Practise safe online shopping — wipe down your personal devices regularly! (Erik Mclean on Unsplash)

Where were you when Covid-19 finally hit home?

Officially, the first case in Canada was Jan. 25, nearly five months ago. 

Just over three months ago, Ontario grade school students attended their last in-person day of school for the 2019-20 academic year.

And within the last couple of weeks — in most of Ontario at least — we saw our first signs of life returning to normal, as the majority of the province entered the second stage of the government’s framework for reopening. How far we’ve come. 

While last year we concerned ourselves with sporting accomplishments such as the Toronto Raptors winning the NBA championship, this year’s we’re working on our own ducking and dodging skills as we try to keep two metres apart from each other in stores. And there’s still half a year to go!

Maybe you’re tired of thinking, hearing and worrying about Covid-19. Maybe you’re eagerly anticipating watching the Raptors get back on the court in July when the NBA resumes its season. For some of us, however, there’s still lots of work to do around the office.

So, if you’re looking for support for your organization — whether it’s financial, advisory or otherwise — we’ve gathered a few of the best Covid-19 Stage Two resources for you: 

• Surviving Covid: The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the federal government, along with many sponsors coast-to-coast-to-coast, have launched the Canadian Business Resilience Network. The website offers a business re-opening toolkit, tips and advice, financial support and some policy recommendations for political leaders.
• What’s in store?: Law firm McCarthy Tetrault is keeping an eye on non-essential retail re-openings and has compiled a timeline of government announcements. Or, head right to the Ontario government’s website.
  

• Go digital: The Ontario and federal governments have beefed up their Digital Main Street program to help Ontario businesses create and enhance their online presence.
• Find funding: Deloitte has launched a tool to help small businesses find relief.
• Lead on: KPMG has prepared a document on business continuity planning with some excellent checklists and advice to consider both in the short- and long-term.
• Take action: Invest Ottawa has launched a resource page broken down by role and industry, and offering podcasts, virtual events, downloads and interesting reads. 

Finally, it’s important to manage your exposure — and your team’s exposure — to stressful Covid-19 news. This Amnesty International article provides some helpful tips for keeping the pandemic situation in perspective.

Have any other resources you’ve spotted that we should add to our list? Let us know at training@algonquincollege.com.

If he were alive today, what sort of music would Miles Davis be playing?

Jazz musician Miles Davis once said, “If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.”

He would know. Davis himself claimed to have changed music “five or six times” and his Rolling Stone obituary lent credence to that claim. 

Change is certainly a constant these days in most industries, and we’re not just talking about during the Covid-19 pandemic. How many of us predicted the rise of social media 20 years ago? How would you even begin to explain social media to your younger self, much less our advances in space flight, online shopping, 3D printing, blockchain or streaming video, to name a few? 

It can feel stressful or uncomfortable when you’re working in an environment of constant change. So, how do you best support your teammates and organization in adapting to new ways of working and doing?

• It’s our choice: Organizational psychology Nick Tasler, writing in Harvard Business Review, notes the importance of a future-oriented view. Citing the work of psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, Tasler reminds us that we may not be free from change, but we are free to choose how we will respond.
  
• Be flexible: Maybe you’re in a large, public-sector organization. Things have always been done a certain way, and you’re tightly caught up in regulation. This does not mean there isn’t room for innovation and flexibility. A favourite story of ours on change involved a woman who cuts the end off her roast before it goes into the oven. One day, her daughter asks her why. She says her father always used to do that, but doesn’t know why. At the next family gathering, she asks her father why he cuts the ends off his roast. He says it’s the way his mother always did it. Turning to grandma, the woman asks about the roast…and grandma replies: “Because the roast would never fit in my darn small pan!”
• Offer help: Therapist Barton Goldsmith reminds us we’re not alone as we deal with change. In this Psychology Today article, he says one of the most courageous decisions we can make is not to soldier on through difficult times, but to instead reach out and ask for help. If you’re in a leadership position, that means making help available and publicizing its availability.

In the past few months, our team has changed a lot — new faces, new spaces, new courses and new ways of delivering learning. And, we’re just warming up.

What are some of the changes you’re working on, and the challenges you’re experiencing as a result? Send us a note and let us know.

Why do ‘smart’ people find it harder to stay motivated, and how could better feedback help?

It turns out behavioural science has the answer.

