Can charisma be taught?

Learn Ferociously

This profile of Olivia Fox Cabane in Matter offers an interesting take on the question of whether charisma, which we usually think of as an innate quality, can be taught — something Ericsson talks about in his HBR article.

Largely through introspection, Cabane developed an alternative definition of “charisma” that breaks the process down into three sets of skills: technical, external and internal. She argues that to be truly charismatic one needs all three sets of skills, and that internal skills are the key: learning to understand and manipulate one’s own feelings to prevent them from leading to socially awkward behavior.

Maybe you can learn these skills and be charming in crucial social situations, but is that really the same thing as having charisma? Or is it more like learning to fake it convincingly? Maybe for charismatic people these skills come easily and naturally, while the rest of us have to work at it. You can fool other people, but you can’t fool yourself.

lean startup at GE

Learn Ferociously

 

Here’s an interesting article on how General Electric is applying ideas from lean startup and focus on rapid learning in product development (a type of deliberate practice with those refrigerators).

“The feedback was hard for the engineers to hear, but it made a huge impact on them. In January 2013 the team came out with a “minimum viable product.” They put it out in front of customers, and … the customers didn’t like it. The first feedback they got was that the stainless steel was too dark. So they made it a lighter shade of silver. Then the lighting tested poorly. They revised it and tested it again. They cycled through several product iterations. By August they had version 5, and customers started to like it. They built 75 of version 6 in January 2014 and response so far has been positive. They’re now working on version 8, which they will produce in October, and version 10, with better lighting, and there is a design projected for 2015. They intend to launch new products every year.”

Pre-K Meet Accountability

Dream Bigger, ,

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/the-accountability-revolution-comes-to-head-start/361161/

This article visits the accountability of head start preschools that go beyond the scope of nap times and teaching nursery rhymes. President Obama often points to research showing a high quality pre-school program can lead to better academic performance through high school. But currently, these pre-k’s aren’t measuring up to standards to adequately prepare children. Currently, there’s not much of a measure for the knowledge learned in pre-k. But as states invest more heavily into pre-k educations, there are questions about how effective funding is in relation to the level of education of the children. As a result, numerous  programs are failing to prepare underprivileged pre-k students for elementary school. As a result, schools are reacting to this by revisiting the curriculum currently taught.

Flying Cars or 140 Chars?

Dream Bigger

This article nicely summarizes the economics and thinking of Internet entrepreneurs when it comes to founding companies. Why is that so few entrepreneurs(and engineers) dream big and follow through? Is it a risk/reward thing? Is it hedging? We put a man in space in just 10 years, what happened to that ambition?

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-cinnamon/flying-cars-or-140-chars_b_5099126.html

How much do you help others in your job?

Discipline Collaboration, Meaning at Work

When do feel accomplished at your job? It is incredibly, but the way in what we are measuring and rewarding success could be wrong. As we know, measuring individual achievements has been the standard for many companies for a long time, but Adam Grant says in his book that helping and teaching  others in our job is not a time killer, but the key for professional success.

Grant recognizes that the results are not immediate nor evident in the short run, but he has discover that helping others can give you more benefits than working on 100% your own goals in the long run. the question is why?

Better relationships: the “givers”, can build deeper and wider connections with other people. They can build trust, networks and getting access to new ideas.

Better motivations: Grant explains that helping others enriches the meaning and purpose of our own life, showing us that our contributions matter and energizing us to work harder, longer and smarter.

Learning: Using different examples, Adam noticed that collaborating with others becomes naturally a learning experience. The givers need to create solutions to problems that they have not face yet and they learn more about different routines.

But we have to be careful when we apply the classical idea of giving in our daily life. In this blog post, he speaks about the three biggest myths about giving:

It is not about being “nice”. Being generous it is not about being nice, and people that thing that they always have to be nice in order to give, they fail to set boundaries, rarely say no and become doormats, letting others walk all over them

Giving is not about altruism. Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.

