorship. People will say yes just because they love your energy and want to support you the same way someone else supported them, says Earl.

(Originally published on 6 March 2011 on TFANet)

3 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Social Entrepreneurial Venture

2011-03-12T19:55:00.005-05:00

The panelists of the February 12 Changing Education Through Social Entrepreneurship discussion at Teach For America 20th Anniversary Summit represented eclectic forms of entrepreneurship, from Sarah Usdin's geography-based New Schools for New Orleans to Louise Langheier's issue-based Peer Health Exchange, Andrea Stouder's intra-preneurial innovation within an organization to Earl Phalen's serial entrepreneurship, and Mike Feinberg's scaling of two charter school successes to the national network of 99 KIPP academies. Coming away from the panel with newfound inspiration, you are fired up and eager to start your own non-profit organization, but is entrepreneurship the right career for you?

I won't sugarcoat it. Entrepreneurship is hard: it is hard work, and it is hard to be successful. To find out whether you are ready to take on social entrepreneurship as your career, ask yourself these three questions:

(1) What is your human capital?

The theme of the panel discussion, as moderator Cheryl Dorsey pointed out, was about human capital. Human capital is the catalyst and the most important asset of any successful entrepreneurial venture. Take stock of your human capital: Who have bought into your team and who need to be on your team? Earl Phalen runs two non-profit organizations, and his first priority is always to put together top-notch teams to operate his organizations. For Mike Feinberg, forming that top-notch team means bringing in people who are better at the areas in which you aren't the best.

(2) What is the problem you are trying to solve?

Andrea Stouder, the executive director of Arizona State University Sanford Education Project, gave her advice to people who are interested in social entrepreneurship: "Right now, for alumni of Teach For America, there are more opportunities to lead than there are alumni. Don't set a goal of 'I want to be a social entrepreneur; I want to start something new.' Respond to a need. What is most important to you? Figure out the right role to address that issue." That right role may mean being entrepreneurial within the institution, bringing innovations into a giant system.

Sometimes that right role may indeed mean outsourcing the solution. When Louise Langheier was a college sophomore, she asked Wendy Kopp, who went to Yale University to give a speech, "Why isn't Teach For America addressing the health education crisis in this country?" Wendy acknowledged that there was a crisis and encouraged Louise to do something about it. This became a catalyst to the foundation of Peer Health Exchange.

(3) What are your personal priorities?

Running a start-up is not a part-time gig. You must be prepared to give up your classroom teaching or whatever job you have and devote full time and all your energy to build your start-up. Oftentimes it includes making concessions about your personal life. Louise put it plainly, "I don't believe in the idea that there is a work-life balance. You define your priorities... Sometimes that looks like a crazy work week where I barely see anyone." When Mike started the KIPP, he didn't have a family to be responsible for, and it was much easier for him to work 18-20 hours a day. To him, the promise he made to the children he served were sacred, and keeping that promise was his sole priority in those early days.

If you cannot afford to give up your full-time job or make the necessary work-life concessions, you may still consider the intra-preneur alternative. In an organization such as KIPP, there is plenty of room for entrepreneurship to happen as part of your day-to-day job, says Mike. Even in a system that seems resistant to change, you can produce a difference by teaching everyone how to change and how to innovate, says Andrea.

(Originally published on 21 February 2011 on TFANet)

Apré «Pippin»

2010-11-14T02:35:00.004-05:00

Apré «Pippin»: the plot may be about a prince who finished college & seeks fulfillment, but aren't we all, at all ages? I'm still seeking.

Behind the 140 characters: An Emory University student group recently brought the musical production Pippin on stage. Having attended plays and musicals everywhere else but in my own backyard, I bought a ticket on a whim, not knowing anything about the story, the troupe, or the average audience. I wanted to be surprised.

How delightfully surprised I was to become! The set and costumes conveyed a minimalist taste; a couple of supporting talents were hidden gems that punctuated the liveliness in the ad hoc cast; the cast and the audience were the contagiously restless and energetic undergrads, most of whom freshmen or sophomore. The greatest surprise, though, was the deep morality in this comical and fanciful musical. I am a sucker for profound morals and dramatic plots.

The plot goes: Pippin the young prince newly graduated from college and sought to do something extraordinary, to attain fulfillment in life. He tasted and became weary of the blood lust of warring glories; he drank his fill of frivolous carnal pleasure but was eventually overwhelmed; he vividly dreamed about broad-sweep social reforms according to his ideology, only to wake after catastrophic failures from his lack of foresight...

