higher education – Page 64

Combing through my zillions of Twitter favorites this Labor Day morning, I ran across these two gems from last February.

Both posts seemed to be appropriate reads for this day set aside to honor and recognize the achievements of the American worker, so I thought I’d share them.

If you’re off the grid for this holiday — and I hope most of you are — then perhaps this will make good reading for the coming, short workweek.

1. Joy at work: It’s your right. This Harvard Business Review post by Allison Rimm, an executive coach, is a must-read for all of us who don’t want to let go of the details for fear of losing control. Rimm writes that “achieving joy at work is not only possible; it’s a necessity.”

I’ve come to appreciate that happiness on the job is a leading indicator of an individual’s ability to sustain high levels of passion, performance, and productivity over the long run. If we can uncover our true gifts and find work that makes regular use of them, we’ve fulfilled our responsibility to use them wisely and we’ve optimized our chances for claiming our right to enjoy the process.

Maybe it’s just an amplification of that trite cliche: Do what you love and love what you do. But Rimm is on to something here. If you’re going to do work, you should enjoy it. And you have a right to enjoy it. (Hat tip to Kim McGrath of Wake Forest University for sharing the post on Twitter.)

2. Relax! You’ll be more productive. This New York Times piece by Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project, In this article, Schwartz talks about the importance of taking breaks during the work day to enhance performance. “The importance of restoration is rooted in our physiology,” he writes. “Human beings aren’t designed to expend energy continuously. Rather, we’re meant to pulse between spending and recovering energy.”

So plan to build some breaks into your work this week. You’ll be better off, and so will your organization. (And if you can sneak in a nap every now and then, so much the better.)

(Hat tip to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who knows a thing or two about being productive, for the share.)

Update, thanks for Mike Petroff, who shared this):

3. Slowing the work treadmill. Harvard business professor Teresa Amabile on why we would be better off doing less. “In the short term,” she says, “people become less engaged in their work if their creativity isn’t supported. They will also be less productive because they often can’t focus on their most important work. In the long term, companies may lose their most talented employees, as well as losing out because they won’t have the innovative products, innovative services, and business models that they need to be competitive.”

Photo: Hard Day at the Office, by Craig Sunter-Click 64.

By now, you’ve heard about LinkedIn’s announcement that it was inviting colleges and universities to create official university pages in that space.

The social network known for helping prospective employees find the right job now wants to get in the business of helping prospective students find the right college.

Will it work?

Is this move a smart expansion of the LinkedIn brand or will it lead to a possible dilution or lack of focus for one of the more distinctive social networks out there?

Christina Allen, LinkedIn’s director of product management, writes in the university pages announcement that these sites “will be especially valuable for students making their first, big decision about where to attend college” and added that in September, LinkedIn will open up to high school students “who can use LinkedIn to explore schools worldwide, greatly expand their understanding of the careers available, and get a head start on building a network of family and friends to help guide them at every milestone.”

I guess soon we’ll see adolescents posting their resumes on LinkedIn, right alongside job-seekers. Maybe even competing for positions.

But some on the business side — which is LinkedIn’s niche — think the move could lead to a loss in credibility for the service. They like LinkedIn’s focus on talent recruitment, not student recruitment.

“When thinking about LinkedIn, numerous adjectives come to mind: professional, business-oriented, networking,” writes Victoria Derrick in a recent Business2Community article. ‘A few of the top reasons businesses use LinkedIn are: to gain exposure to professionals and consumers, recruit new talent, and increase credibility.”

But maybe those same adjectives come to mind when describing certain students looking for a college degree. As we’ve read in countless reports over the past few years, the demographics of college-bound students are changing. From my own experience, working at a university where the vast majority of students are engineering and science majors, I know that many of them are focused, serious-minded students who are looking at the college experience as a pathway to great careers. Many of these students also had this mindset while in high school. We also must consider older students who are re-entering college after losing jobs to downsizing, or military veterans returning to campus, and many other non-traditional audiences for whom LinkedIn may hold more appeal than other social media venues.

That’s more or less how the Wall Street Journal sees the move. “Focusing more on higher education is a natural extension for LinkedIn, and one that opens up the company to a whole new territory of users–young people,” writes the WSJ’s Brian L. Fitzgerald. “LinkedIn says ‘smart, ambitious students are already thinking about their futures when they step foot into high school.'”

But Fitzgerald adds something that gives me pause:

For LinkedIn, it’s less about trying to grab a group of savvy social-media kids allegedly growing bored with Facebook, and more about plying that old General Motors concept: Start out the customers young and stay with them through different stages of their lives. A college prospect with a LinkedIn account is likely to become a professional employee with a LinkedIn account a few years later. (Crossing fingers for a good economy.)

It’s that “plying that old General Motors concept” that bugs me. GM became known for extending its brand too far, trying to build all kinds of cars for all kinds of customers. And we saw the outcome of that brand extension in the form of a bailout.

“Reinvention,” Business2Community’s Derrick notes, “is sometimes a necessary aspect of business that can result in success and increased brand awareness. For other companies, it spells disaster.”

Let’s hope LinkedIn is making the right move — for its core business and for higher education.

P.S. – If you want to jump on the LinkedIn bandwagon and apply for one of the university pages, Karine Joly’s recent blog post provides a good step-by-step approach. (I’ve already submitted a request on behalf of my university. Might as well join the herd, right?)

Also, just for fun, view LinkedIn’s video targeting thecollege crowd:

Category: higher education

Labor Day thoughts: Relax, and enjoy your work