These are big questions, and we had the great privilege to discuss them all last night at an event organized by the Chile California Council.

Ivan Vera’s Club de Innovacion brought 28 Chilean executives to Silicon Valley to explore possibilities for intrapreneurship and innovation. Along with visits to Google, SRI and a biotechnology incubator, the group stopped at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for a collaborative conversation with Stanford d.School students, Chileans based in Silicon Valley, academics from the Universidad de Concepcion in the south of Chile, and a few Californians with ties to Chile (like me!)

Juan Eduardo Ibanez leads the Chile California Council. A lawyer by profession, Juan is passionate about fostering real dialogue between Chile and California to design new solutions to shared challenges. Chile and California are quite similar in geography, and this collaboration spans many different topics and industries, such as technology, wine and renewable energy. Last fall he organized the Chile California Conference, during which academics from both countries shared their perspectives on topics like inequality, water politics, and the growth mindset in education. These discussions go far deeper than the typical happy hour, and last night’s was no exception.

The event began with presentations about design thinking, Stanford’s international reach, and how educators must move from teaching problem-solving to problem-finding to prepare tomorrow’s leaders to meet tomorrow’s challenges.

Next we started small-group discussions. My table included Chile’s most influential advocate for innovation and entrepreneurship, a pharmacist who leads scientific innovation programs at a top university in the south of Chile, a professor of corporate governance, an American winemaker making premium wines on her family’s land in Chile’s Casablanca Valley, a Chilean academic/entrepreneur who teaches at Berkeley (Go Bears!), a Chilean Googler, a Stanford d.School fellow focused on renewable energy in emerging markets, and me.

I loved sharing what we’re building here at Bridgecrest Medical (including mobile and wearable technology solutions to prevent fatigue-related accidents on mining sites. There’s a huge need for this in Chile, where mining is the main industry.)

The big question: How best to encourage innovation within Chilean companies?

We began with a long list of problems: risk aversion, lack of collaboration, hierarchy, obedience, fear of offending people, mistrust, a culture that places tremendous shame and secrecy around failure, tradition, fixed mindset, lack of incentives (many of Chile’s most powerful companies gained their market share through structural and regulatory changes and these incumbents understandably fear radical change), etc.

Soon we stopped complaining and began to talk about the good news. Chile is changing. All it takes is a few positive leaders to create a movement. Young leaders, especially “outsiders” (from outside Santiago, outside the most prestigious neighborhoods, outside the traditional networks…) have the energy and motivation to build new possibilities. We must empower these leaders with one-on-one mentoring and by sharing their stories and experiences.

More specifically, what could corporate leaders do in the short-to-medium term to foster innovation?

Our initial answers focused on hiring. What if there were more incentives to hire immigrants and talented people from unconventional backgrounds? How might that impact the corporate culture?

Overall, I learned a ton and questioned my own biases on many of these topics. And I got to reconnect with Chile, a country where I lived for four wonderful years. Thank you for the invitation!

Images via @Chile_CA on Twitter. Originally posted on LinkedIn.

The post Chile, California and the Future of Collaborative Innovation appeared first on Leslie Forman.

Over the course of about six months in 2014-2015, I focused on three specific challenges:

• creating an initial concept for an employee wellness portal
• designing an interface to manage worker fatigue in real time
• relaunching the company’s website

Bridgecrest Medical Fatigue Management Solution from Bridgecrest Medical on Vimeo.  I served as the main point of contact with Piehole.TV throughout the video production process, including the Spanish translation.

Challenge #1: How might an employee portal engage workers in safer and healthier behavior?

Brenda Chen and I designed an initial concept to give employees access to their health data. This project stemmed from a request from one of Bridgecrest’s clients, a multinational mining company.

This company collects employee health data through monthly screenings and wearable devices. We explored how Bridgecrest’s system might filter and display the data to meet the needs of two audiences: executives and mine workers. Our research consisted of extensive reading about mining safety, gamification and employee wellness, along with interviews with local construction workers.

Challenge #2: How might we structure real-time data from wearable devices to prevent accidents before they happen?

For this project, I led a team of four user experience designers. This time, the scope of the project was more tightly defined.

A significant percentage of workplace accidents are fatigue-related. And too many are fatal. Mining companies, especially those in high-altitude locations where workers live on site while on shift, have expressed interest in having their employees use wearable devices to track their sleep patterns.

How might this system work?

