Helping Help

5 Questions to Build a Stronger Team

2012-02-19T19:20:00.001-08:00

Charlie Kindel recently wrote a great blog about using The 5 P's to Achieve Focus.

Framed as a series of 5 questions, the 5 P's are an incredibly useful team building exercise to get everyone on the same page. So get your team together, grab some blank pieces of paper, answer each question, and then share your responses to improve your ability to make things happen.

Purpose: Why are you committed to making it happen?
Principles | What are our guiding rules, ethics, and morals that inspire and guide us?
Priorities | If we can only make one thing happen, what is it?
Plan | What does success look like, how are we going to get there, and in what time frame?
People | Who is responsible for what, by when?

Like this topic? You should read this other post on how to inspire action.

Where Good Ideas Come From

2012-02-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

The best ideas come from people.

Most take a long time to evolve.

They come from the "collision of smaller hunches".

The person originating the idea usually try and fails many times to develop it.

Ideas grow and improve when people developing them learn, network, and connect with others.

"Chance favors the connected mind"

- Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson wrote a great blog post and even better book on this topic if you want to read more. I also highly recommend this short video:

Real Leaders Inspire Ongoing Action

2012-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

The day after MLk day is more important than the holiday itself. It is the day that we truly see who the real leaders are. It is the day that the celebrating masses give way to the nonconforming minority of change-makers.

MLK taught us to lead fearlessly, selflessly, and righteously. His accomplishments - and sacrifice - is worth celebrating and remembering, and I am proud that we take a day every year to do it. But celebrating is easy.

The day after MLK day is where true leaders shine. And they continue to shine for the weeks and months in between celebrations.

Right now, the world doesn't need celebrators. It needs leaders, innovators, and motivators. A "Day On" once a year won't cut it. Sure, being a good citizen 0.27% of the year is better than nothing, and donating a single holiday to commit to community service is indeed a noble act. But you are capable of more than serving soup, picking up trash, cleaning highways, and removing non-native plants.

The question on January 17th should not be "What did you do on MLK day", it should be "What are you going to keep doing to make the world a better place?"

You have skills that can inspire the masses, move mountains, and change the world - use those everyday to truly live MLK's dream - and yours.

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Passionate Leaders are Better Leaders

2012-01-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Leadership Passion Pyramid

To be a truly inspiring and effective leader, you must have passion.

But not any passion will suffice, the best leaders focus their passion on 4 main areas:

Passion for the development and fulfillment of the people they lead
Passion for the cause they are working towards
Passion for making an impact
Passion for their own personal growth

The ordering is just as important as the area of passion. Why?

Nothing happens if the people you lead don't make things happen.
Be invested in the people you lead, as their happiness and fulfillment is vital to success. People achieve more if they have the ability to work autonomously, utilize their strengths, and recognize that their work is making an impact towards a bigger purpose. They must have internal motivation: drive.

Great causes call for great achievement.
The most impactful leaders establish and communicate causes that people are willing to fight for. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not fighting a war, he was fighting for freedom. Mother Theresa was not nursing, she was giving people the opportunity to live their lives, free from issues of health and poverty. Lead people towards something worth fighting for.

Nothing inspires action like the ability to make a positive impact.
Steve Jobs didn't turn Apple into one of the most valuable brands in the world by inspiring people to make computers. He wanted to put a "ding in the universe", and showed progress towards doing just that. Endeavor doesn't just support high-impact companies, they focus on measurable impact, and report on it every year.

The Best Leaders Never Stop Growing.
According to Professor Michael Useem, the Director of Center for Leadership and Change Management at Wharton, the most effective leaders have 3 traits in common:

Being a self-directed student of leadership and lifelong learner

Receiving mentoring and coaching that is fine-grained, off-line, and individual

Getting in the game and having diverse experiences

Leaders must continue to grow, and push each other to grow, in order to make a bigger positive impact, faster. But reading a book won't suffice, you must be DRIVEN to grow from the inside out.

All the leadership books, training, and experience mean nothing if you are not endlessly motivated from your heart and mind. So no matter what or who you are leading, start with passion, then build from there.