All through that, I thought: That's me! That's me. Toward the end of undergrad, I was in a panicked search for extraordinary achievements and an extraordinary existence. (Aren't most of us?) If Pippin were my contemporary, I might have persuaded him to apply for Engineers/Doctors Without Borders or Teach For America. Thusly Pippin might find his calling, and the musical might have an extraordinary ending. Surely, if there had been a post-performance discussion, I would have shamelessly seeded such opportunities in the minds of the impressionable undergrads.

Alas, I think there will never come the quenching of man's thirst for extraordinariness and fulfillment. Grass is always greener on the other side. As soon as I satiated my desire for citizenly fulfillment through Teach For America, I pined for my own intellectual fulfillment in scientific pursuit. As soon as I tasted abstract intellectual stimulation, I sought engineering practises to put knowledge into tangible use. As soon as I held down an engineering job, well, I started questioning the meaning of life again and wanted to leave a legacy for the society. I imagine Pippin would have felt the same, no matter what extraordinary fulfillment he attains.

In the end of the story, Pippin copped out. He chose a plain exit, to run an estate with the widow who took him in and showed an interest in him. No more allure, no more magic, except for that sentimental connection between a man and a woman. Frankly, I felt betrayed. To be fully human is to live an existence of continuing struggles, to forever chase the missing piece to fulfillment (or "to forever chase the carrot that's dangling in front of you", as a plain-spoken engineer would put it). Pippin's final choice was a surrender, an acknowledgment of defeat.

In spite of my displeasure with the ending, or perhaps because of it, I love the plot of «Pippin». It profoundly stirred up different and conflicting emotions at different moments, from my sympathy for Pippin's uncertainty to empathy for his predicament, and to resentment at his betrayal of his ideology, all in the guise of a cute and eccentric musical. To find that substance was my greatest surprise.

Accountability of Nonprofit Start-up Volunteers (II)

2010-03-14T00:01:00.002-05:00

In a few weeks we are going to have a mid-year leadership team retreat. For what it's worth, this retreat is the first of its kind in the two years since I came to the alums chapter. I didn't come up with the idea of having a leadership team retreat, but it sure is a brilliant idea, and quite an overdue one at that. Through this retreat, I hope to build higher sense of responsibility, collaboration, and accountability within the leadership team.

What is a leadership team retreat? A retreat is a scheduled opportunity for team-building and benchmarking an organization's focus and philosophy. A ropes course challenge or an overnight stay at a secluded or exotic destination often comes to mind. But a retreat doesn't have to be fancy and action-packed. The main point of having a retreat is to spend a few hours together to

get to know the people you are working with,
get everyone on the same page regarding the organization's state and plan for the future, and
help everyone to gain useful knowledge, skill, or resource to do his/her job better.

If a half day sitting at a round table can achieve all the aims of a retreat, then you don't need to spend two days at a beachfront in Savannah. The key to a successful retreat is simply to facilitate guided communication for all parties involved.

* * * * *

A leadership team retreat may feel more civilized and social than other alternatives, but it is not the only effective way to keep volunteer officers accountable and motivated. Here are a few other methods worth implementing, either separately or combined:

Sign an officer contract: Certainly the most obvious strategy in the corporate world, though frequently found in classrooms as well, signing a contract is a symbolic gesture that the officer agrees to fulfill all the responsibilities that come with the position. While it is plain to see that not fulfilling the contract could lead to early termination and an unfavorable letter of recommendation, it is no small challenge to come up with tangible incentives to fulfill the contract for a volunteer officer position.
Conduct quarterly performance review: Much like filling out a report card every six weeks, the intention is to help the officer being evaluated to objectively identify specific performance issues and create an improvement plan. The touchy part is that a performance review often creates unintended stress for both the evaluator and the person being evaluated, and even objective negative reviews may be taken subjectively.
Put high bar for qualification: There is a reason that you don't see students and people who work shifts serve on non-profits' boards. Commitment to the organization and success of the organization are measured by the amount of time the board members and staff can consistently put into the organization week in and week out. Especially for volunteer leadership positions, a sufficient trial/shadow period should be required to qualify a person for the candidacy of an officer position. Though this is easier said than done if you have a limited pool of candidates to work with.

