DaveShearon

Louisiana State Bar Association

I was contacted several weeks ago about consulting on a contract through the National Center for State Courts with the Louisiana State Bar Association.  It was to entail five days or so on-site, hopefully in August, but there was a re-work of the team that delayed the contract.  I think it's finished now, but since the bar center is right in downtown New Orleans, we obviously won't be down there anytime soon. 

My counterpart in Louisiana sent got an e-mail out that she had safely evacuated to Houston.  That's good news, but it's hard to grasp the pictures I'm seeing of the devastation to that beautiful city.  Here's hoping they can get the water out soon and that recovery won't be as difficult as it now appears.  They're saying two months before schools can re-open!

And thanks to all the disaster workers headed that way.  The beautiful and patient Teresa asked me if, when Patrick's off to college, if I'd join her in volunteering for a disaster recovery team.  She's always wanted to do that.  Absolutely.  With her people skills, organizational ability, and level headedness, she'd be great, and I'd certainly do whatever I could.

New Tech Experiences

Well, given that I've had my nose stuck in a book more in he last few weeks than at any time since ... hmmm..., high school?  Naaaah.  More like sixth or seventh grade.  Or maybe ninth, when sports gave me two study halls and home room to end the day.  In the library.  Heaven.  (Although, there was the six weeks when my table of boys in study hall had an A, B, C, D, and F in conduct.  Idle hands are the devils workshop, or something like that.)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Reading.  Or, rather, what I've been learning when I haven't been reading.  (I'll get to that, but I've got to process a little first!)

Tech stuff:

Microsoft Sharepoint Server:  I had no idea what this was until the last two weeks.  Then, the company programming Form1.org, Intellinet, set one up as the respository/workspace for that project.  As President of Form1.org, Inc., I have access, so I've gotten a little feeling for it.  It's a wiki.  Ok, now I know that if anyone who REALLY knows what Sharepoint is reads this they'll likely light me up for that statement and explain how completely off base it is.  But, that's what it looks like to me.  Document storage, notices of updates when things are added or changed, comments, and entries much like a group blog.  Yep, looks a lot like a wiki to me. 

X1 and Exchange:  I've gotten these technologies installed at work and they're beginning to take hold.  We have a public folder on Exchange that gets a copy of every incoming and outgoing e-mail, and X1 on everyone's desk that is set to index that folder.  So, no matter who's been involved in an e-mail exchange with an attorney or provider, any of us can access that exchange easily and quickly.  Cool.  And very helpful.

Document Imaging:  We've also installed a document management system by a company called Infodynamics.  We scan it in on our multifunction copier/scanner and put the attorney, provider, or course ID, plus other key information in the title of the documents for identification.  Then, one of our folks moves each to a "Work in Progress" folder for the appropriate person.  When processed, that person may add a little more to the title and then sticks it in a "storage" folder.  Again, entering an attorney's id number can call up all correspondence between us and that attorney, regardless of who's desk, I mean, WIP folder it's in.  I'm planning to set the system to do an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on each document so that we'll be able to search on text in the document, but haven't gotten that done yet.

Open Office:  A while back, a disk drive died in this computer and we had to get a new one installed.  We saved all the data, but not the programs.  Generally not a problem, but I had Microsoft Office on here from some time or another when it was ok to install on an office and a home system.  Don't know if that's still ok, and hadn't gotten around to checking.  Then, last week, Patrick needed to finish and print a Word document he'd started at the library.  So, I downloaded the current version of Open Office and told him to go at it.  No questions from him since, so it must be a fairly close work-alike.

MindManager & UCLA Law

Jerry Kang on how he uses MindManager for law school lectures:

Kang has never liked PowerPoint, the de facto standard for teaching classes at many professional schools. “It brings a C teacher up to B, but never gets beyond that,” he says. “If you can't capture the interactivity of the classroom you are encouraging a passive form of teaching. MindManager, on the other hand, has allowed me to integrate student responses and ideas right onto the screen– and at the same time manage the big picture and the small details.”

At the end of the class, he outputs the map as HTML and posts it on his class Web site for students to review.