Look Back Before Moving Forward

2011-12-24T08:40:00.000-08:00

At the end of every year, I dedicate a day to looking back. I think about a lot of things, and I use Who, What, Where, When, Why, How as a framework...

Who slowed me down
Who helped me

What I set out to do
What I did

When I was struggling
When I was happiest

Where I tripped
Where I soared

Why I failed
Why I succeeded

How I lost motivation
How I inspired, motivated, and empowered others and myself

I look within myself to find balance, and I look outside to find knowledge. I listen and learn from experts in all fields, knowing the diversity of thoughts and opinions enriches mind and body. I reflect on the news and trends - good and bad - and think about how I can use newly acquired knowledge to be successful next year.

2011 was an amazing year. 2012 will be even better.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

-Steve Jobs 1955-2011

How do you end your year so that next year is even better?

Inspire Others To Exceed Their Expectations

2011-12-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

Forbes.com just published a brilliant article on leadership that was written by Russell Raath. In it, Russell share a scene from the movie Invictus where Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela:

Morgan Freeman’s Mandela offers some final words of wisdom. “We need inspiration,” he says, “because in order to build our nation, we must all exceed our own expectations.”

You can read the full article on Forbes and I highly recommend it. The takeaway is simple and powerful. As a leader, your job is to do more than just setting and achieving goals. Your imperative is to inspire and empower people to exceed their goals, and expectations.

Increase Motivation, Inspire Action and Drive Behavior

2011-12-04T14:09:00.001-08:00

No matter your position, role, and responsibilities - you have the ability to motivate others and inspire action. There are thousands of books, research reports, and case studies on this topic - and out of all of them that I have come across, the three best resources are the following two videos and link

Dan Pink on the Surprising Science About What Motivates Us (video)
Simon Sinek on How Great Leaders Inspires Action (video)
Chip and Dan Heath on How to Change Things When Change is Hard (book, and article)

Here are the videos and book summary for your convenience:

Dan Pink on the Surprising Science About What Motivates Us

Simon Sinek on How Great Leaders Inspires Action

Chip and Dan Heath on How to Change Things When Change is Hard (Article copied from Triple Pundit Blog)

Human decision making is like a tiny rider on a massive elephant. The rider may think he’s in charge, but the elephant’s will always wins. Both are imperfect – the rider over-thinks and over-analyzes. The elephant acts on passion and emotion. Heath’s advice for causing change was three-pronged:

Direct the rider

Motivate the elephant

Shape the path

1) Direct the rider:
Humans obsess about problems to a fault and spend very little time analyzing what’s right, say, in a relationship. Heath explained how focusing on bright spots rather than issues can be transformational. Let’s study what’s working and do more of that. He gave an example of Donald Berwick at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement who aimed to save 100,000 lives by a certain date, and exceeded his goal simply by looking at what medical practices worked and spreading them across healthcare facilities.

2) Motivate the elephant:
People are emotional and often react better to a good story than heaps of data. Tell a story and allow your listeners to draw their own conclusions (which ideally match up with yours). In a vivid example, Heath described a procurement officer who wanted to overhaul his company’s supply chain for greater efficiency. Rather than say that, or bombard his team with data on the problem, he chose one item — gloves worn by the manufacturing team — and noticed that the company purchased 424 kinds of gloves. He got one of each and placed them in a mound on the conference table and then invited his team in. Without saying a word, they began to proclaim “This is crazy! We can fix this so easily!” — which was exactly what the procurement officer wanted to do. He invited his colleagues to see, feel, and then change the problem.

Interestingly, Heath pointed out that the environmental movement has got us all saying, “This is crazy!” but no one is quite at the point of saying, “And we can fix it!” And that’s a problem.

3) Shape the path:
Make change easy. Manipulate the situation and the environment such that the desired behavior is frictionless. Amazon’s 1 click purchasing button is a great example of removing all barriers between the customer and the goal. If you are trying to drive change, have you removed every single barrier between the people who aim to change and the actions you want them to take? “What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem,” Heath explained. The clearer your ask, the higher the likelihood that people will comply. Giving students a map and specific directions about donating a can of food increased their likelihood of compliance from 8% to 42% in the most kind students, and 0% to 25% in the least kind students.

