ED 262 Research, Reference & Resource Skills

Over the past three years, my colleagues and I have been supporting an extraordinarily diverse team of top Mexican leaders who are working together on a project called Méxicos Posibles (Possible Mexicos) to develop solutions to their country’s daunting problems of illegality, insecurity, and inequity. The team is made up of politicians from all parties, government officials, corporate CEOs, trade unionists, clergy, journalists, academics, and activists. In spite of, and also because of, their profound differences, these leaders have developed a powerful set of ideas and initiatives and have become a hopeful model — a living example — of a better Mexico.

Carlos Cruz has been a thoughtful and influential member of this team since its inception. He is the president of Cauce Ciudadano (Citizens’ Way), a grassroots organization that deals with youth violence by building peace. Last year, at a meeting to welcome new members of Méxicos Posibles, he offered this advice: “In this group, we mustn’t be afraid to fight and argue.” He continued, “I don’t come here to find friends — I have those in my neighborhood — but rather to find allies.”

Cruz puts his finger on a typical weakness in efforts to collaborate with diverse others. We think that in order to make progress in such contexts, we need to ignore, avoid, or smother conflicts: to be polite and to paper over our differences. We are afraid that if we open up this Pandora’s box, we will get hurt and collaboration will be impossible.

But papering over the differences in our perspectives, interests, and needs does not make them disappear. It means they will fester and erupt later with greater violence.

Efficiency is very often confused with effectiveness. In general, efficiency is a measurable concept, quantitatively determined by the ratio of useful output to total input. Effectiveness is the simpler concept of being able to achieve a desired result, which can be expressed quantitatively but doesn't usually require more complicated mathematics than addition.

Efficiency can often be expressed as a percentage of the result that could ideally be expected, for example if no energy were lost due to friction or other causes, in which case 100% of fuel or other input would be used to produce the desired result. This does not always apply, not even in all cases in which efficiency can be assigned a numerical value, e.g. not for specific impulse.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=efficient+competitive+intelligence

There is a key behaviour we must address before any collaboration technology can offer true transformative value: the learned helplessness of end users. A willingness to try and fail is sorely lacking when it comes to the tools we use every day at work. We’ve fully adopting the mentality of hands-off, call the help desk, it’s not my problem, in stark contrast to our private lives where we update apps and operating systems regularly, trying new tools and customising to suit our personal workflows.