Giving is not about refusing help from others. The clearest distinction between failed and successful givers is the willingness to seek and accept help. When people focus on giving, they often become fearful of asking. They don’t want to burden or inconvenience others—they want to be givers, not takers. Sadly, this leaves them suffering, because they lack the support of others.

——————–
Adam is an expert in organizational psychology, the youngest full time professor in Wharton, and a consultant for big companies like Pixar, Goldman Sachs, Facebook and others. He has centered his work in work motivation, prosocial giving and helping behaviors, and in his book, Give and Take, he proposes that helping is not an enemy for productivity, but the mother lode, the motivator that spurs increased productivity and creativity, as is described in the New York Times.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/is-giving-the-secret-to-getting-ahead.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

http://www.giveandtake.com/Home/AdamGrant

http://adammgrant.tumblr.com/post/80635914211/the-three-biggest-myths-about-giving-and-how-to-become

https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/1323/

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/how-to-succeed-professionally-by-helping-others/284429/

 

 

Assignment 4 Team Placement

Mobile Technology Implementation

Team #1
Agrawal, Siddharth
Friedman, Sydney
Phan, Evie
Young, Paul

Team #2
Arvizu, Pablo
Greis, David
Pérez, Ignacio
Tsai, Dan

Team #3
Berger, Michael
Gutman, Max
Malhotra, Ramit
Swigert, Peter

Team #4
Chen, Jung-Wei Jennifer
Hess, Jonas
MacFarland, Ian
Sparks, Evan

Team #5
Fan, Christopher
Hitchcock, Meredith
Lo, Jenny
Siddiqui, Sufia

Team #6
Jakobsen, Ronnie
Linding Jørgensen, Elin
Li, Johnny
Puthyapurayil, Seema

A bicycle simplified… the Bicymple

Do Less, Not More, Dream Bigger

“Once you learn how to ride a bike you never forget”. There are things we learn when we are kids and never actually forget how to do it, and bicycles are a great example. We tend to look at it as a finished product, it is as good as it will ever be. Right?

We as we learned with “Jiro, Dreams of Sushi” there is always room for improvement. Even if it takes a month, a year, or a lifetime, there is no such thing as a finished product or Jiro’s case, the perfect sushi. Jiro focused on the details of his craft to keep improving, sometimes the improvement might not be in the details but in the overall aggregate. That is the case of the Bicymple.

The Bicymple by Josh Bechtel
The Bicymple by Josh Bechtel

In 2011, Josh Bechtel decided to create a great bicycle experience and his approach was to simplify. Remove chains, remove gears, strip everything down to basics , and enjoy the ride. For this he created a Kickstater campaign and got double the funding he needed. The bicymple is a reality, albeit in a prototype sense. We might have to relearn how to ride a bike but from the looks of it, it will be worth it. There is no such thing as a finished product…

Intrigued? Watch the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lzUBCRBJeg

  • Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshbechtel/the-bicymple
  • Website: http://www.bicymple.com/

Mini-Assignment

Mobile Technology Implementation

We are crowdsourcing next mission. You are required to suggest one short and practical task — an activity that anyone in the class can carry out — that is based on the course concepts, as well as vote on your favorite mission idea submitted by other students. Please see more details at https://tricider.com/en/brainstorming/1X4QO. Deadline is Tuesday, April 22 at 6 PM.

If you have any questions regarding either of these, feel free to contact Professor Hansen or myself.

Why America Hasn’t Gone Back to the Moon

Dream Bigger

This video explores the reasons why, even though we managed to put a man on the moon in the span of 9 years, we haven’t gone back.  Here we also learn some key steps it took to get us there:

1. Get a Visionary
2. Have a Cold War
3. Very Large Budget
4. Work Long Hours.  Through the 60s, around 400,000 people worked to send people to the moon.  Seamstresses for space suits worked around 100 hours a week for nine years.
5. Innovate
6. The Right People at the Controls

These are the theories that Time believe it would take to put people back on the moon.  Many believe we could not do it again.
VIDEO BELOW:

Why America Hasn’t Gone Back to the Moon