How might we filter the enormous amount of data that wearables generate into a system that meets the needs of this time-sensitive, 24/7 industry? 

 

The team interviewed key stakeholders, including a company doctor from Peru and a consultant who had designed many products for the mining industry industry in Australia. Together we sketched a wide range of design options, created journey maps, and figured out how to manage scrolling and alerts within the desktop and mobile interfaces.

A glimpse behind the scenes at our design studio process:

Here’s what two of the designers wrote about the experience:

Challenge #3: How might we communicate the core value of this complex technology in a new website?

BEFORE: The text was hard to read, the hierarchy and structure didn’t help new visitors understand the core value, and the company had refined its positioning strategy—so it was time to build an all-new site.

AFTER: The page structure emphasizes the core product offering: fatigue management solutions, while clearly differentiating the three product lines. The colors and style emphasize that the company’s core values of innovation and strength.

I created the structure for the new site, wrote all of the core content, and managed a global team of contractors — including two graphic designers, a WordPress developer, and a video production company.

For a series of infographics like these, I wrote the copy and sketched out a rough draft, then collaborated with a visual designer to refine its look.

CONTENT STRATEGY: 

To educate prospects about how wearables and real-time data can prevent accidents, I authored a 20-page guide on the topic (a content pillar, the base of a broader marketing campaign, inspired by this strategy from content marketing software provider Kapost. The idea is to conduct all of the core research and interviews upfront, then repurpose the main ideas in many forms—articles, infographics, etc.—to reach many different audiences.)

Here’s a preview of what’s inside:

This guide served as the base for these bylined articles on LinkedIn and in RTInsights. Here’s an excerpt from my RTInsights piece:

When people don’t sleep enough, they can make mistakes and fail to pay attention during routine tasks. They can even fall asleep on the job. Some of the most disastrous workplace events—from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl to the recent case of an Alaska Airlines baggage handler getting trapped in a plane’s cargo hold—have been attributed to fatigue. This is especially problematic in industries that depend on round-the-clock shifts such as healthcare, mining and transportation.

 

How might we prevent accidents before they happen? A new set of solutions lies at the intersection between wearables (wearable technology) and real-time analytics.

If you’d like to chat more about any or all of these topics, send me an email (leslieforman [at] gmail [dot] com) and we’ll make it happen. Thank you!

The post Designing Real-Time Tools to Improve Mine Safety appeared first on Leslie Forman.

“The process was smooth, clear, well-paced, and frankly a joy (it’s nothing short of a thrill to see a creative, heartfelt vision come to life).”

Over the course of one month, with the bulk of the work concentrated into a one-day sprint, we migrated her site from Blogger to WordPress and redesigned the navigation to enable a better browsing experience, especially for those who most need stories like hers.

Background

Jennifer Massoni Pardini is a writer, editor, mother and heart collector. She and I met when we lived in the same neighborhood of Santiago, Chile. I’m a longtime reader of Jennifer’s blog, where she started off by writing about newlywed life in Chile. Her story took a sudden turn when she and her husband lost their first child, Lorenzo, in the second trimester. She is now parenting after loss and writing about the journey in publications such as The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Literary Mama.

The Challenge

Nearly five years after starting her blog, Jennifer noticed that her stats had dropped off. She’d been posting less frequently after the birth of her daughter Hazel in 2014,  and she wanted to make the site more accessible to the people who most need to hear her story: parents facing a similar loss.

Jennifer is writing a memoir called Lorenzo’s Heart: The Anatomy of a Decision, so this site and the community she’s built have the potential to be a major asset in her pitches to editors, agents and publishers.

In her words:

The inspiration for the overhaul was two-fold. One, I needed to bring my blog into the present and make it easier to navigate and connect across communities. Two, writing after loss is not simply the evolution of my life; it’s my creative enterprise. It may even be my life’s work. For now, I’ve stopped wondering for how long it will be and have embraced that it simply is.

My goal in sharing our story is the same today as it was when I first told it: to help other parents walking in shoes like ours. With that in mind, you’ll find that this site talks directly to those parents and those seeking to help them. My aim is to make it easier for those searching for stories like theirs—as I did and do—to find me and consider me a friend in solidarity. Part of grief is feeling alone in it, but I hope to minimize the time it takes to realize that you’re actually not. That directness is not at the exclusion of other readers. I hope anyone interested will find value here. That may be the toughest balance to strike as a writer: providing something of the universal through a singular experience.  [more]

Our Process

I started with a thorough content audit of Jennifer’s Blogger site and the Chain-Link Heart Project, where she photographs the hearts she finds in the world and invites everyone to send in their own. She sent me links to favorite sites: Modern Loss and Nicole Belanger.  I noted that both sites are built in WordPress, with plenty of white space, right sidebars and serif fonts. The sidebar on Modern Loss is especially effective at helping readers find more to read.