So to recap:

Direct the rider – study the bright spots and replicate

Motivate the elephant – use emotional levers

Shape the path – make change easy

Motivating, inspiring, and changing behavior is never easy, but knowing the science behind each will certainly make you more effective!

Two More American Cancer Society Researchers Win Nobel Prize: Now 46 funded researchers in total

2011-10-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

For years I have been lauding the fact that the American Cancer Society has funded more Nobel Prize Laureates than any other organization. As of today, that number has grown to 46 - AMAZING!

Two of the newest three Nobel Laureates were funded by your American Cancer Society, bringing total of ACS funded researchers who have received Nobel prizes to 46.

Two of the three scientists receiving the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology are former American Cancer Society research grantees, bringing the number of Nobel Laureates among the Society’s funded researchers to 46.

Dr. Bruce A Beutler, professor of genetics and immunology at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California was awarded a two-year project grant in January 1992 for $120,000 to study TNF synthesis in cancer. Dr. Ralph M. Steinman of Rockefeller University was awarded a one-year Research Opportunity Grant in 1999 for $75,000 to study dendritic cells and mediated immunization. Dr. Steinman died from pancreatic cancer on Sept. 30, just three days before the Nobel Committee’s announcement.

Dr. Beutler was awarded along with Jules Hoffmann, who headed a laboratory in Strasbourg, France, for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity. In 1998, six years after receiving his American Cancer Society grant, Dr. Beutler and his colleagues helped discover receptor proteins that can recognize bacteria and other microorganisms as they enter the body, and activate the first line of defense in the immune system, known as innate immunity. The discoveries of Hoffmann and Beutler triggered extensive research in innate immunity, which has enabled the development of improved vaccines against infectious diseases. In the long term their findings could yield better treatments for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and chronic inflammatory diseases. In fact, there are now many agents being studied for use in cancer therapy because of their stimulation of immune cells via these receptors.

Dr. Steinman was recognized for work in the 1970s, when he discovered a new cell type that he called the dendritic cell, which he thought could be important in the immune system. His research, which was initially met with skepticism, showed that the actions of dendritic cells resulted in specific responses of T cells, a cell type that has a key role in adaptive immunity and develops an immunologic memory against many different substances. In 2010, the FDA approved the first therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer, Provenge, a vaccine that is based upon the principles of immunity developed by the study of dendritic cells.

It is also now apparent that there is an important regulation of anti-cancer immune responses that involves pathways connecting the receptors and responses studies by Dr. Beutler and the dendritic cells studied by Dr. Steinman. Studies initiated on these seemingly disparate aspects of the immune system have converged to provide new and exciting possibilities for fighting cancer.

“There is perhaps no greater indication of the importance and the vitality of the American Cancer Society’s research grants program than the number of former grantees who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize,” said Edward E. Partridge, M.D., national volunteer president of the American Cancer Society. “We are hopeful that among the 933 researchers currently receiving American Cancer Society funding across the nation are other early career scientists whose breakthrough ideas will one day be recognized with this high honor. This is what drives us every day and moves us closer to a world with more birthdays.”

Bettering The World

2011-06-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

Whoa... sorry for the temporary absence from updating this blog... Currently, I'm on a Global Volunteering Adventure and publishing updates on another blog. While volunteering in Indonesia and being half-way through my travels, I realized that a lot of my experiences and resultant learning's are very much in-line with the main purpose of this blog. If you haven't visited my Aspen To Nepal blog yet, I encourage you to check it our or subscribe for updates.

