Moving the Planet Forward: GW to host innovation summit to search for sustainability solutions to global problems

Government, academia, nonprofit and industry sustainability leaders will come together at the George Washington University to discuss the challenges facing the planet around climate change and energy and showcase successful innovative strategies.

The innovation summit, “GW Moving the Planet Forward: Turning Innovation into Action,” will be hosted on Tuesday by Frank Sesno, creator of Planet Forward and director of GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

During the half-day event, participants will make “Innovation Challenges” – individual commitments to improve the planet over the next year such as installing a rain barrel or making an office or home more energy efficient.

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray will be joined by Tommy Battle, mayor of Huntsville, Ala., and Mark Mallory, mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, who will explain how American cities can serve as clean tech incubators. Industry leaders will discuss the future of green jobs, renewable energy, clean technology and data management. Speakers include Aneesh Chopra, former U.S. chief technology officer; Mark L. Vachon, vice president of GE ecomagination; retired Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy; and Deborah Wince Smith, president and chief executive officer of the Council on Competiveness.

“By hosting this extraordinary gathering of leaders, GW continues to demonstrate our leadership in the area of sustainability,” said Mr. Sesno. “Our Planet Forward project focuses on innovations that help to solve our planet’s greatest challenges, and our symposium will create a dialogue between campus leaders, participants, individuals and companies breaking new ground with sustainability practices and policies in the areas of private enterprise, urban management, federal government and academia.”

GW’s Planet Forward, a project of the Center for Innovative Media in SMPA, is an online social network where creative and innovative ideas addressing global challenges are featured, discussed and evaluated. Showcasing original video, blog entries and commentary, this social network invites participation and opinion from policymakers, students, advocates and practitioners. Contributors with the most promising and original ideas are featured on a national television show and selected as “Planet Forward Innovators,” earning them a shot at implementing their idea on an ambitious scale.

The symposium, which is sponsored by the GW Office of Sustainability, the Office of the Provost and Planet Forward, will also feature GW experts including George Washington President Steven Knapp; Doug Guthrie, dean of GW’s School of Business; and Melissa Keeley, assistant professor of geography, public policy and public administration and interim director of GW’s Environmental Studies Program, whose research focuses on urban sustainability and green infrastructure.

“GW’s vision for sustainability is to create resources systems that are healthy and thriving for all,” said Meghan Chapple-Brown, director of GW’s Office of Sustainability. "I'm seeing sustainable innovation sprouting up all over GW, and it will be highlighted at this exciting Innovation Summit..”

Last month, President Knapp, along with eight other D.C. university presidents, signed a pledge to reduce energy use and promote greener college campuses. The pledge, which is a partnership between the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area and the District of Columbia to advance sustainability, is the first of its kind in the nation. As part of the pledge, GW committed to reducing its potable water use by 25 percent through plumbing enhancements and reducing its direct expenditures on bottled water by 50 percent by 2016. Other commitments include reducing solid waste by 30 percent through increased recycling, purchasing at least 15 percent of total food and beverages from sustainable sources and expanding its two urban vegetable gardens that provide fresh food to Miriam’s Kitchen, a nonprofit organization in Foggy Bottom that provides nutritious meals, case management and art therapy to the homeless.

In February, GW launched a new undergraduate sustainability minor, which was developed by faculty across the university. The 18-credit minor, which will not be housed in one particular school but rather overseen by the Office of the Provost, will offer courses in all of the university’s schools and colleges. All GW undergraduate students are eligible for the minor, regardless of what school they’re in or their major.

And GW continues to work toward its Climate Action Plan – unveiled in 2010 – that aims to reduce the university’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2025 and reach carbon neutrality by 2040.

“The university is committed to being a model of sustainability,” said Ms. Chapple-Brown.

The summit kicks of GW's celebration of Earth Week, which will conclude with a university-wide fair on Friday, April 20 on Kogan Plaza.