These sites and initial conversations inspired a series of quick sketches.

My next step was to choose the right Wordpress theme to highlight Jennifer’s writing and heart photos: Pohutukawa.

Next: colors. Jennifer had taken Abby Kerr’s Voice Values quiz, and came up with Love and Transparency as her top values. I directed her to Abby’s Pinterest boards for these Voice Values, where she chose this image (source). She asked to use turquoise in Lorenzo’s honor.

To create the favicon (the small icon you can see in your browser tab), Jennifer sketched hearts  and scanned them in. I then circled my favorites and sent them to a designer on Fiverr, who made the icon.

Next Jennifer sent me a selection of favorite photos she’d taken for the Chain-Link Heart Project. I cropped these into the dimensions specified by the Pohutukawa theme, noticing that photos with deep colors and high resolution looked best. 

With all the key assets in place, Jennifer and I met on Skype to collaborate on the site’s installation. (I prefer to work face-to-face — much more efficient than going back and forth over email.)

While she watched over Skype, I migrated the full site from Blogger to WordPress.

Once all of her content was in place, we set up the site’s navigation to speak directly to Jennifer’s core audience — grieving mothers, fathers, and couples — and focus on the specific keywords that these readers might use while searching for stories like hers.

For example, the word “miscarriage” is far more common than “stillbirth” or “heartbreaking decisions” (which makes sense since 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage) and to reach as many readers as possible it’s important to use the most common terms.

Together we optimized the widgets in the site’s sidebar to ensure easy access to five years of blog posts, with a focus on helping her core audience to feel less alone in grief, while also highlighting the wide range of topics she’s written about over the years.

Results

In Jennifer’s words:

“Before getting started, I was pretty overwhelmed at the thought of redesigning my site. Since attending BinderCon L.A., a professional development conference, in March, I knew it was time for an overhaul. I both wanted my site to look as professional as possible as my main writing platform, but I also needed it to speak to the baby loss community and therefore be warm, compassionate, and inviting. I wanted my readers to feel like they had found a trustworthy friend and a resource—someone who was far enough along the path of grieving to have vetted articles and other sites that could help. I knew I was going to have to teach myself a lot about web design in order to pull it off, so I felt such relief when Leslie offered to help.

 

The process was smooth, clear, well-paced, and frankly a joy (it’s nothing short of a thrill to see a creative, heartfelt vision come to life). Leslie is a skilled communicator, both over email and chat, as we were often touching base daily about our creative and collaborative approach to the design as well as the technical steps required to set up hosting and prepare for the site transfer. When it came time to “meet” on Skype, Leslie was prepared and efficient. If we hit a snag, as is bound to happen during such a massive undertaking, Leslie handled it calmly, promptly, and successfully. In so doing, I stayed calm during a process that would have surely been frustrating were I to have done it on my own. I dare say the process was stress-free from start to finish!

 

Since announcing the relaunch, I’ve been so moved by the feedback. Immediately, a couple of friends told met they had passed it along to others in need of this kind of support, which was the main goal of the redesign and produced an immediate sense of success. One colleague called me “fearless,” which served to remind me just how powerful our vulnerability is when we harness it for good. A family member thanked me for continuing to share my story and let me know how privileged she feels to be hearing it. “Clear” was the one word that kept coming up from a design perspective. One editor wrote, “It’s very clear what the focus and message of your blog is, so that’s great. Plus, it will be easy for journalists and editors to find you, sample your work, and reach out if they’d like to hire you for a piece. It’s professional and streamlined. Smart move!” Considering two assignments came my way in the first 24 hours of the relaunch, I’d have to say she’s right. I notice I also used “clear” to describe the process of working with Leslie. That illustrates how important clarity is behind the scenes in order to produce it in a product.

 

Bottom line, three years out from my loss, I am re-energized to continue helping other parents in my shoes. I think that energy results from and contributes to my site and the opportunity for healing it allows. Thank you, Leslie!”

