Organizations are always looking for ways to motivate and engage their workforces.  How can we get individuals to perform at high levels and have them do so enthusiastically? I was recently reading Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky and was reminded of the research of Edward Deci (I think I first learned about this in a freshman psychology class more than 20 years ago).  Shirky emphasizes ...

In reading the title of a recent article posted on MarketWatch, “Accenture Study Finds U.S. Workers under Pressure to Improve Skills, but Need More Support from Employers,” my initial reaction was, “Well, duh.”  This is in no way meant to be a slam on Accenture’s work.  In fact, I’m glad that someone has done some research to back up this obvious claim...

Caveat: I know that my position on this is somewhat biased given what we do at Triple Creek.  But hey, this is a blog and I’m entitled to be opinionated, right?   The above stated and out of the way, even when I do my best to be objective, the stories that I still hear around how much time some organizations put into running mentoring programs continue to amaze me.  Even with ...

Why old-fashioned mentoring programs are insufficient to meet today’s evolving needs I was listening to an interview with the CEO of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, on NPR the other day and the interviewer joked about the “old-fashioned web.”  The context of his comment was in asking a question around how, given the growth of social networking and people connecting to other people, ...

At this point, I expect that most of you are asking yourself “Huh?”  Ora na azu nwa is a Nigerian proverb which translates to “It takes a community/village to raise a child.”  I’m sure that many of you are familiar with this saying and its meaning.  I bring this forward as a metaphor for what I want to discuss in this entry, and that is: “It takes...