GEORGE WASHINGTON TODAY

Division of External Relations
2121 Eye Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
Phone: (202) 994-1000

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Tom Peters: Las 10 claves del talento

Tom Peters es lo que se conoce como un gurú, en todo lo amplio de esta palabra. Es uno de los más influyentes líderes en temas como innovación, creatividad, talento y “nueva” visión corporativa. En su libro “Re-imagina: Talento”, este maestro del management reseña lo que él llama “el kit de supervivencia de la marca personal”. He aquí los 10 atributos claves según el gurú:

1. PIENSA COMO EMPRENDEDOR
Sé el jefe de tu propio espectáculo. Reinventa todas las actuaciones para asegurarte de que realmente realcen tu marca personal. Debes actualizar tu “historial”, por lo menos, una vez al año. Imagínate como el CEO de “YO S.A.”. Piensa que hoy sólo estás “prestado” a tu actual trabajo.


2. SÉ SIEMPRE UN “REMATADOR”
Necesitas saber los pormenores de hacer dinero, sea en tu actual trabajo o como el CEO de “YO S.A.”. Conoce los números y mantén la vista pegada en el balance. Aquí lo clave es que tu historial, en la práctica, consiste un 98% en “cerrar el trato”. Como sabe un auténtico hombre de negocios, la vida es vender. “El buen intento” de cerrar una operación, en este caso, no es suficiente.


3. UTILIZA EL MARKETING
Esto no significa poner un anuncio en una revista de alta circulación. El mundo de la marca personal está lejos del viejo mundo den el que permaneciste durante 20 años… en el departamento de crédito y cobranza. Ahora saltarás de proyecto en proyecto, trabajando con desconocidos. Tendrás que venderte de nuevo en cada actuación. Vende tu punto de vista. Vende lo que vales. Vende tu “YO S.A.”.


4. PERSIGUE LA MAESTRÍA
Ya no es suficiente ser bueno en lo que haces y saber las reglas del marketing y el networking. Necesitas ser condenadamente especial en algo de valor económico específico. En una palabra: necesitas exhibir una ¡verdadera maestría! Esto es mucho más que tener una capacitación distinta. Debes trabajar obsesivamente en tu “arte”, como un artista o atleta de elite.


5. FOMENTA LA AMBIGÜEDAD
Aunque la maestría es esencial, ni siquiera eso será suficiente en un mundo donde las auténticas categorías de pensamiento y de acción están errando y cayendo constantemente. Tan importante como la capacidad de hacer una cosa extremadamente bien, es la capacidad de hacer una docena de cosas a la vez. Todo está a nuestra disposición. Nadie sabe a qué demonios se dedica. Debes ser capaz no sólo de “ocuparte de ello”, sino de fomentar realmente la ambigüedad.


6. RÍETE DE LAS GRANDES TONTERAS
Cultiva el sentido del humor. Esto no significa saber contar chistes, sino tener la capacidad de reírte del fabuloso prototipo que se auto-destruye… y ocuparte inmediatamente de la próxima interpretación. En la actual y turbulenta era, tendremos que equivocarnos mucho más frecuente y embarazosamente que antes. Triunfarán las empresas que toleran o incluso celebran el fracaso.


7. CONFÍA EN LA TECNOLOGÍA
No necesitas ser un experto en un paquete de software particular o saber programar. Pero debes apreciar instintivamente el hecho inequívoco de que Internet y todo lo que venga después pondrá boca abajo la empresa en un período de tiempo extraordinariamente corto.


8. PÓSTRATE ANTE EL JOVEN
Muchos tendremos “apetito por la tecnología”… pero, ¿llegaremos a “captarla” verdaderamente? ¡Ni pensarlo! Por eso tenemos que rodearnos de jóvenes. Cada equipo de proyecto debe incluir al menos un joven: alguien que no necesite “reinventarse” porque nació, se crió y se licenció genéticamente en la nueva economía.