Here are a list of the most popular and relevant posts from AspentToNepal.com that fit with the theme of Helping Help:

Changing The World Has Never Been Easier | Put your money where you mouth is and start seeing positive changes today!
Opportunities Are Created, Not Born | No such thing as luck... only be putting yourself out there and opening yourself to new experiences can you take advantage of new opportunities
Breaking Barriers, Creating Connections | Building bridges across nations and among groups is one of the fastest and surest ways to develop sustainable change
Find A Bright Spot, Make It Brighter | Change is hard... but this post outlines tips on how to make positive, sustainable changes
Cleaner Than When You Found It | The Golden Rule to live by... always leave a place cleaner than when you found it

Thank you for your readership and support!

With respect and admiration,

Mark

Three Types of People

2011-02-24T20:54:00.000-08:00

In my experience, I can bucket almost everybody I meet into one of the categories:

Those actively changing the world for the better
Those wanting to change the world, and learning and preparing to do so
Those acting in their own self-interest

Which one are you?

Motivating Greater Commitment and Effectiveness

2011-02-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

Whether working with employees, volunteers, or donors, getting more out of the people in your network is vital to long-term success and growth. The key to garnering this higher level of support is influencing your constituents to become more fully immersed in your cause and mission.

However, asking or demanding immersion is never sufficient. Throw a child in a pool, and he will kick and scream, but show him the allure of being refreshed in the water, and the same child will eagerly dive-in and splash and play in the water.

Garnering immersion is not an easy task. It requires a hands-on approach, with a combination of audacity, specificity and gratitude.

The audacity to ask for immersion from people who are only giving a little
The specificity to provide relevant, tangible and impactful opportunities for people to contribute their strengths and desires to a real cause
The gratitude to thank and recognize all constituents, at all levels of immersion

While a different type of immersion, this post was partially inspired by the TED talk by Jacqueline Novogratz, "Inspiring a life of immersion". It's well worth the 18 minutes to watch it!

Are You Meeting in the Right Place?

2011-02-03T13:47:00.000-08:00

Ask yourself, if you are on the way to a meeting, how do you feel walking into:

A conference room in an office building?
A classroom in a high school?
A meeting room in a church?
A common room in a community center?

What happens if you change the surrounding? How do you feeling walking into:

A stadium?
Disneyland?
Night club?
Park?
Museum?
Bowling alley?
Cinema?

Different places evoke different emotions. Choose a place - or at least decorate the space you have - so that it is more conducive to what you are trying to accomplish. For example:

Brainstorming is great outdoors and in settings with lots of natural light and influence
Motivational sessions are great in big, decorated rooms
Planning meetings are greet in office building with lots of windows and white boards
Informational meetings are great in social settings like cinemas, bowling alleys, and decorated community center rooms

What are your favorite places to meet?

(This post was inspired by Seth Godin and his recent blog post: The Space Matters

Action Triggers Can Help You

2011-01-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

Do your donors forget to donate after committing?
Do you have volunteers forget to show-up after signing-up?
Do your co-workers forget to meet deadlines after agreeing?

Of course they do, but don't get all high-and-mighty... I'm sure you do to. I don't want to make an easy excuse and just call it 'human nature' to forget and procrastinate, but maybe it just can't be helped. And sometimes, reminder phone calls and pestering emails just won't illicit the type of behavior you are working towards. Instead, when people first commit, help them create a mental ACTION TRIGGER:

People who create action triggers for themselves are far more likely to take action. An action trigger is a mental plan you make about when and where you will do something or what you will do in a certain situation. For example, patients recovering from a hip operation who wrote down when and where they would go for a walk were much more likely to carry through on that decision then patients who just decided they would go for a walk.

Don’t just ask people to do something, get them to make a mental plan of when and where they will do it. - Chip and Dan Heat h

As an example, instead of asking for donations "at your earliest convenience," instead ask donors to donate as soon as they get their next paycheck.

Action triggers, of course, can go well beyond donations, they can also be used for self-improvement and coaching. For more on Action Triggers, I HIGHLY recommend reading this excellent book: Switch - How to change things when change is hard.

Make it Vivid, Personal and Immediate

2011-01-21T08:09:00.000-08:00

Today, Seth Godin published a GREAT post. While he focuses on misjudging risks, there is another takeaway I really enjoyed:

If you want to create action on the important, figure out how to make it vivid, personal and immediate.