She also earned well-deserved praise from experts in the field:

Thank u @jmassdini for including my writing here! What to Read About Grief, Miscarriage, + Parenting After Loss http://t.co/uB2ab06hde

— Jessica Zucker, Ph.D (@DrZucker) July 1, 2015

I look forward to hearing about the next steps in her writing career!

Also, if you’re looking to redesign your website, I’d love to chat with you about it. Please feel free to email me: leslieforman [at] gmail [dot] com :)

The post Redesigning Jennifer Massoni Pardini’s Virtual Home, Powered by Empathy & WordPress appeared first on Leslie Forman.

It makes me feel more confident about tackling my current challenge: writing a guide to international career opportunities. I’ve got illustrations (Gracias Nacho!) I’ve got 8+ years of anecdotes and 5 years of blog posts and several years of presentations and conversations about this topic. I’m not starting from scratch. I have a deadline. (Thank you Erin.)

But it feels like a mess! So many documents! So many stories! So many aspects to cover!

This book helped. It’s concise. It teaches you how to organize messy information of all kinds, without using jargon like “information architecture” or “user experience” or “wireframe” or any of the other tricky-to-explain phrases I’ve learned over the past few months. 

Each page has a sentence-long headline that makes a decisive point, followed by tight paragraphs explaining it in more detail. 

My favorite page is 46. It reads:

Language is the material of intent. 

The words we choose change the things we make and how we think about them.

Our words also change how other people make sense of our work.

In writing this book, my intent was to make it:

• Accessible
• Beginner-friendly
• Useful in a broad range of situations

As a result, I had to be comfortable with it not being these other things:

• Academic
• Expert-friendly
• Useful in specific situations

How can I relate this to what I’m writing?

My intent is to make it:

• Visual
• Open-Ended
• Inspiring for the well-traveled, ambitious and bored 

As a result, I need to be comfortable with it not being:

• Authoritative
• Managerial
• Inspiring for employees seeking international transfers within large companies

I also loved Abby’s post about her process of making sense of her own mess, through teaching, writing, iterating, editing, and more.

A good book. Highly recommended.

This post is part of Small Planet Studio’s #MyGlobalLife Link Up!

The post How I’m Making Sense of the Mess That is My Book-in-Progress appeared first on Leslie Forman.

In my experience, holding these two types of thoughts—big picture ideas and day-to-day details—in my mind at the same time leads to major stress. And in a recent class on creativity, I learned why: They require different types of thinking, which come from different rhythms inside your brain. So the good news: It’s not just you.

The expansive possibilities we entertain come from what’s called “divergent thinking.” Our to-do lists, on the other hand, come from the opposite, or “convergent thinking.” As Nancy Duarte explains in her book Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences, “Divergent and convergent were identified by J.P. Guilford in 1967 as two different types of thinking that occur in response to a problem. Divergent thinking generates ideas, while convergent thinking sorts and analyzes these ideas towards the best outcome.”

Sidenote: Resonate is available for free online. It’s fully interactive, with videos and quizzes. Enjoy!

What does that look like practically? When you think divergently, you generate lots of possibilities. You might scribble all over a paper placemat. Or surf through favorite blogs, clicking whatever catches your eye. Or brainstorm with a friend. Or dream about where you might go next. Thinking divergently is like browsing through an all-you-can-eat buffet. You can admire all the food, but soon you have to pick a few items that fit on your plate, so you can really dig in.

When you dig in, this is convergent thinking. This means organizing, editing, getting things done. You might make a list. Or turn off your phone. Or put the article you’re writing in full-screen mode, so you can’t see anything else.

At work and in life, both types of thinking are important. Divergent thinking generates new ideas; convergent thinking transforms these ideas into concrete steps. The problem is when we try to do both at the same time—when our brain is switching back and forth between the different types of thinking, it doesn’t accomplish either particularly effectively.

Whether the challenges you deal with every day involve creative work, like design or marketing or writing, more operational work, or something else entirely, consciously separating and making time for both ways of thinking can maximize your brainpower and fuel your productivity and creativity. But of course, that can be easier said than done. So, here are a few ways I’ve found to separate divergent and convergent thinking in my day-to-day life—and keep myself better focused on the type of brainpower I’m choosing to use.