"Being able to reorganize ideas in real time enables my students to reach a deeper level of analysis more quickly.”

MindManager is currently 15% off with a free updgrade to 6.0 when it is released in September.  Recommended.

Related:  Uses by students.  Book notes The Cancer Code, The Mind Map Book

Under stress, I...

Cut back on newspapers and rely on blogs.  Yep.  With my new reading schedule, I find I have a lot less time for a lot of things (blogging being one), but that, conversely, I'm getting more things done, even things I was in the habit of putting off.  No time to put them off, now.

But, one interesting thing I've noticed is that I've cut back on reading newspapers.  I didn't read bunches of them anyway, but most days I scanned or read front page stories, editorials, scanned the letters and read those on topics that interest me, read a couple of coluns, read Metro section articles, and maybe a sports story or two in the Tennessean.  Then, I'd find time at work to read several articles in the Wall Street Journal.  Now, I find I'm relying on a few blogs to keep me abreast of what's happening and what folks are saying about it. 

Why blogs instead of newspapers?  Bias and spin and poor reporting.  How many newspapers would I have to read to find out what's going right in Iraq, expert analysis of military issues, etc.?  I can get all of that and more from scanning a few blogs.  And, what the news media does report is often the spin of some "player" in the news -- what good is that?  And, they just don't report well.  Often, the journalists don't seem to realize there is anything more than "talking heads" -- much less that they should go out and report the other stuff.  And don't get me started on how bad most "education" reporting is.  So, blogs.  Of course, I have to just scan and move and don't have time for the leisurely wandering from link to link as I am amazed by the knowledge, insight, and writing so many blogs make available.

And, now, time for my walk and then some reading!!

More reading ...

The required and recommended books should arrive from Amazon tomorrow.  (Beats the beginning of the semester trip to the campus bookstore!)  I have also received my first e-mail with reading assignments for the first "immersion" session, including journal articles.  I'm organizing everything in Mindmanager X5 Pro.  So far, my map looks like this (click for larger image):

The little pdf icons on some of the branches are hyperlinks to the articles in pdf format on my system.  Haven't decided whether I'll use Acrobat to make notes on the pdf's, put the notes in a "note" entry on the mindmap branch, or link to a map with notes.  I suspect a combination of notes on the pdf as I study, then a mindmap to really record and structure my thoughts.  Something, along the lines of this.  Especially with color and pictures -- helps me remember and review quickly.

Invitational Education

This post from Down Under summarizes Invitational Theory as applied to education.  Although I hate to see a school system say they "believe" in a theory (bad scientific method!), I suspect that following this "theory" is far more likely to create some excellent schools than many other approaches that are out there!

Reading List

Just got my reading list for the MAPP program.  As an undergraduate (let's not even talk about law school), I can't remember being anxious to grab the books and start reading.  This time, however, I'm raring to go! (I'll leave for Philly three weeks from tomorrow!)

MAPP 600 Intro to Positive Psychology (Seligman)

Required:
Seligman, M. (2002). Authentic Happiness N.Y.: Free Press. (AH) ISBN 0743222989
Seligman, M. (1993).  What You Can Change & What You Can't.  N.Y.: Knopf. ISBN 0449909719
Vaillant, G. (2000). Aging Well. Boston: Little, Brown.  ISBN  0316090077 

Recommended:
Wright, R. (2000). NonZero. N.Y.: Pantheon.  ISBN 0679758941
Vaillant, G. (1977). Adaptation to Life. Boston: Little, Brown.  ISBN  0674004140

 
MAPP 601 Assessment and Classification  (Peterson)

Barker, C., Pistrang, N., & Elliott, R. (2002). Research methods in clinical psychology (2^nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. ISBN 0-471-49089-X (paper)

Becker, H. S. (1986). Writing for social scientists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-04108-5 (paper)

 
MAPP 700 Elective (Schwartz)

Schwartz, B. (2004).  The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.  New York: Ecco.
ISBN 0060005688

Switching from Lookout to X1

  Lookout was great; X1 is better.  I used Lookout for about a year and found it wonderful for going through my personal stuff.  And right now, the price (free!) is right.  But, my office now has six folks, and we all will correspond by e-mail with attorneys and providers.  Unless the e-mailer decided a post was important enough to copy and paste into a comment on the attorney's record in our internal system, there was no way for other staff members to know of that communication.  And, since the next time that attorney called in, he or she might be talking to someone else, this could be a problem.