You can read the full post here, or see it below:

Misjudging risk (and bad decisions)

The perception of risk is skewed when bad outcomes are vivid, personal and immediate.

Given the choice between working on the important and the urgent, the urgent almost always wins.

Given the choice between avoiding the rare but grisly outcome or doing the hard work to avoid the equally nasty, more subtle but more common outcome, we usually go for the grisly.

We do this sort of miscalculation all the time at work. We avoid the hard work on the long-term project in order to panic and rush about to avoid the possible vivid, immediate and personal risk on the short-term project, even if it's far less important.

(Think about this the next time you're in the security line at the airport).

This is one reason why the media is so complicit in many of the issues of the day... they take concepts that were previously abstract and relentlessly make them vivid, personal and immediate. It amplifies the risks around us and easily sells us on a cycle of dissatisfaction.

If you want to create action on the important, figure out how to make it vivid, personal and immediate.

The Tiniest Survivors

2011-01-06T20:08:00.000-08:00

Success comes from the most unlikely places.

No More Resolutions

2011-01-01T16:24:00.000-08:00

Please, no more resolutions, only action.

No excuses or scapegoating.

Now is a time for action. Not because you need to, but because the world needs you to... they need you to

Just Imagine

2010-12-17T21:59:00.000-08:00

One of the best renditions of this song I have ever seen... and just in time for the Holidays

Imagine from PlayingForChangeFoundation on Vimeo.

Grow Your Network

2010-12-06T22:09:00.000-08:00

Increasing the number of people engaged in your cause is always a challenge. I came across this GREAT post from the Escape Velocity and found these answers as a great question to the challenge of growing networks:

Over a year ago, in his blog post, War Paint and Promotion, Todd Jordan offered these words of wisdom . . .

It’s partially about having something great to say, but it’s equally about sharing your story and making them a part of it.

Keep that thought as you read through these.

Seed the garden. As Dave Navarro said, ” . . . Spend time either a) getting *their* name out or b) helping them move forward on their site goals … well before you need promo.” via Twitter.
Offer something worth sharing. Sure I love you, but if your product is bad or boring. I’m going to find it hard to pass it on to the other friends in my network.
Show confidence and courtesy. If you get nervous, self-conscious, or overly humorous, It makes it seem like your products can’t stand on its own.
Let me opt in! Tell me about what you have in a way that leaves me lots of room to choose for myself. If you hang your promotion on our relationship, you might find that our relationship wasn’t strong enough to carry it.
Make it easy to share. — have a simple message. You can offer me the way to say what your point is, but don’t give me a speech.
Give me a way to feel proud. I’m going to be sharing your message with other folks I care about.

I hope you take away as much from that as I did....

Don't Ever Give Up

2010-12-02T10:46:00.000-08:00

Lots of parallels to draw from this video.

My take-away? Notice that as the runner with the football slows down, so do his blockers. It only takes one person giving 110% to upset an entire team letting up just a little bit before the finish line...

Being Thankful

2010-11-23T14:34:00.000-08:00

I just read a great article from Jim Bird, a publisher at WorkLifeBalance.com. I want to share it with your word for word. Enjoy!!!

Your Thankfulness Quotient

No personal quality can deliver more meaning and joy than gratefulness - a deep recognition and appreciation for the wonders and blessings that life offers up. However, a rich sense of thankfulness is not automatically inherent in our nature. It is a trait that must be developed – and the more keenly we develop it, the happier and more balanced we become. (Reading time 180 seconds)

Thankfulness is the quality or state of being grateful. It is a positive character trait like courage, honesty or ambition. It is absolutely necessary to your enjoyment of life. Without it, you can not be happy and balanced. With it, life is good, much more meaningful and rewarding.

However, it takes effort to develop, because our more natural tendency is to bemoan what we don’t have and why we don’t have it. The more we give in to a routine of such lamenting the more we become whiners. A whining lack of appreciation is truly bad for us and those around us.