Hesitance

2010-03-02T20:49:00.002-05:00

Airplane toilets use vacuum to remove waste from the bowl. But at 30,000-ft cruising altitude, where air pressure is already imbalanced inside and outside the cabinet, that vacuum suction always gives me pause. Discovering this sign in the lavatory was particularly unhelpful...

Accountability of Nonprofit Start-up Volunteers (I)

2010-02-22T21:11:00.005-05:00

I fired an officer -- still a student -- from the ACAlums-ATL leadership team, and I was two months too late in making my decision. Ironically, if getting fired had meant more to her, or if asking for resignation had meant less to me, then everyone could have walked away happy... well, I don't mean walking away in the sense of packing up the cubicle and walking out the door. This is the trouble with running a nonprofit organization whose board and administrative team consist entirely of volunteers. There isn't any personal incentive for accountability, nor any substantial consequence for irresponsibility.

If a start-up wants to be successful, it must attract diverse talents that

share a common passion
dedicate themselves to the job
have a plan to support their pursuit for an extended period

While many students make great entrepreneurs, many more of them fizzle and disappear without making as much as a pop. They either blunder at forming the right team and the right networks, don't have the spare time to manage their start-up, or are under the pressure to "get a real job" -- let's face it: not everyone can move in with his/her parents, live on credit cards, or burn through a big fat checkbook for a couple of years while pursuing an entrepreneurial passion. Adding the word "nonprofit" is just adding fuel to the fire.

This must be why no full-time students are permitted on the board or the advisory council of the D.C. chapter of Young Nonprofit Professionals Network. Full-time students with their passion make great community volunteers and short-term task leaders, but they are generally handicapped by time and concentration, if not by experience and resource, required to function as a capable nonprofit board member or program manager in the long run.

Though wherever there is a bounded problem (e.g. having to work with the limitation of who are available/willing to serve on the board of ACAlums-ATL), there must be a solution. The question is, what strategies can be used to keep the volunteer officers accountable and motivated to do what is asked of them?
(Hold that thought...)

Maximizing Job Performance Is Like Finding True Love

2010-02-14T01:32:00.008-05:00

I was at a professional development workshop a couple of weeks ago. The presenter's topic was, "How to Maximize Your Job Performance." The premise was that by understanding the dominant dimensions of your behavior, you can seek out jobs that better utilize your strengths and complements. The tool used in the workshop was the DISC assessment of behavior dimensions.

If you have not heard of the DISC test for behavior dimensions, her is what each of the four capital letters means:

D (dominance) - Emphasis is on shaping the environment by overcoming opposition to accomplish results. People ranked high on dominance traits like to make decisions, and they are best placed in a project management capacity and given challenging assignments.

I (influence) - Emphasis is on shaping the environment by influencing or persuading others. People ranked high on influence traits like to make favorable impressions and are best suited for public relations and sales positions.

S (steadiness) - Emphasis is on cooperating with others to carry out the task. People with steadiness traits like consistent and predictable environment, and they need guidelines and slow conditioning prior to any changes.

C (conscientiousness) - Emphasis is on working conscientiously within existing circumstances to ensure quality and accuracy. People with conscientiousness traits pay attention to key directives and details, and they are highly effective in quality control roles.

Most people embody multiple traits. There are many psychologist-administered DISC assessments available to help each person determine the composition of his/her behavior dimensions. Being an academically developed tool, administering these assessments and interpreting the results by a certified psychologist would cost you a pretty penny.

That is until Dr. Helen Fisher, the Rutgers University anthropology professor and Chemistry.com Chief Scientific Advisor, comes to the scene. She developed a personality test to help lonely-hearts to find their other halves using the scientific method. This personality test uncannily mirrors the four behavior dimensions of the DISC assessment. Whereas the DISC assessment has four dimensions (dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness), the Chemistry.com test identifies four personality types (director, explorer, builder, and negotiator). And this personality test is free! I am not kidding!

If you want to discover your personality profile in order to improve your chance of finding true love -- or if you want to understand your dimensions of behavior in order to maximize your job performance -- you can register on Chemistry.com for free and take the test, or you can administer Dr. Fisher's test to yourself using this Digital Citizen article: http://digitalcitizen.ca/2009/08/02/facebook-note-helen-fishers-why-himwhy-her-personality-test-for-love/. I am high on the dominance scale. What do you get? :)

Surprisingly, the result you get is almost completely irrelevant. In my introductory psychology class many years ago, my instructor, Tracey Guertin, performed a brilliant demonstration to knock so-called personality tests. She gave four randomly selected volunteers from a lecture hall of several hundred students four separate personality assessments and asked each of them to reflect on the accuracy of her analysis of each of their personalities. All four volunteers said they were impressed by how accurate she described them. Then Ms. Guertin read out loud her analysis: all four volunteers received identical results. Since then I have been a non-believer of personality tests of all kinds.