9. ALIMENTA TU RED
La lealtad no está muerta y es más importante que nunca. Pero el eje de la lealtad ha girado 90 grados. La “lealtad antigua” era una lealtad vertical: a una jerarquía. Te agarrabas un escalón tras otro mientras escalabas una ladera vertical prescrita.
La “nueva lealtad” es horizontal: a una especialidad o un sector. Lo que importa es lo que piensan de tu trabajo tus compañeros. Debes formar y gestionar deliberadamente una red cada vez mayor de contactos profesionales en tu campo.


10. CULTIVA LA PASIÓN POR LA RENOVACIÓN
Hoy, un enfoque pasivo del perfeccionamiento profesional te dejará fuera de carrera. Revolucionar tu cartera de capacitaciones… al menos cada media docena de años, si no más a menudo, es ahora una necesidad de supervivencia mínima. Pregunta: ¿tienes un plan formal de renovación de la inversión? Y, si tienes uno, ¿es tan osado como demandan estos tiempos osados?

Fuente: Voy por más

Corporate Culture isn't set in stone

(*) by S. Chris Edmonds on March 23rd, 2012

Organizations come to The Ken Blanchard Cos. to have us help them make their organizations better. “Better” might mean more effective leadership, higher performance, improved customer experiences, greater net profit or a more cooperative, positive work environment.

Organizations come to us because they see missed opportunities in their operations. They might see less-than-inspiring leadership happening each day. They might see less-than-inspired employees every day. They have gaps they want to close, and they know Blanchard can help them do that.

After a thorough assessment of a client’s current operation and clarification of needs, we are able to present solutions that we’re confident will address their gaps. Some of those solutions involve skills training, some involve personal coaching, and some involve proactive culture refinement — culture change.

Some clients readily embrace our solutions. Some don’t embrace our solutions quite so quickly.

When considering culture change, more than a few of the senior leaders I’ve engaged with say, “You can’t change corporate culture.” I’m not surprised at this belief. Blanchard’s experience indicates that most senior leaders, in their careers, have not lived through successful culture change. Even fewer have led successful culture change.

When I hear this belief, I ask a question: “Can you change how an organization performs?” These leaders say, “Absolutely!” By changing how individuals perform, leaders change how the organization performs.

Leaders change the way individuals perform by:

• Setting clear performance goals.
• Directing, supporting, coaching and delegating where needed.
• Measuring progress and accomplishment.
• Celebrating progress and accomplishment.

These activities, done consistently with a service mindset, often lead to increased performance, higher-quality, happier customers and growing profit.

Changing your organization’s culture is no different from changing how your organization performs. It requires intentional definition of, communication of and accountability for your company’s:

• Purpose: The reason you in business.
• Deliverables: Your promise of high-quality products and services.
• Culture: Values you stand for and live by daily with stakeholders, peers and customers.

Change what you pay attention to

Corporate culture is the most important driver of what happens in organizations, and senior leaders are the most important driver of their organization’s corporate culture.

To change an organization’s culture, all leaders must change how they spend their time and what they communicate and reinforce on a daily basis. Their focus shifts from “great performance” to “great performance WITH great citizenship.”

Just as performance metrics help one understand how well productivity is going, values metrics are created to help one understand how healthy the organization’s culture is.

Leaders can change their organization’s culture by:

• Setting clear values standards, in the form of behaviorally defined values.
• Directing, supporting, coaching and delegating as required.
• Measuring values progress and demonstration.
• Celebrating values progress and demonstration.

Creating clear performance standards enables leaders to proactively manage performance. Creating clear values standards enables leaders to proactively manage their desired culture.

(*) S. Chris Edmonds is a speaker, an author and a senior consultant with The Ken Blanchard Cos. He co-authored Blanchard’s book “Leading at a Higher Level,” Blanchard’s award-winning culture-change process and the book “#POSITIVITY AT WORK Tweet.”Edmonds also authored the book “#CORPORATE CULTURE Tweet.” Subscribe to his leadership and culture blog at Driving Results Through Culture.