All of us have the capacity to improve ourselves and our lives by instilling a more routine sense of gratitude into our being; by making it even more of who we are. That begins with an awareness and focus on the huge immediate benefits of developing our “thankfulness” trait.

Doing so can turn a fast food lunch into a feast, a sunny day into a vacation, a stranger into a friend and a house into a home.   It molds bitterness into joy and what we have into more than enough.

Last week “Slick” Surratt a former outfielder for the Kansas City Monarchs of the old Negro Baseball Leagues died after struggling in his later years with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.   Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of Major League Baseball, wrote a heartfelt tribute to Slick, his dear friend. In it he explained, that Slick “…had helped clear the airfield at Guadalcanal during World War II as an Army Bulldozer operator. He came home from war hoping to play baseball again. But he was the wrong color, and so he spent some 50 years on the line as welder at the Ford Motor Co. plant in Kansas City.”

Slick was one of the men of the Negro Leagues that kept baseball alive in the black community and taught the next generation, making possible the careers of such superstars as Hank Aaron, Willie Mayes, Bob Gibson and so many more. Slick was in good physical shape even many years after his playing was over, “But it was his smile you had to notice. He was always smiling, full of joy,” Fay notes. He had fun and was fun to be with.

What Mr. Vincent recalled the most about this friend he truly loved was his total lack of bitterness. The hardships of being raised in the severe segregation of his native Arkansas were dismissed, as was being denied any chance even to try out for a big league team.

“I see no point in being bitter. It won’t do no good for no one,” Slick told the commissioner. Faye recounts even when he was dealing with his illnesses, Slick always sounded upbeat.

Commissioner Vincent reflects, “I will not forget the lessons I learned from this good and noble man. I will miss him, but I will never forget the joy of being in his company.”

Slick Surratt reflected the inner joy that comes from a deep gratitude for the positive opportunities life had offered up to him, not a bemoaning of the negative roadblocks that may have made another man bitter. Slick made the choice to be grateful.

So too, for each of us being thankful is a choice that we can develop into a habit or way of being. Choosing thankfulness every day develops it into one of your positive personal character traits. That nobility within you then reflects itself both inwardly and outwardly as the joy and warm friendly feelings of gratitude.

So what is your more dominant state? Do you tend to fret more about what you don’t have…on how someone else has more…or has slighted you…or let you down…or made your day more difficult? Or are you thankful to have a store to shop in. Some money to shop with. A roof over your head tonight. Warmth from the cold. A TV filled with entertainment and education. And oh, if you have someone in your life, family – friend to love or who loves you – are you grateful? Every day?

Whatever your answer, consciously focusing on upgrading your thankfulness character trait will improve you life. Recent psychological research for example, shows that participants who wrote down things they were grateful for at the end of the week were 25% happier, more satisfied with their lives overall, more optimistic about the upcoming week, exercising more and sleeping better.

Here are two simple and effective ways to reap the benefits of developing your thankfulness quotient.

Write Yourself Visual Reminders

The primary reason we are not more routinely thankful is we simply forget to be mindful of it. It is not fully engrained yet as a habit. So create these visual commitments and prompts:

• Schedule an appointment with yourself in your calendar to “be thankful.”

At lunch and the end of the day are good times. Dwell mentally or just jot down the occurrences, people, pleasures or achievements of the day you are grateful for. Schedule these reminders for 30 days.

• Post a note on your door at home, or in your car or office as a reminder.

Express Your Gratefulness Verbally

Maximize the impact of your gratitude, not by just thinking it and feeling it but also by expressing it.

Last week I had lunch at a favorite spot of mine that has been a long time star of the Atlanta restaurant scene. As I sat down a bustling waiter I knew passed and I asked how he’d been doing. He paused, smiled and replied, “Great! I’m alive, and I’m working and I’m grateful.” And he truly was, and happily expressing it. His doing so not only was reinforcing for him but made me even more thankful and joyful to be back dining with him.

So express your thankfulness to and for others often. Creating this habit multiplies the positive impact for you as well as all those around you.