In 1998, a pair of Columbia University professors ran a study. A group of children was given a series of puzzles to work on, and the children were praised for their performance. Half of the children were praised for their intelligence, and the other half for their effort.

The researchers were specifically interested in figuring out how the children would respond to the praise they received as they tackled a second set of puzzles.

It turns out the children who were praised for their effort were much more motivated to keep working on the puzzles and take on greater challenges than those who were praised for their intelligence.

Why did the “smart” children not fare as well? And what can we learn and apply to the workplace?

• A matter of control: Though you can always apply yourself to more learning, you cannot control how smart you are. However, you can always control how much effort you put in. Consider the last time something went wrong on a project at work: did you blame external factors, reflecting what’s called an “external locus of control,” or did you examine what was within your “internal locus of control” to find improvements? 
• Internal versus external: We couldn’t sum it up better than today’s video: “You must feel like you have control over your life and that you are responsible for the things that happen to you if you want to feel motivated all of the time.” 
• OK…then what?: To have a more effective internal locus of control, you need to make the connection back to your own actions and appreciate your own efforts when you solve problems.

Do you want to better understand what motivates your team members? A DYNAMIX team assessment can help. Contact us for more information. 

Check out Improvement Pill on YouTube for more interesting videos like this one.

The covers may feel cozy, but with a smartphone at your fingertips trouble will still find you. (Alexandra Gom on Unsplash)

Do you smoothly glide out of bed each morning, with your feet barely touching the floor?

Or does your snooze button have a permanent indent from overuse?

We know that maintaining a regular routine is important. But all the good intentions in the world don’t really help with those six a.m. (or earlier!) wake-up calls.

We’ve found a few tips to help you get a better start to your day:

Start the night before: If you’re more of a night person, use it! Get all of that prep work you normally leave to the last minute done before your head hits the pillow. (Just don’t do what Michael Scott does.)

Something to look forward to: Kalen Bruce, a writer with Lifehack.org, starts his day with something he’s passionate about. Would you enjoy reading first thing? Working out? Why not treat yourself for getting up to face the day?

Or, face the challenge head on: Mark Twain once said, “If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.” So, if you can’t treat yourself or want to spoil yourself later, start with the frog instead.

Goal setting: Amy Dalton of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology suggests keeping a short list of goals or to-dos for the day. This will help you stay focused and feel productive.

Reduce friction: Ever wonder why some celebrities, despite their wealth, always wear the same clothes? No, there wasn’t a fire at the laundromat — they’re avoiding what behavioural scientists call decision fatigue. 

“Our willpower peaks in the morning and we gradually use it up throughout the day, like a battery. So, it makes total sense to free up some time in the morning for these good habits while there’s capacity to make a change to the lifestyle,” notes Andrejs Byr of TheAthleteBlog.com.

When it becomes serious: If you’re regularly having difficulty getting out of bed, or waking up feeling tired, it may be time to talk to a medical professional. Researchers at Dalhousie University have created mysleepwell.ca, a website with resources that may be able to help with insomnia or other sleep challenges.

What do you do to help you greet the day with a smile, even if it’s a bit of a sarcastic one? Send us an email and let us know!

Don’t have 10,000 hours to learn something? Josh Kaufman has good news for you!
Img source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY

Here’s a good one for the working-from-home crowd! Author Josh Kaufman shares some insights from becoming a new parent while he and his wife continued to run their home-based businesses.

The experience forced the sleep-deprived couple to find quicker ways to do what they enjoy. For Kaufman, that was learning. But of course, he didn’t have a lot of time for it. So, he researched how we learn quickly.

Here’s what he found:

• If you want to be a world leading expert, it might take 10,000 hours. You’ve probably heard (or misheard) this bit of pop culture wisdom from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. Ten thousand hours might be needed if you want to be a high-performing athlete, for example. But, for those with more modest ambitions, you can achieve a lot in much less time. How much less?
• If you want to be competent, it takes one five-hundredth of that. Your early level of improvement at a task is really fast — what’s known as the learning curve. According to Kaufman’s research, you start to experience significant diminishing returns on your learning after 20 hours, which works out to about 45 minutes a day for a month.
• There’s a way to practise intelligently and efficiently. The three-step process includes breaking down the skill into its components, obtaining the supporting resources you need to help you notice mistakes, and removing barriers to practice.

Want to learn what skill Kaufman set his mind to? Check out the full video on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel.

What skills would you like to take from “unconsciously competent” to “consciously competent”? Send us a note anytime!

