• The Winter 2009 edition of globalNEWS
• Team leaders embrace triple challenge
• Global Learning website designer sent into orbit
• Grim news: the manager is mostly peripheral
• Two exciting days with two hundred young carers
• Now's the time to prepare for the recovery
• The power of now: Eckhart Tolle interview
• 'The soft stuff is the hard stuff'
• We still like feedback...

The Winter 2009 edition of globalNEWS
With this bout of cold temperatures, people are either scurrying to the snowfields or heading north to seek sun and sand. One of the great joys of living in Australia is that everyone can be satisfied! In the last edition, we promised you news about upcoming events, and you can read about them here. And for more inspiration, we offer links to a range of stimulating sites.

Team leaders embrace triple challenge
The Workplace Ombudsman, a Federal Government agency, has taken an intensive approach to a three-part challenge – transition into a new agency (the Fair Work Ombudsman), expansion of staff responsibilities through changed legislation, and a merge with the Workplace Authority (doubling its size). Over a six-month period, Global Learning has delivered a team leadership development program to empower their highly-motivated middle managers in a combination of face-to-face and online activities. More than 95 per cent of graduates reported that what they learned during the program improved their management and leadership skills and will deliver significant productivity gains. [more...]

Global Learning website designer sent into orbit
Once in a while websites benefit from a good makeover, and Global Learning's is no exception. The previous site was very 'corporate', and whilst it attracted business, it wasn't a true representation of who we are or what we do. The transition is almost complete, and we were careful to ensure that no whales were harmed in the process. We've sent our designer into orbit to take a decent photo of the planet that we share, and our imagebank [http://globallearning.com.au/imagebank.html] is replete with pithy quotes to stimulate the brain. Even our mysterious '404' error page is ... informative! [more...]

Grim news: the manager is mostly peripheral
According to Benjamin Waber, a PhD student at MIT, you could be out of the loop. If you're not able to create environments of high trust and super-connectivity, you're not aware of who is really doing what. Waber has studied the way in which groups interact socially, and has mapped how information flows within an organisation. This exploration is known as 'reality mining', and Waber shows that we are often better at communication via the virtual world, and not the face-to-face environment. Read all about 'pulsing stars' patterns and learn how to predict future meetings! [more...]

Two exciting days with two hundred young carers
"It was FANTASTIC, GREAT, SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICALEXPIALIODOCIOUS AWESOME!" Unusually unrestrained and enthusiastic feedback, perhaps - but it truly reflected the views of many who took part in the 'Bring It! 2008 Young Carers Forum' held at Parliament House, Canberra in November. Young carers had two days of vigorous discussion, met Ministers and Shadow Ministers - and had to be asked to be a little quieter by ushers from the nearby Senate! Carers Australia published their final report on 24 June, detailing the crisis faced by young carers around Australia. Read on to discover how Global Learning helped to make the program an outstanding success. [more...]

Now's the time to prepare for the recovery
MIT Sloan Management Review interviews Vijay Govindarajan, chief innovation officer at General Electric, about his 'three-box framework': improving the present, selectively forgetting the past, and inventing the future. Govindarajan opines that it is critical to focus on box two and three in spite of tough times. He argues that the best time to prepare for expansion is during a recession, and that assets and talent are cheap and readily available. He also suggests that whilst you cannot easily plan for the future, you can most certainly prepare for it. [more...]

The power of now: Eckhart Tolle interview
Everybody who is not awake spiritually is run by their thinking mind - the incessant voice in the head. In an unawakened state, you don't use thought - but thought uses you. You don't see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns. Your sense of identity - of self - is reduced to a story that you keep telling yourself in your head. And when your life is thus reduced, you can never be happy for long, because you are not yourself. [more...]

'The soft stuff is the hard stuff'
Translation: technology will work, but the people might not. It is the people side of the change equation that is difficult to get right. It requires a small but crucial investment in communications, training, and support. Participation, engagement, and buy-in is the stuff of successful change. It's not something that can be gained through a transaction, but requires generative dialogue. The approach is highly interactive. Rather than top-down, it is inside-out: as people generate new insights and understanding, their behavior changes. The real territory of change is inner space. [more...]

We still like feedback...
Please feel free to talk back to us. Ask for more information or links. Comment on our news. E-mail your feedback to us, and if you like globalNEWS, let your friends know and invite them to subscribe, too! Subscription details (and how to unsubscribe) are found here: [more...]