Smiles,

Jim Bird
Publisher

Innovate

2010-11-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

I just read a great quote by Henry Ford. He said:

“If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’”

"How do you see your customers [and donors]? Help them unleash their inner genius, and you’ll win over their hearts and minds. [People] care about themselves, their dreams, and their goals. Help them achieve their aspirations, and you’ll win them over" - Carmine Gallo

A Moment of Inspiration

2010-11-11T22:24:00.000-08:00

In case you need a moment of inspiration, check out this trailer. The story is really incredible!

The World of Children

2010-11-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

The World of Children Awards, the gold standard for child advocates, are holding their 13th annual Awards ceremony at UNICEF on November 4, from 9 am to 12 pm EST. At this ceremony, six honorees will be recognized. These award winners including Adi Roche, who has dedicated her life to providing life-saving surgeries to children born with heart defects as a result of radiation in the Chernobyl region, and Leonor Portela, who provides food, education and shelter to children in Guatemala who have been orphaned and abandoned.

This year the Awards will be available via a live video stream. Immediately following the awards, viewers will be able to participate in a live Q&A session by submitting questions through the chat. If you’d like to watch the feed and submit questions to these real-life heroes, come back to Helping Help on the morning of November 4 and
watch the feed below!

worldofchildren on
livestream.com.

Top 7 Animated Talks To Help You Change The World

2010-11-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

Learning is paramount to personal and organizational growth. These videos seek to provide education and inspiration for those of us interested in making a bigger impact. Here are the videos, along with a brief summary of each.

Please note, the summaries are simply posted to help remember and re-cap the videos. Please do yourself a favor and watch the full videos :)

Crises of Capitalism, by David Harvey.

Summary: While Harvey delivers a somewhat Marxist-centered point-of-view, his talk is very interesting. In it, he mentions that there are a LOT of reasons why there was an economic collapse. A big piece of the puzzle relates to financial innovation that worked to get the right amount of money, in the right volume, at the right time. In doing so, the rich continue to get richer while the middle class (and lower) get relatively poorer. As time goes on, the greatest number of people who have the potential to buy the most products (the middle and lower classes) are getting poorer and are unable to buy as much, thereby slowing down the economy. In their quest for immediate wealth, the financiers (and upper class at large) are eroding their own markets. Only be improving the quality of the middle and lower classes, can we all continue to become "wealthier".

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, by Slavoj Zizek

Summary: In this talk, Slavoj seeks to answer the question "Why charity is a basic constituency of our society?" He explains that charity in fact destructs what it seeks to solve. And in pursuing purchases that "give back" (like Tom's shoes) we actually aren't helping as much as we think we are. While charity (at least in most cases) is better than nothing, Slavoj urges you to consider that a child who is better fed because of our donations is still living in the same corrupt system that produced him. In order to truly be successful in our giving, we need to invest in sustainable businesses and infrastructure improvements that enable people to create their own wealth, not just accept charity.

Superfreakonimcs, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Summary: In this talk, the speakers explore the notion that people might not be as altruistic as they think (or as we think they are). If we think people have nothing, we are likely to give more. If people have even a little bit, we are less likely to give as much. And if people have the same amount as us, we feel entitled to even take some of their money. Yes, people are altruistic and give, but only if there is something in it for themselves.

The Secret Powers of Time, by Professor Philip Zimbardo

Summary: People know that smoking is bad for them, and yet they do it. Kids know that it is important to study in school in order to be financially successful, and yet a child drops out every 9 seconds. In this talk "Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships, and how we act in the world." Zimbardo also highlights a study that shows that by the time a boy is 21 years old, he has played 10,000 hours worth of video games. This means that "children live in a world they create". Zimardo then explores how this affects their education and future careers. By analyzing how we view time (and the impact of our choices over time) we can improve our education, and even our political system.

Left Brain, Right Brain, by Mathew Taylor

In this talk, Mathew Taylor starts by saying that "Democracy can only be as successful as we, the people, make it." Taylor goes on to highlight a few idiosyncrasies in our thinking. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from his talk:

"If asked if we want $50 dollars now or $100 in a year, we will take $50 now. We are risk averse... We feel more strongly about losing something we have than gaining something we don't. We tend to think our own successes our based on our qualities, while our failures on based on circumstance, but we think the opposite about other people. For example, we think 90% of us are above average drives".