1. Give Yourself Space to Explore

Take a look at your schedule each day or week. If most of your day is spent “getting things done,” that’s a good sign you need to carve out some time for divergent thinking. So do yourself a favor and schedule it: Plan time to step away from the computer and mind-map your ideas for a new project, go for a walk outside, or read a book on an unfamiliar topic. It’s important to do this every day, for at least 20 minutes or so, to give your brain space to create new possibilities. Try to minimize distractions that might send you into get-it-done mode. And write down everything that comes to mind.

2. When it’s Time to Converge, Make it Your Mantra

Once I’ve collected a wide variety of ideas, or need to get started on my to-do list, I say to myself, “Now it’s time to converge on this assignment.” (Yes, in the same voice a preschool teacher might use to direct kids to line up for snack.) Sometimes I’ll even write this message on a Post-It and put it next to my computer screen—sounds silly, but these reminders help keep me on track.

3. Separate Your Tools

You can train your brain to switch into a certain thinking mode by using different tools for each divergence and convergence—a very helpful skill as you’re training yourself to be better at separating the two modes. I like to use an unlined notebook for divergent brainstorming, and then switch to the computer to polish these ideas into a cohesive article. Or I’ll write divergent ideas on Post-Its, and then converge them into an outline.

4. Beware of Distractions

Even with the best of intentions, staying in your chosen mode of thinking won’t necessarily come easily. On a recent Sunday morning, I woke up and made a long list of things I’d been meaning to do the previous week and settled into “convergent mode.”

Just as I started the first email, my friend came in and started talking about new ideas for promoting her startup, big plans for China-Chile trade, and what to make for brunch. Since I’d just coaxed myself into a convergent flow, her divergent energy stressed me out! I listened to her ideas, but my heart began to pound at the thought of my to-do list. I explained what was going through my head, and then eventually, excused myself and headed to a café to re-enter that convergent flow.

My advice: When you’re in one frame of mind, adjust your environment to help you stay there, so that you can maximize it. In the office, this might mean wearing headphones or moving into the conference room. It could also mean going to the gym, park, or library to get in the zone. With practice, you’ll figure out what works for you.

No matter what field you’re in, thinking both divergently and convergently is important. But even more important is being conscious about separating the two—it’ll help you focus your mind, reduce your stress level, and get more done.

Note: I sketched the image you see above, inspired by this image from one of Nancy Duarte’s articles in the Harvard Business Review.

This is one of my most popular articles — it was featured on The Daily Muse and Forbes in late 2012.

The post The Secret to Creativity and Productivity appeared first on Leslie Forman.

Here’s the full interview:

Here’s what we talked about:

• My long and winding career path and how Danielle and I met in Chile [introduction]
• My simple visual for wrapping your head around the idea of social entrepreneurship [6:50min]
• The connection between design thinking and social entrepreneurship [9:50min]
• How Design Thinking and Lean Methodology are connected right down to their 3-word mantras [11:40min]
• How mushroom-preneurs are using Lean Thinking (yes, I said mushroom-preneurs) [14min]
• The number 1 free resource you need to check out [21:10min]
• Why it’s important to start small even when you’re trying to change the world [35:10min]

Links I mention during the interview: 

IDEO Human Centered Design Toolkit
http://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit/

Lean Startup
http://theleanstartup.com/

Back to the Roots
https://www.backtotheroots.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW_1pTj2a6k

IDEO.org at the Lean Startup Conference (experimenting with toilets in Africa)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-3rCWbJ4PU

Uber hires David Plouffe
http://www.politico.com/…/david-plouffe-uber-campaign…

Sanivation
http://sanivation.com/
http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/…

If you prefer to read than listen, I have the full transcript and I’d be happy to send it to you. Feel free to email me: leslieforman@gmail.com. Thanks!! :)

The post How Social Entrepreneurs Can Use Design Thinking and Lean Methods: My Interview with Danielle at theSedge.org appeared first on Leslie Forman.

This is not my first experience with re-entry. I’ve experienced two severe bouts of reverse culture shock over the years, along with many milder ones. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

After Chile, Back to School

These pictures are from my year abroad. LEFT: with my host mother, Latife, and her husband Jaime. MIDDLE: standing in front of the library in the Toma de Peñalolen, where I volunteered. RIGHT: with montañismo classmates at the top of a snowy mountain we climbed.

At the end of 2005, I finished my year studying abroad in Chile. As I packed my suitcases, I tried to summarize my experience in one sentence: Chile’s a country of contrast between rich and poor, traditional and modern, liberal and conservative, city and country side and as an international student, I was able to see the extremes of all of these different contrasts often in the same day. In December I left Chilean summer and landed in California winter.