I've been looking for ways to give each staff member the capability to rapidly access ALL records of communication with an attorney.  For e-mail, I've settled on X1 on each person's machine and a public folder in Exchange into which a copy of every e-mail, outgoing or incoming, is automatically placed.  Since X1 can search such public folders on the server, I don't have to buy and install some kind of "enterprise" software.  Cheaper, easier to manage, and it works a treat!  Here's part of an e-mail I got this week from one of my staff:

Also – the X1 e-mail search tool is one of the best additions to our system I’ve seen so far. It is just saving lots and lots of time trying to figure out if an issue forwarded from me to staff has been handled. Fantastic tool!

I love it when a plan comes together!

Caring for the Leader

Does that title strike you as strange?  I suspect it does.  But leadership is tough, and yet most of us give little thought to the care and feeding of leaders.  They have to do it themselves, and, what's more, they virtually never get even a suggestion that they need to do that, much less guidance in how.  A VC has a great post on this.  And I suspect it is appropriate to school principals.  I know it would be to superintendents.

But my advice to founders and CEOs who find that they have the weight of the company on their shoulders is to get some help.

And there are two sources of help I recommend.

The first is inside the company.  A CEO/founder must surround themselves with people who they like, trust, and can lower their guard with.  The best leaders have a "kitchen cabinet" of people they can be completely honest with and who they rely on for advice, counsel, and support. It is tricky to provide that back to the same people who are providing it to you, but you must try to make it happen.

The second is outside the company.  I encourage every CEO/founder I work with to find someone that they can meet with at least once a week to talk to about their hopes, dreams, challenges, anxieties, and fears.  I don't normally suggest a shrink, but a coach or a mentor who has no other agenda than to be your counsel and friend is critical.  Most of the successful leaders I know has someone like this, at least for part of their stint on the job.

The bottom line is being a founder/CEO is a really hard job.  It's even harder if you've never done it before. If you find yourself being slowed down by the weight of the company on your shoulders, find some people you can trust and be totally honest with to help you carry the load.

Think about it.  School principals really report to a "board".  No one person at the central office is their direct superior, responsible for building them up and helping them succeed.  Rather, you've got a ton of folks empowered to meddle in their day-to-day activities, but with virtually no accountability for results.

And what about supers?  They usually didn't set out to be CEO's and founders.  They just moved up.  And, along the way, the only time they were the "leader", they were principals -- and not supported.  Then they get to the top, and they think being the "big leader" is going to make it better.  And, instead, they find everybody dumping problems in their laps and an organization that, as noted, fails to support the critical leaders on which supers depend:  principals.  But, that's the way they were treated.  That's the way all school systems are structured.  How in the world are supers going to see the need to radically realign the roles of central office administrators vis-a-vis principals?  As one administrator here in Nashville was heard to say, "I came to the central office because I like to tell people what to do!"

Finally, I should point out that school boards have to be about the worst boards around to work for!  Generally, the members have little or no management experience.  Most have never been on any board with a similar public profile and responsibility.  The political nature attracts issue-oriented folks and bomb-throwers.  Typically they have no clue how to evaluate the system's performance overall, much less any way to judge whether it's headed in the right direction.  And, they want to "do something" -- that's why they ran for the post!  But, "doing something" from the board level is quite often a REALLY bad idea, and the super often knows this, even if he or she cannot articulate why in a way that will work with board members.  Great.  What a position.  And I campaigned for some of these jobs!  What was I thinking?

A Masters? At my age?

Yep.  I've accepted a spot in the initial class for the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology at Penn under Martin E.P. Seligman.  Starts in September!  I'm really looking forward to it.  I've been studying this area anyway since I read Learned Optimism in 2003.  For more info, see the category of Optimism/Pessimism on this blog or my book note on Authentic Happiness.