This extends in voting... We believe that the "customer is always right"... the same can be said about the voter who is in the majority. "Patient satisfaction ratings for the NHS are at the highest ever, but 56% think that the health service is in crisis. We agree that we need to change our lives to counter global warming, but admit we have no plans to do so ourselves."

The problem with our democracy is not as we often think... About the performance of our politicians, nor even the workings of our constitution, but its about the content of our conversation. Yes, we have some flaws and frailties... we are personally optimistic but socially pessimistic. If we are creative and ambitious, we CAN exert more influence over the social sphere". And if we understand that we often view things through irrational lenses, we can improve the quality of conversations, and the impact of our action.

Smile or Die, by Barabe Ehrenreich

Summary: In this talk, Barbara Ehrenreich outlines that "positive thinking" can have its "darker side". In many cases, positive thinking is not only handed down, but in fact, mandated. She provides examples from former President George Bush and financial institutions who all did their fair share of firing people for bringing up issues or "being negative". While optimism is indeed beneficial, Ehrenreich outlines that we should work on "Realism" to tackle the parts of the world that are threatening. We have collective power, but only if we believe that we can change things by action, not just positive thinking.

The Empathic Civilization, by Jeremy Rifkin

Summary: I am ending this post with this talk for a specific reason... it is the most hopeful. In this talk, Jeremy Rifkin explains that people are soft wired to experience anther's plight.... people are soft-wired for sociability, attachment, affection, companionship. This is the reason that we cringe when we see people get hurt or start smiling when we see other laughing. Because of this, Rifkin asks

"Is it possible we can actually extend our empathy to the entire human race as a extended family, and to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family, and to the biosphere as our common community? If it is possible to imagine that, than we may be able to save our species and save our family."

Empathy used to only be extended to immediate blood ties (and immediate tribes). Script allowed us to bring more people together under theologies, so now empathy extended to larger groups, based primarily on religious ties. In the 1900s, industrial revolution extended markets to fictional nation states. But now, new technologies are allowing us to extend across all humans. As an example, when the earthquake hit Haiti, within hours the entire human race was in an empathic embrace of Haiti as soon as the world saw the pictures and videos coming from the destruction of the quake.

In order to come together, we need to expand out identities to connect to humans, creatures, and the biosphere at large regardless of fictional political, racial, cultural, ethnic and/or religious boundaries. Our primary drive is to belong to something... let's all belong to a better world. Will you help create it?

Bad Failure and Good Failure

2010-10-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

I LOVE this post from Escape Velocity.

Here is an exert:

In climbing, shared Collins, there’s failure…and there’s “fall-ure.”

Every climb has a move or a section known as the crux. It’s the hardest, most technical, strategically-challenging part of the climb. The crux makes or breaks a climb and, not too infrequently, a climber, too.

But, regardless of whether you make it through, it’s how you handle the crux that determines whether you go home with your tail between your legs or you head back to the lair with an epic story to be shared.

It’s the difference, said Collins, between failure and fall-ure.

Failure is when you get to the crux, start to feel your legs shaking, your forearms and fingers flaming out, your nerves rattling and focus flagging…then just choose to give up, peel off and hang on the rope.

Fall-ure is when you get to that same place. Heart pumping, sweat pouring from places you didn’t know you could sweat, ground a distant memory and, instead of choosing to let go, you commit fully to the next scary-as-hell move. You go for it with everything you have…and still fall.

Failure is about going most of the way, then bailing on your defining moment.

Fall-ure is about going all of the way, then falling in the utterly committed pursuit of a quest.

And, the difference, the willingness to go all-in and fail at the biggest moments, is very often the difference between epic journeys and a lifetime of excuses.

Because failure and fall-ure isn’t just about rock-climbing, they’re about life.

So, what do you and your organization do when you hit the crux?

You can change the world, or you can quit.