Chile changed my perspective. I’d grown up. I was 21.

It hit me hardest when I went back to college. I lived in the sorority house where I’d lived B.C. (before Chile). The rules seemed silly — no boys upstairs after ten or downstairs past midnight, you must wear light-but-bright-blue + bronze + brown tweed for tomorrow’s event….

I overcommitted myself. I needed two classes to graduate, but signed up for five, including a social entrepreneurship seminar, a student-taught women’s leadership course and ballet, plus too many activities and internships.

About a month into the semester, it hit me hard. Rushing everywhere, fueled by fear of missing out, exhausted — I missed Chile.

A few months later, I graduated with a degree in Latin American Studies. Then I moved to China. (Here’s the full story.)

After China, Hometown Adventure

In December 2007, after a year and a half in China, I moved back to San Francisco.

As I packed my bags, I tried to summarize my experience into one sentence and came up with one word.

Harmonious. A word I’d heard many times in China. “Build a Harmonious Society” is a Chinese government slogan that refers to hierarchy, stability, peace and respect. This was the topic for a student speech competition I’d judged and a favorite buzzword for Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. But when I arrived home, I realized that this convoluted story about “harmonious” was not what anybody wanted to hear.

When people asked me about China, I said: “Fun, interesting. Lots of people.” And then we’d move on to another topic.

I’d say things like, “Wow, there’s free coffee at Bank of America! You can understand exactly what I need and help me in five minutes!?!?” and “Wow, Trader Joe’s has so many choices. And I can read all the labels!”

Fast Forward to Now

Now I’m back in San Francisco again, adjusting. I’m staying in my parents’ house (they’re out of town) and I’ve had plenty of time and space to myself over the past month. I’ve figured out how to introduce myself without going on and on about my travels. I can’t say it’s been totally flawless: 6am fire alarm I don’t know how to turn off? Not fun. Long-distance relationship? Not easy. But I have learned a lot over the years about how to process all these faraway experiences and move forward here.

4 Tips for Going Home After Living, Working, or Studying Abroad

(1) Give yourself time to adjust.

There are lots of subtle, mental shifts that you don’t necessarily recognize until you’ve lived them, but if you’re in the supermarket saying, “OMG I can read all the labels!” you should give yourself that moment to pause and think about it rather than jumping right ahead to, “I have five minutes to buy all these things on this list.”

(2) Keep your descriptions concise.

Your family and friends probably don’t want to hear all the details. An analogy: one of my best friends earned her PhD in biophysics. If she were to talk for an hour about her experiments, I probably wouldn’t understand it all. She and I are better off talking about things we have in common: friends from high school, what her sister’s up to, a bit about what we’ve been doing since we last met. But it can’t be a monologue. If it is a monologue, it is not really a conversation.

(3) Don’t go back to the same living arrangements as before.

It’s important to re-negotiate the major relationships in your life, as well as where you’re living and how you’re spending your days. You’ve changed. It’s important to figure out ways to acknowledge and account for these changes. It’s easier said than done, and it takes time.

(4) Get professional help.

Working with a résumé editor, or a career coach that can help you translate your experience into clear value in the local labor market, or a professional who’s familiar with re-entry issues can be helpful. Cate Brubaker has excellent resources about Re-Entry Reality on her website, Small Planet Studio.

What else might you add to this list? 

Update: November 25, 2014

 

Added by Stacie Berdan, via Facebook: “I’d add one more tip: Learn to tell a great story. This way, when you’re asked about your international adventures, you can share it in an engaging and non-threatening way. This one is particularly helpful with employers.”

 

I agree. It’s so important to be able to tell a great story that resonates with whomever you’re talking in a specific situation. Since I’ve been back I’ve frequently told the story of how I chose General Assembly‘s User Experience Design Immersive. In Chile I taught entrepreneurship classes with a focus on design methodology, and I wanted to go deeper into how design methods can be used to improve user experiences. It’s a more technical, specialized and applied approach to topics I’d explored a bit before.

 

It’s really important to be able to connect the dots in a way that’s engaging, non-threatening, and easy to understand.

 

Now that we’ve finished the course, I’m applying for jobs. This means that I’m continually re-telling my story, choosing details that are specifically relevant to each potential employer. In some cases this has meant emphasizing my language skills, in others it’s about showcasing my experience with mining-related startups, technical storytelling, this blog, or something completely different. I’m lucky to have such a wide variety of anecdotes to draw from!  

