Jan 4 In 2012 I Resolve to read more . . .

Okay, lets assume that one of your resolutions for 2012 is to read more (By the way, does anybody resolve to read less?).  And, for the purposes of this post, let's also assume that you have resolved to read more worthwhile books and not just a lot of pulp fiction or the latest from Danielle Steel.

Well, what are you going to read?

Well, there are several places to check out, including the staff picks at Talking Leaves (A wonderful well staffed  independent bookstore here in Buffalo) or the best of 2011 list at Amazon, and, of course, there is venerable New York Times Best Sellers List.

But here is another idea from Bob Sutton.  Mr. Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, where he focuses on studies regarding evidence-based management.  He is also the author of many books, including Good Boss, Bad Boss and The No Assholes Rule — two book that deserve a place on your reading list for 2012 if you haven't already read them.  And his blog, Work Matters,  also deserves your regular attention.

Mr. Sutton has put together a list of  "11 Books Every Leader Should Read" (he also has an 12th suggestion at the end, but we'll let him decide the title for his blog entry, no matter how inaccurate).  It is a great list and I have already added a few of these to my own 2012 reading list.

Check it out here — and let me know which book or books you thought were most meaningful to you and  how you work.

11 Books Every Leader Should Read 

via bobsutton.typepad.com

Jan 2 In 2012 I Resolve to . . .

It's that time of year again.  That time when we take inventory of our faults & shortcomings and resolve to — and I really mean it this year — change.  There are the popular ones like losing weight, exercising more, reading more, eating less, and calling our mothers/sisters/parents more.  And usually we have some that correlate to our work life: finishing a long neglected project, deciding to get better organized, or set limits regarding the work/life balance.

 Good luck with that.

 Face it, there are strong forces that lead us to where we are as persons, employees, and members of our community.  And it is going to take more that a list and a date on the calendar to move us from previous, usually comfortable behaviors, to the new you.  

 Perhaps instead of what you should do in 2012 you should think about what you should not do.  That is the advice from Kelly McGonigal.  Ms. McGonigal is a Stanford lecturer and author of “The Willpower Instinct” that explores the psychology, economics, and neuroscience of self-control and that offers some compelling (and counter-intuitive) advice.  Namely, that instead of making a New Year’s resolution, we should instead pledge not to change something in our lives.  (You can get the book here)

Interested?  Check out this interview with Daniel Pink

Oh, and Happy New Year.  We wish you health and happiness in 2012 and hope you achieve everything you strive for.  One of my resolutions is to write more Blog entries this year.  In December we will see how well I did.

 

Mar 27 And so it begins . . .

Enter “Smoke Signals” into Google and you will get 1.5 million results.  “Printing Press” garners 12 million and “Telephone” will get you 87 million.  

But things sure have changed in the last ten years.  Now, enter “social media” into Google and you will see about 187 million results.  Impressive results for a term describing something that started only about ten years ago.  Consider, Twitter just turned five this month; YouTube is only seven years old; Facebook will be eight in February; and Friendster (2002) and MySpace (2003) are the senior citizens of the genre, but not yet 10 years old.  In these short ten years “social media” has entered into the fabric of our lives, changed how we communicate and how we get our news.

With this inaugural blog posting Prentice enters this conversation.  At the same time we are opening a Prentice channel on YouTube, announcing our Twitter feed, and invite you to check out our Facebook page. 

We probably cannot promise anything as momentous as regime change or expect to have as many followers as Lady Gaga (Over 9 million on Twitter).  What we will try to do, however, is provide you with a mix of thoughtful pieces on the workplace, interesting updates on office products & trends, and offer up a few off-beat pieces that catch our attention.

And we hope to earn a greater audience that the gentleman with the snappy hat in the photo.  We’ll see. 

It should be fun, we hope it will be entertaining, and we invite you to let us know what you think.  

 

Feb 7 IDEO and Steelcase Unveil a School Desk for the Future of Teaching

[Update: James Ludwig, Steelcase's chief designer, has sent us some intriguing information on pricing and demand, added to the bottom of this post]

IDEO and Steelcase have just announced what might be a revolution in classroom design, a school desk that seamlessly adapts to whatever happens in class.

If you've spent any time in a schoolroom in the last 15 years, you're familiar with the high pitched whine of metal scraping against linoleum, as students rearrange their chairs and desks to whatever activity is going on. It seems like a minor annoyance, but it's a serious design problem: School furniture was largely designed 50 years ago for static, face-forward teaching. It isn't suited to the myriad forms of teaching that take place in the modern classroom.

Contrast that with the Node chair, which was designed by IDEO and produced by Steelcase, a Michigan-based furniture company. The details betray a remarkable thoughtfulness: The seat is a generously sized bucket, so that students can shift around and adapt their posture to whatever's going on; the seat also swivels, so that students can, for example, swing around to look at other students making class presentations; and a rolling base allows the chair to move quickly between lecture-based seating and group activities.

In group activities, the proportions are such that the chairs and integrated desktops combine into something like a conference table:

And finally, there's storage underneath the seat--but off the ground--for backpacks, while the armrests themselves have a subtle flair that allows them to become strong, convenient hooks:

Of course, it's unlikely that the chair will be appearing in your local public school anytime soon--the market seems to be the glizty new secondary schools and new university classrooms popping into existence. And you wonder whether the economics will work out, since a plastic chair probably can't last as long as bomb-proof metal job like you find in public schools.

Meaning this design, for now, will be one more reason to envy a private-school education.

For more pictures, check out The Contemporist.

UPDATE

James Ludwig, Steelcase's VP of global design, writes that the chair is $599 fully loaded with a desktop, and $399 without. Ludwig also says that he's gotten lots of confirmation from educators that the price point makes it viable in the market--and that already, there have been verbal commitments from university clients around the world.