Over the past few weeks, I have attended many webinars through various organizations – Duke University, IEEE, Indiana University, and others. All had various tidbits of knowledge that I thought I would share with you here.
IEEE Xplore – I listened to a talk about how to use the IEEE Xplore website. This site appears to contain all IEEE publications for all societies that are part of IEEE. An extraordinary library! They talked about how to find information on various topics or from different companies or specific people. I searched for my last name, and my IEEE book popped up along with a research paper that my husband was involved in over 25 years ago!
Providing Feedback – I learned that there are many models for providing feedback – Ask-Tell-Ask, CAST model, SBI, and others. This is an area that I’d like to delve into more because some of these models can help to diffuse a difficult situation and resolve conflict. I’ll be digging into these models more over the next couple of months.
Grit & Resilience – Charlotte Westerhaus-Renfrow gave a vibrant talk on “How Grit and Resilience Can Make You a Better Negotiator”. She talked about how you need the skillset to negotiate but you also need the mindset to negotiate. And the mindset is the courage and resilience to stick with your strategy and plan and to “bounce back” from failed negotiations. She talked about when to use bargaining techniques versus negotiating techniques and how to respond to conflict in negotiations. She had a lot of great information to share.
Innovation – Gus Gaynor from IEEE-TEMS gave an excellent talk on “INNOVATION: Bringing the Idea to Human Experience”. He went through the broad steps of taking a Raw idea to the Proof of Concept to a Project. He talked about the Idea pathway and Business pathway and that both need to be followed in tandem in order to be successful. There are many, many steps along the way. It can be done but it will take time, talent, cooperation, resources, and more to accomplish.
Healthcare Innovation – Amrou Awaysheh from Indiana University talked about the changes in healthcare that are happening right now during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Hospitals lost $500 billion in revenue in the 1st quarter of 2020 – and the pandemic was only a portion of the quarter. It could be much worse for the 2nd quarter of 2020.
- It is estimated that 50% of hospitals will not survive.
Additionally, we have seen other changes occurring in healthcare over the years:
- Costs of healthcare were 7% of GDP in 1970, but they were 17.9% of GDP in 2017
- 50% of primary care physicians in the US are trained at non-US schools.
All of theses changes mean that we need to innovate. He suggests that we use the principles of product design to solve the healthcare problem. He also believes that we need a change in the Business Model. We are currently setup as Solution Shops but need to consider other models such as Value-Adding Businesses and Facilitated Networks.
The Job Market – The Kelley School of Business at Indiana University provided a panelist discussion about the current state of the workforce and how to navigate it during this time of COVID-19. The panelists talked about having an exit strategy because you never know when the job market might change. They discussed important skills to learn and gave some predictions of where jobs will be in the next year or so. It was very informative!
Who Moved My Cheese? – Region 5 of IEEE hosted a webinar discussion about the famous book, “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson. It has been a long time since I read it. I think I may need to read it again! There is also a sequel to the book entitled “Out of the Maze” which has also gotten good reviews.
Contact Tracing – Johns Hopkins University offered a free course on Coursera about COVID-19 Contact Tracing. It included the definition of contact tracing, the steps for using it, example contact tracing phone calls, problems that might arise in doing contact tracing, ethical implications, technologies used, and tips for performing contact tracing. I enjoyed learning about the process and the complexities of it. I now have a better understanding of its importance in containing a disease but also understanding the sheer volume of time and energy that goes into doing the tracing.
Education – The leadership team at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University gave a webinar on the Future of Higher Education. Kelley was one of the first schools to move a lot of their teaching online, and because of that, they were able to pivot to everything online MUCH easier when the pandemic hit. They are looking at doing partial in-person and partial online courses for students in the fall and trying to figure out how to do so safely. I have no doubt that they will figure it out and that they will be a leader in this new world we are moving into.
Self-Observation – Ray Luther from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University gave a talk entitled “Leading Yourself Through Challenging Times”. It was one of the best presentations this month. He introduced us to the Self-Observation Cycle and to the 5 H’s of the Modified Leadership Framework that works well for changing times. He also mentioned the short video “Earthrise” where the first astronauts to see the Earth rise from the Moon talk about how that different perspective affected them. I watched it after the webinar, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My biggest takeaway from the talk was the need to stay in the present during this challenging time of COVID-19.