This post originally appeared on Lane Letters, my friend and former colleague Christy’s lovely blog about living adventurously in the middle.

The post Moving Home After Living Abroad: 4 Tips for Re-Entry appeared first on Leslie Forman.

Start-Up Chile is an entrepreneurship initiative backed by Chile’s Ministry of Economy that invites entrepreneurs from all over the world to bootstrap their businesses in Chile, with the support of a $40,000 grant, a gorgeous office in central Santiago, and endless opportunities to network and collaborate with a dynamic community of entrepreneurs.

I stumbled across Michael Leatherbee and Charles E. Eesley’s academic study of the impact of this program, Boulevard of Broken Behaviors: Socio-Psychological Mechanisms of Entrepreneurial Policies and decided to share the most fascinating parts of this study with you (especially if you don’t have time to read all the methodological details and statistical regressions that led to these conclusions).

Leatherbee and Eesley’s study focuses on how Start-Up Chile is “changing the entrepreneurial environment by altering the sociological and psychological attributes of its participants.”

It focuses on two core aspects: Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy (ESE) and Opportunity Discovering Behaviors (ODB).

Leatherbee and Eesley define Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy in this way:

ESE is a measure of an individual’s belief in their abilities to perform entrepreneurial tasks successfully. Individuals with higher levels of ESE are more likely to pursue more audacious ventures.

The authors define Opportunity Discovering Behaviors like this:

ODB is a measure of the extent to which individuals behave in ways that favor the discovery of high-value, innovative entrepreneurial opportunities. Through the process of socialization (Berger & Luckmann, 1967), we argue that entrepreneurs assimilate those behaviors embedded in their social environments which are perceived as useful for the entrepreneurial process.

For the purposes of this paper, we call questioning, observing, experimenting and networking the opportunity discovery behaviors (ODB).

The study compares ESE and ODB of three groups: non-Chilean entrepreneurs that participated in Start-Up Chile, Chilean entrepreneurs that participated in the program, and Chilean entrepreneurs that applied but were not selected.

The results are striking:

The regression results suggest that domestic entrepreneurs who participated in the Start-Up Chile develop higher ODB than domestic entrepreneurs who did not participate in the program.

Moreover, it is striking to find that 45% of domestic entrepreneurs stated that peer learning was the most valuable aspect of the program. This difference stands in stark contrast when compared against the response of foreign participants. Of these only 16% considered peer learning a valuable aspect of the program. In other words, domestic entrepreneurs (who as a group have lower ODB and ESE than foreign entrepreneurs) are more likely than foreign entrepreneurs to perceive knowledge from their peers as a valuable resource that is being transferred through the public policy.

So yes, the program has been successful in increasing the entrepreneurial potential of its domestic participants.

A broader goal of Start-Up Chile is to strengthen Chile’s entrepreneurial ecosystem as a whole. I think this has been quite successful as well.

Following my participation in Start-Up Chile, I stayed in Chile to teach entrepreneurship classes at Chilean universities and collaborate with local entrepreneurs.

In Emprendimiento y Liderazgo, an entrepreneurship course for first-year students at the Universidad del Desarrollo, we specifically trained students in ODB. They worked in groups to discover opportunities and create prototypes of new toys to address problems they observed in the world around them. One group in my class noticed that mothers don’t exercise as much as they’d like, and they created a board game that involved push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks for the whole family.

I think it’s important to train students in these behaviors, whether or not they immediately launch these ideas as actual businesses.

The paper also mentions the role of peers in the way people approach entrepreneurship.

Social comparison theory argues that when an individual comes to the realization that another person—who is similar to the former in some distinct way—can achieve something that is considered challenging, that individual starts believing that the challenge is more achievable than originally thought.

In other words, an initial perception that something is very difficult or impossible to achieve can be relaxed when individuals observe other similar individuals achieving that something.

I can definitely attest to this. I come from a family of entrepreneurs (my parents and brother have all run businesses, and have all participated in Start-Up Chile). Working alongside many entrepreneurs, both in Start-Up Chile and at Co-Work, has given me plenty of ideas for current and future endeavors.

I’m glad to see that Michael Leatherbee and Charles E. Eesley have emphasized the social and psychological aspects of entrepreneurial ecosystems (which is apparently unusual among academic studies on this topic) and I’m glad to see that Start-Up Chile is being recognized for its focus on peer learning and collaboration. Good work!