The greatest use of these personality or behavior assessments is not to put a label on someone or to tell horoscope-like fortunes. The greatest use is to inform the assessed of behavior modifications necessary for a given situation in order to improve the working relationship and the outcome. That is why a good behavior assessment should only be conducted by a psychologist or a counselor, and the professional advice generated should inform behavior modification tailored to the person and the situation.

Aside from knocking the generic DISC assessment and the Chemistry.com personality test, what can we learn from comparing these two? At its core, job performance and personal relationship are both set on the foundation of recognizing your strengths and working with your complements. It takes a team to do a job well; it takes two to build a relationship.

Happy Valentine's Day!

LEP ≠ LIMP

2010-02-07T21:20:00.000-05:00

My friend Nora asked for help with creating math writing prompts.

"A math writing prompt? What on earth is that?" I asked.

True to her form as a teacher, she demonstrated with a few examples:
"How would our daily lives function without math?"
"What was your best math class? worst?"

Right away I recalled one of those Facebook quizzes I took and said, "How about 'If your life is a mathematical function, what type of function does it look like/will it be?'"

Too sophisticated, Nora replied, citing that the math writing prompts were an exercise for her LEP students. If you are not up to the educational lingo, let me translate: LEP stands for Limited English Proficiency, like ESL in my days, or EFL as a politically accepted alternative to recognize that English may in fact be the struggling student's third or fourth language.

But I adored that Facebook quiz-based writing prompt! It is full of opportunities for critical thinking and use of metaphors. Who says a LEP student must be a LIMP, be unable to grasp mathematical concepts, and be utterly incapable of expressing their range of imagination? Oh, I should explain: LIMP is a term I coined to mean Limited In Math Proficiency. You will have a serious limp in life if you are "limited in math proficiency". Brilliant, eh?

Then again, perhaps I was too hasty in becoming defensive. If these LEP student haven't learned the concept of functions in any language, then it is indeed unfair to ask them to compare their lives to something they don't understand. At the same time, I like writing prompts that demand students to be creative about concrete scenarios. What, then, could I construct a math writing prompt out of?

ZERO:
"If a law were made to prohibit everyone from using the number '0', how would your daily life change? How might we cope without '0'?"

NEGATIVE SIGN/SUBTRACTION:
"If machines -- cash registers, calculators, TV remotes, etc. -- were not able to do subtraction, how would your life change? For example, what would it be like shopping at the grocery store?"

MENTAL MATH:
"Imagine you were taking a vacation in a country in which nobody knew the multiplication table and were unable to add and subtract numbers in their heads. Describe what it would be like to interact with the restaurant wait staff, the bank clerk, the post office worker, the souvenir merchant ..."

Weekend Burnout

2010-02-01T00:54:00.001-05:00

Television turns your brain into gooey soup. So does a burnout. Because my brain had already gone on vacation anyway, I decided it couldn't hurt to sit in front of the tele for a while. Therefore, this weekend I watched three full seasons of Doctor Who streamed from Netflix. Ahh, tele-therapy.

Seriously though, this couldn't have been the best way to treat myself. Go for a walk! Read a book! Hang out with friends! My Reason nudged me. But I felt really tired and wasn't in the best mood for company -- it would take a bigger man than I am to even stand hanging out and chatting with myself under the circumstance (that's a figure of speech -- I don't actually make it a habit to chat with myself -- I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy......).

Ohh, how I am looking forward to getting these over with this week:
(1) Pass the bylaw amendments to set up ACALums-ATL as a non-profit organization.
(2) Get the renewal of corporation status with the GA Secretary of State and the application for 501(c)(3) status underway.
(3) Find a new communication chair for the board.
(4) Be through with Wednesday's jury summons.

Nonprofit Talk: to Be or Not to Be

2010-01-25T02:37:00.005-05:00

ACAlums-ATL is going nonprofit!

Maybe.

Going from a mere incorporated entity to a nonprofit organization seemed the solution to everything: it would be more convenient for us to apply for grants, solicit tax-deductible charitable donations, and receive tax exemptions. Becoming independent from our fiscal agent also means that we can host fundraisers and support causes that our fiscal agent isn't in a position to do. Besides, how difficult can it be to run an organization that doesn't make money?