If you don’t want to be just days into a project and declaring something like “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” strong requirements gathering is essential. (NASA on Unsplash)

The year was 1999. NASA had hired Lockheed Martin Astronautics to work with the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to get the spacecraft ready for its voyage.

Upon arrival at Mars, the probe flew too deeply into the Martian atmosphere and its 461 million mile journey ended in disaster.

The reason?

NASA was using the metric system while Lockheed Martin used imperial measurements. That led to critical miscalculations of data transmitted to the spacecraft. A $125-million mistake.

Maybe your job does not involve launching space probes. But perhaps you’ve experienced a situation in which the wrong requirements were gathered or details were not thoroughly checked, and the outcome was a failure to launch (or land).

It could be that you had a coworker cover your job during a vacation or leave and discovered upon your return that a major report hadn’t been updated. Maybe you purchased a new software tool for the office and did not realize it was not available in French. Or perhaps you posted an RFP and forgot to specify that the keyboards you were buying had to use the Latin alphabet, not the Korean one! 

If any of those scenarios seem like something that could happen in your work environment, we have some good news. As part of our summer course catalogue, Accelerated Requirements Elicitation and Analysis — one of the courses in our Business Analysis Essentials certificate program — is now available. Check it out and let us know if it helps your project performance!

We send out a regular digest email, Learning for Performance, with articles like these and more. Email training@algonquincollege.com to sign up.

Where do you fall on this chart most days, and where were you two months ago?

When a loved one passes, someone we know might mention the five stages of grief — also known as the Kübler-Ross model in recognition of the Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who described it in her 1969 book On Death and Dying.

According to this model, when we’re grieving we transition between denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. 

It has been determined that this model is far from an exact science and is hardly representative of the ways all cultures express grief. 

Still, there’s an underlying idea in it that is useful. During a period of loss, it is important to reflect on how we’re feeling and recognize that we may change over time — and the change won’t always  necessarily be in one direction. 

Some days, as you cope with what you may have lost (whether temporarily or otherwise) as a result of Covid-19, you may experience fear or anger. Other days, you may wish to simply “hunker down” and get work done to hide from those difficult emotions. And on others, you might feel totally fine, only to crash later on.

The point is not to judge ourselves, or our teammates, when we don’t feel as capable as usual. It’s more important to build compassion for ourselves, empathy for others and understanding that we need to match our work to our capabilities for any given day.

We’re fortunate in Canada to enjoy great healthcare, access to food and stable government in these uncertain times. On the other hand, if you or one of your teammates have had a negative experience or if you’re financially struggling during the pandemic, it may be harder to see that silver lining.

We encourage you to download the infographic we have made to accompany this article and use it to help structure your thoughts when you start your workday. Use it to acknowledge and embrace your feelings. Then, drop us a line or an email and let us know how it is working for you!

We send out a regular digest email, Learning for Performance, with articles like these and more. Email training@algonquincollege.com to sign up.

These tips will help you get work done at home, no matter who wants to ‘help’.

It can be a bit of a challenge to focus on your office work when you’re surrounded by your housework.

Or how about trying to Zoom in to a work call when your kids are zooming around your workspace?

Don’t get me started on digging through the fridge in search of leftovers instead of popping down to the office cafeteria. 

Thankfully, some helpful work-from-home experts are offering up their best tips to stay productive:

• Apply office rules at home: Maura Thomas, founder of Regain Your Time and the author of books such as Attention Management, says you still need to plan your day. Writing for Harvard Business Review, she advises sticking to low-attention tasks when you’ve got more distractions around you, and use signals that tell your housemates to stay out when you’re on an important call. (Caution: the latter advice may not work with pets!)
• Have boundaries: Business etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore, writing in Entrepreneur, is one of several experts who specifically mention the need to set aside an office space in your home. The consistency and ability to customize the space will help you focus and get comfortable while working.
• Stay safe: Luciano Hernández with cyber security company F-Secure reminds us all about the importance of keeping our anti-virus software up to date, using strong passwords, tapping into workplace virtual private networks (VPNs) where applicable, and being careful not to overshare our screens. Now more than ever, staying productive means keeping the technology we rely on safe and secure.
• Make some noise: Writer Erik Devaney, on the HubSpot blog, has collected a few tips from pro freelancers and a few of them suggest letting it get a bit loud in your workspace. One work-from-home star matches the tempo of music to the work she’s doing, while another says she uses the laundry machine timer to help keep her on track. 