Here’s another link to the paper’s abstract. From this page you can download the whole paper.

Mike Leatherbee also wrote about the study in Spanish for El Mercurio, Chile’s leading newspaper.

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn. 

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I wrote down these quotes while reading the book Thinkertoys, by Michael Michalko.

This is me, feeding thoughts into my brain and the collective brain of the internet, looking after them and not letting them disappear, despite the usual tasks to do. I wrote those words during this trip to Valparaiso, while fighting a stress-induced, not-yet-diagnosed, nasty case of bronchitis.

I attempted to define a broader theme around all these random thoughts.

One of the books I found most helpful and validating: Mash Up! How to Use Your Multiple Skills to Give You an Edge, Make Money and Be Happier, by Ian Sanders and David Sloly (which I reviewed here on Amazon). My notes:

Along with notes from books and events and my students’ assignments, this is a common theme: stress.

And I’m continually reassuring myself that I do have the answer, I don’t need anyone else to magically fix me. It’s all in my power.

A part of me feels like this is way too personal to post on the internet — and I probably wouldn’t be posting unpolished scribbles from this month, about unresolved doubts and questions that are currently keeping me up at night. But I do love the intimacy of handwriting, and I do like to share books and ideas that have influenced me.

What about you?

• Do you write down quotes from books?
• Do you scribble through frustration?
• Do you prefer handwriting?
• Would you post something like this on the internet?

Linked to the My Global Life Link-Up at SmallPlanetStudio.com

The post Dispatch from the Rollercoaster Career (a look back inside my brain) appeared first on Leslie Forman.

Some highlights from our discussion on the webinar:

(1) “People either want to go internationally or not.  That’s not as big a part of the decision, it’s usually how to make it work and decide how you’re going to make it happen.”

(2) In creating an international career, steps build upon one another.

Ann Abbott, a Spanish professor at the University of Illinois who teaches practical courses on Social Entrepreneurship, commented:

I think that people simply want to jump straight to the “real job” instead of doing all the necessary work of going through all the stages you have outlined. So it is really good that you show that it takes time and that it comes in steps that build upon each other.

She also asked: “What is *one thing* you should do while you are still in college to help you make this transition after college?” One thing turned into three:

1. Study Abroad. This is an amazing opportunity for almost any college student. I wrote more about this here.
2. Get comfortable with professional networking — which might (less intimidatingly) be described as making friends, sharing your career interests with them, and following up.
3. Use your language skills to do something practical. When I was 20 I led a high school summer program in Costa Rica, where I coordinated lots of events and arrangements for my students. I distinctly remember thinking, “wow, my Spanish is useful for getting things done.” I think more students should have access to this type of practical experience and I’m so encouraged to see that this is what Ann does in her classes.

(3) Visas

One of the most complicated things can be getting legal status/having a company sponsor your work visa. How did you manage that?

Visa trouble has been a consistent companion on my international career journey — and the solution has pretty much always been money. When my Chinese visa was rejected, I made an urgent “visacation” to Hong Kong. On other occasions I paid a Chinese visa agency to sort it out for me. I’m incredibly grateful to Paz Fuenzalida from Foreigner in Chile for getting me through an incredibly stressful visa situation in Chile. I’m so privileged to be able to dig into my savings account to cover these services. If I worked for a large company they might be able to help in a similar process, but sometimes companies expect that the visa be taken care of before you can be hired locally. I consider dealing with visas to be a psychological tax on living abroad.

(4) Family

For working professionals, particularly those with families, one option is to “split the family” – one part stays put to maintain stability, the other goes off to establish a life in your destination. It sucks being apart but it’s an option.

(5) Stage in Career

The idea of a “landing position”(see slides 13-14) might be more attractive for people that are earlier in their careers.

But if you’re taking an intermediate step, e.g. teaching English, you risk losing your edge

(6) Notes on Mindset

• One really needs to be flexible and adventurous to move to another country.
• A lot of this can’t be taught, it’s empirical and only learned via hands on experience.
• Keep and open mind and go with the flow
• Do a lot of listening and observing before jumping in
• But, you can teach students to look at their past struggles with this. Even moving from high school to college involves a lot of these same issues. So they have experienced these things, just not necessarily in a foreign country.

Overall, an interesting and inspiring conversation! Thanks Mary for the invitation!

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