Very difficult.

(1) To apply for the federal 501(c)(3) status, we have to pay a $400 user fee to the IRS (reduced to $200 once CyberAssistant comes online later in 2010).

(2) To obtain an attorney's help with the 501(c)(3) filing, we have to pay $300-$600 legal fees (based on the rate at LegalZoom.com).

(3) To renew our corporate status with Georgia, we have to pay an annual $90 registration fee to the Secretary of State.

For an organization whose seed money is $1000 (thanks to a generous stipend from the Give a Day. Get a Disney Day. program) and whose income stream is uncertain, these overhead costs form a significant barrier to entry. Once we decide to go through with the 501(c)(3) application, there is no turning back, and we must find ways to cover the annual overhead even though the Chapter is wholly run by voluntary staff. To illustrate how difficult it is for us to raise funds, on MLK Day, with volunteer turnout estimated at 250, we only managed to collect under $25 donation.

Money is not the only issue. There is also the Chapter's mission statement, which the IRS scrutinizes carefully before granting 501(c)(3) status. Should we position the Chapter as a regional leader for community services (Western New York AmeriCorps did a tremendous job -- see the behind-the-scene story about the January 24 episode of ABC's Extremem Makeover: ~~Home~~ Neighborhood Edition -- but that is not the work of an alumni chapter)? If we do, how should we build our network of connections, establish our reputation, and drive volunteer volume? How should we balance the project varieties so every alumnus with his/her unique interest and skills will stay engaged and feel valued?

Or, say, should we position the Chapter as a professional development organization, training a corps of alumni to take on civil and business leadership and become pivotal change-makers in the community? Should we focus on job skill training and career transition preparation, so new alumni will not find life-after-AmeriCorps terribly shocking and challenging? Teach For America, for example, is aggressively encouraging its alumni to run for offices at national and regional levels, and TFAnet, the Teach For America alumni network on the web, is a successful provider of career/graduate school resources and resume coaching in many key fields, from business and law to medicine and sciences.

Is applying to be a 501(c)(3) organization going to be worth it? I don't have the foresight to tell. All I know is that until we can articulate a clear focus for the Atlanta Chapter of AmeriCorps Alums to engage and rally the 500-plus local alumni, we haven't found the purpose and the means to establish ourselves as a successful nonprofit.

Present & Represent Your Organization in the Wake of Haiti Earthquakes

2010-01-17T21:53:00.003-05:00

My organization, the Atlanta Chapter of AmeriCorps Alums, is not rich. If you shake all the loose change out of our pockets, you'll be hard-pressed to put $3 together. While that doesn't stop us from undertaking good deeds for the communities and providing professional development opportunities for the alumni, we dream of having a workable budget and doing a lot more. Therefore, at our Martin Luther King, Jr. Day project, which has long been in the works and will pool together over 100 volunteers from various sources, we had planned to talk to everyone about our organization and seek their financial support.

Then the magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Haiti. Blast this untimely disaster, I cursed under my breath (was that considered blasphemy?). How can we good-consciously ask for donations to our organization now, when real human tragedies are on every TV screen and in everybody's mind? I submitted a motion to the chapter leadership team, proposing that we donate our MLK Day charity collection to the American Red Cross, even though I didn't see any philosophical relevance between our MLK Day project and the Haitian disaster relief work.

The question was, "How much should we donate to the Red Cross?" I have no qualm about keeping a portion (or all) of the charity collection to support our organization; I just can't convincingly persuade everyone to reach for the wallet if we do. Reluctantly, I suggested conveying to the 100+ project volunteers this message: "Even though the Atlanta Chapter has only $3 in its asset, all the donations to the Atlanta Chapter we collect on MLK Day will go toward the Red Cross for Haiti disaster relief." If we can prosper on a non-existent budget for 12 months, we can probably survive another six months to a year. We just have to scale back or postpone the timeline of our organizational ambitions.

Oh, but this proposal wasn't an easy sale! Leadership team members who have put a lot more effort into organizing this MLK Day project than I do -- I am just two moving lips with an impressive title -- showed varying levels of support, from agreeing to 25% donation up to 50% or more. Finally, KaCey summed up her opinion, "I think that its important that we recognize this disaster. We have plenty of time to fund raise. I think its sends a vital message about what kind organization we are when we donate." I couldn't have said it better myself.