Finally, something many writers and mental health professionals have expressed about working from home during this pandemic is the importance of self-care and compassion. Whether your inbox is a little more full than usual, or you fall behind on vacuuming, it’s OK if you aren’t as productive during Covid-19 as you were before. 

And, as we said recently during our article about mental health, don’t forget to stretch and get some fresh air every now and then.

What has worked well for you so far as you transition your regular work environment? Get in touch and let us know. If nothing else, we hope you’re enjoying your new commute!

We send out a regular digest email, Learning for Performance, with articles like these and more. Email training@algonquincollege.com to sign up.

Does this picture look familiar? For many of us, it’s not just the future of learning but the present.

How was your experience the last time you completed an online learning course? 

It is fascinating that we are less inclined to ask about someone’s experience with in-person learning than we are when discussing online learning. Then, the question always seems top of mind.

Perhaps this is because, with the whole of the internet at our fingertips, the quality of online learning and style can be much more varied. While in-person learning can often take the form of a lecture, with the odd group discussion or hands-on activity (particularly in the college system), online learning offers a wide variety of options.

Is your course self-directed or instructor-led? What’s the ratio of students to instructor? Do you watch video lectures, and are they live or taped? How is your learning evaluated?

The many different approaches to online learning is an important discussion, particularly as the grade school and higher education sectors rapidly shifted to what’s being called “emergency remote teaching” in response to Covid-19. Instructors who may not have taught online before became students themselves as they learned new systems and approaches to teaching. 

I predict this new normal will forever change how we deliver training. That’s why we are working with clients to help them revise their digital learning strategies.  

The focus has shifted to developing more engaging and interactive eLearning courses, migrating existing in-class training to virtual online sessions, and making critical decisions on the systems required to register, manage, track and report.

As a training organization ourselves, within weeks we have had to re-invent how we deliver our training. We are now sharing our own experience and best practices to help our clients adapt to their unique circumstances.” 

As a recent testimonial from Yanique R. said, it seems our early efforts are being well received. She found her negotiation course to be well-organized and enjoyed learning from our instructor. In fact, the technology never entered into the discussion — which is almost as it should be. Regardless of medium or delivery, our goal when taking a course is always to learn. When those little, albeit meaningful, details are working as they should, they can almost become invisible.

For a deeper dive on some of the differences in online teaching styles, this recent Educause article provides a thorough look at some of the advantages, disadvantages and differences associated with online learning.

If your organization is adapting to online learning and needs assistance with setting up systems or creating custom course material, please reach out to us at training@algonquincollege.com and let’s learn from each other.

We send out a regular digest email, Learning for Performance, with articles like these and more. Email training@algonquincollege.com to sign up.

Every great change needs a roadmap, and change management professionals are the ones who help organizations navigate change. (Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash)

Do you see yourself as someone who likes change? What about your coworkers?

When the boss announces a new special project or software platform you’re all going to be using, do you get excited? Or maybe a bit scared? 

It’s easier to be enthusiastic about change when we control it and see the benefits, and the outcome is clear. For example, winning a lottery would be a big change for most of us. Yet, how many people complain about the possibility of striking (or scratching) it rich?

So, how do you get people through change when they can’t control it, the benefits are mixed and the outcome may be unclear? 

For instance, some of your team members may be enjoying working from the comfort of home right now due to Covid-19. However, it is unclear how long the pandemic will last and what life — and work — will look like on the other side of it. 

Likewise, if you are nearing retirement, working on a contract or not satisfied in your current role, you may not see what’s in it for you. Why should you adopt or adapt to whatever the management braintrust has cooked up this time, instead of just biding your time?

It’s the job of change management professionals to think through how your organization’s upcoming changes will affect every level of the organization. 

Every day, these talented individuals take major corporate initiatives and make them easier to understand, digest and support for the very real people who are affected. Looking at the problem through a change-management lens goes beyond just systems, processes and workflows: it sees the people side of change. This is the area where the rubber meets the road in innovation.

By helping people — whether it’s your employees or teammates, customers or other stakeholders — get excited about the future and understand the issues in context, you begin to build the foundation for a successful change. 

In other words, you may think you’re dealing with software and spreadsheets, but for change to work it must start with trust and transparency. 

Got a tricky change project coming up? Does your team have the right training in place? If you have questions about change management training, let us know at training@algonquincollege.com.