So, the Atlanta Chapter of AmeriCorps Alums will still be collecting donations on MLK Day. We will still be contributing to the American Red Cross to support the Haiti disaster relief work. How much we will contribute and how we are going to persuade the MLK Day project volunteers to donate are up to the on-site project leaders tomorrow -- did I mention that I am unavoidably out of town and cannot attend this service project, which is practically the most significant project our organization do all year?

FOOTNOTES

(1) During the last 12 months, the Atlanta Chapter organized volunteers to participate in 9 community service projects, from environment-themed projects such as Chastain Park-cleanup on the All-Corps Service Day in May 2009, to education-themed projects such as Saturday-tutoring at Thomasville Heights Elementary School in December 2009.

(2) All together, the Atlanta Chapter alone contributed over 300 man-hours into community service projects during the last 12 months.

(3) In July 2009, the Atlanta Chapter hosted an hour-long professional development training for alumni. The topic was on leveraging networking events to build career opportunities.

(4) Looking forward in 2010, the Atlanta Chapter will organize monthly community service projects in the theme of environment, education, and economy. Bi-monthly professional development events are also in the calendar (Jan. 28: resume/portfolio workshop; March: grant-writing workshop) to help alumni learn practical job skills and refine job-seeking techniques.

Vision Is Turning the Tables; Leadership Is Getting People to Sit at Your Table

2010-01-10T05:27:00.003-05:00

I coach resume writing on Teach For America Career and Leadership Center. Like every resume coach before me, I advise my applicants to quantify their accomplishments and demonstrate their leadership skills. My applicants and I never discussed what leadership roles mean or what qualities exemplify a good leader. We all assumed that we know what good leadership looks like. In this essay, I am going to tackle that assumption by examining one commonly attributed leadership quality: visionary.

The cover story in the February 2001 issue of Harvard Business School Bulletin stated its topic plainly, "What Makes a Good Leader". In that article, HBS professor John P. Kotter was quoted, "We know that leadership is very much related to change. As the pace of change accelerates, there is naturally a greater need for effective leadership." Vision is important to a leader in these changing times, the article expressed, as it noted Prof. Kotter's observation: "the ability to recognize and make the most of new opportunities is highly prized.¹"

I argue that while vision is a requirement in the organizational scheme of leadership, visionariness is not a necessary personality trait or professional skill to become a good leader. Rather, a good leader must constantly surround oneself in a group of people who would help to brainstorm ideas and generate new visions. William S. Frank captured the essence of it when he wrote "These 10 Core Competencies Comprise Good Leadership" in the Denver Business Journal in August 2005,

Good leaders create a vision, a picture of the future, of where they want to take their organizations. Leaders can improve both the quality and acceptance of the vision by partnering with their peers, executive team, key employees throughout the organization or outside consultants. To get the best vision you need lots of ideas, and people support what they help to create.²

* * * * * * * * * *
To illustrate the difference between being visionary and being leadership material, I am going to tell a story: a few days ago Stacy, an AmeriCorps member who is helping to develop the Atlanta Chapter of AmeriCorps Alums, asked me, out of the blue,

"Do you have ideas for engaging the disability community? I will be engaging the disability community in the coming months for the Georgia AmeriCorps Leadership Council and I'm trying to keep a broad scope, to collect ideas and really make an impact."

We tossed several project ideas back and forth, all very practical but unfortunately mediocre. Just when the weight of mediocrity was starting to distract our brainstorming, I came across an online FAQ about participation in AmeriCorps and its endangerment of disability benefits³. I showed Stacy that FAQ.

"Oh man, that's not good," she sighed.

"No no no, au contraire, this is good news, really good news for your cause. You should start with a policy campaign to lobby the SSA to discount AmeriCorps living allowance as Substantial Gainful Activity, and further exempt it from counting toward deduction of the SSI benefits. This is a big, hairy, audacious goal that deserves all that you can give. It is also a great way to invest the disability community. What is a better way to exemplify leadership?"

Stacy beamed, "Wow. You have amazing vision! You may have sparked something!"

Even though I turned the tables on a seemingly adverse issue and lent that idea to Stacy, when the rubber meets the road, she will be the key to leading and realizing that vision. Were it up to me, I wouldn't have the slightest ability to pull off that project. The point I am making is that a good leader doesn't need to be visionary; a good leader needs to invest people to work toward a common vision.
* * * * * * * * * *

Some leadership lessons are analogous to entrepreneurship lessons:

(1) The best ideas are generated by brainstorming with a team that you can call upon.

(2) Experienced entrepreneurs will tell you that it's the team, rather than the idea, that makes the business venture successful.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Blagg, Deborah, and Susan Young. “What Makes a Good Leader.” Harvard Business School Bulletin, February 2001. http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/2001/february/leader.html (accessed January 10, 2010).

2. Frank, William S. “These 10 core competencies comprise good leadership.” Denver Business Journal, August 26, 2005. http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2005/08/29/smallb3.html (accessed January 10, 2010).

3. “Frequently Asked Questions About AmeriCorps and Disability Benefits.” The National Service Inclusion Project. http://www.serviceandinclusion.org/index.php?page=faqcncs (accessed January 10, 2010).

my life according to facebook -- 2009

2009-12-24T01:30:00.001-05:00

Other people work out for the benefits: relax, energize, and stay fit. When I work out, a friend observes, "You seem to only get the negative side effects."
#1 of 25 illogically logical facts about me: I am not from Mars. Personally, I think the whole lot of you are all extraterrestrial.
The sedan ahead of me sports a bumper sticker: Proud Parent of a SAILOR. I cannot help but picture a sailor-mouthed 12-year-old.
I used to dream in French. At least in my dreams I could converse in French. Last night I dreamt that I was struggling with French alphabets.
I hate gravity, but I missed it terribly when it wasn’t there.
A blank TFA STEM alum profiling questionnaire stares at me as if asking its Judgement Day question: Have you been worthy?
After much introspection on self-worth: "I am forsaken!" I exclaimed to my friend. He asked, "By God?" "No, by a celestial teapot."
Lunch chat turned to Aboriginal tribes eating cats. I: "Feral cats have no fat. Unless you have house cats gone wild?" Coworker: "What porn have you been watching?!"
A fortune cookie said to me, “You would prosper in the field of wacky inventions.” If it is a sign, then I need a bigger hint.
My Polish friend averts surprises with his food; I prefer the unfamiliar and the exotic. Yet our lunch choices always seem identical.
My journey through Ireland started in a library and ended in another library. I went in search of Ireland's William Butler Yeats; I came back after having discovered Dorothea Lange's Ireland.
A cup of curdled cheese sat in the kitchen, but I didn’t buy any cheese. Then I recalled: it was a cup of milk for my breakfast from two weeks ago.

Bookmarks

2009-12-20T21:38:00.003-05:00

The Found Bookmark Project, on display at the National Library of Ireland, displays

a selection of objects that were found between the pages of books in public libraries in Dublin during the summer of 2009 ... and the titles of books in which they were found.

Below were a few bookmarks on display that had me psychoanalyze:

We Do Not Sell to Persons Under 18

2009-12-14T21:53:00.005-05:00

Irish store owners make up the darnedest business names ...

(Photographed in Inis, Ireland.)

Saturday Tutoring in South Atlanta

2009-12-13T20:46:00.002-05:00

I have been looking forward to attending this volunteering project, tutoring math and reading at an elementary school in South Atlanta. Alas, I overslept, was out of gas, had no cash to pay toll, and circled the elementary school's neighborhood for 10 minutes before finding where it was. In essence, I was unfashionably late.

Being in the month of December and near the end of the semester, however, the tutoring program had a different agenda in mind on this Saturday morning. By the time I arrived, the children had been given supplies and instructed to make Christmas and Kwanzaa greeting cards. The teacher inside me was a little disappointed. On the other hand, I got to learn about Kwanzaa alongside the kids (maybe they all have heard it a half dozen times, but it was my first)!

Did I ever mention that children are little monsters? Not all of them -- not even most of them -- but one or two are already a handful. During the story-telling session, a couple of kids were throwing corn kernels at me and at other children. Those things hurt! I caught them in the act and used my most stern teacher face to scare them until they apologized. If the story teller hadn't been so in character about telling her Kwanzaa story, I might have decided to eat those two little monsters alive to set an example for the others.

On my way home I paid particular attention to a prominent fortress a stone's throw from the school. It is a federal penitentiary. Having a prison next door may be inevitable in some neighborhoods, considering United States' insatiable need for prison space and the scarcity of land. Yet, I can't help but wonder what future aspiration the children will have when the most prominent building in plain sight, with a street leading straight into it, is a federal penitentiary.