GW’s Research Ranking Climbs into Top 100

The George Washington University nearly doubled R&D expenditures in FY2010, jumping 34 spots on list

GW has risen into the nation’s top 100 colleges and universities in terms of funding spent on research and development projects, according to new data from the National Science Foundation.

The university’s R&D expenditures from all funding sources—which include grants and contracts from federal, state and local governments, industry, nonprofits, and GW’s internal resources—increased by 97 percent, to $196,917,000 in the 2010 fiscal year over the previous year.

The boost elevated GW to No. 99, up from No. 133, which amounted to the third-largest jump on the list among the top 150 schools. In total, the list includes more than 600 institutions.

GW’s R&D expenditures funded from federal sources only—which include agencies and departments like the NSF, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education—increased by more than a third over the previous year, to $122,357,000. On that list, GW rose to No. 92, up from No. 109.

Expenditures, which represent actual money spent from grants and other resources, are a key measurement of an institution’s research activity.

GW Vice President for Research Leo Chalupa said the jump in the NSF ranking offered “another clear indication that GW is well on its way to realizing President Knapp’s plan of becoming one of the nation’s top research universities.”

According to the Office of the Vice President for Research, the university’s individual awards with the largest research expenditures in the 2010 fiscal year came from the GW Biostatistics Center, which acts as a coordinating center for large-scale clinical trials and epidemiologic studies; and awards focused on HIV and health policy through the School of Public Health and Health Services and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Dr. Chalupa said he expects research expenditures will continue to increase in the long term, particularly with the completion in late-2014 of GW’s new Science and Engineering Hall. The nearly half-million-square-foot teaching and research facility will include state-of-the-art labs that promise to reshape the landscape for GW investigators.

Those will include a three-story-tall "high bay" that will facilitate research on safer and more earthquake-resistant bridges and buildings, among other projects. Plans call for the vast glass-walled lab—visible to passersby on the street—to have reinforced floor and wall spaces capable of withstanding intense horizontal and vertical loads, a dedicated loading dock, and a crane capable of toting 20 tons of material.

The building also will house a 3,600-square-foot greenhouse for teaching and research projects, with a focus on plant-herbivore interactions and the role of plants in developing a more sustainable economy.

And a growing slate of physicists, chemists, biologists and engineers are anticipating the building’s lab for nano-scale research. The lab will be housed in a specially-built "clean room," where particles like dust and dead skin cells are filtered out, since they dwarf projects at the nano-level. The tidiest areas of the lab will contain no more than 100 particles larger than 0.5 microns—roughly half the width of a red blood cell—per cubic foot of air.

GEORGE WASHINGTON TODAY

Division of External Relations
2121 Eye Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
Phone: (202) 994-1000

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Aligning People with Business Strategy

March 20 2012 by Jennifer Pellet And C.J Prince

Dick Flanagan, Emmet Keefe, Lars Bjork, Christine Jacobs

Dick Finnegan

CEO, C-Suite Analytics

Founder and President, The Retention Institute

“How important is retaining and engaging your teams? On a one-to-ten scale most of you would probably say ten. But while managers are held really accountable for [sales or revenue] metrics, they’re not held so accountable for retention and engagement. Yet 70 percent of how engaged your people are and whether or not they stay is about their boss— not about HR or employee programs. If you want to change your company to make retention and engagement metrics important, to drive them down to the first-line supervisor level, enforce them with reports that have names and tie outcomes to bonuses. Convert turnover percentages and engagement scores to the language we all know—dollars— so that now they’re really meaningful in your company.”

Emmet Keefe

CEO and Co-Founder, iRise

“The single biggest challenge for CEOs around alignment is how do you get business and technology people aligned and communicating and marching in this direction of automating business process and generating new things that will affect the top line? That’s huge because you have a fundamental communication problem between business and IT stakeholders; and as a CEO, if you’re going to really automate the business, drive it forward, make it more profitable, make the top line better, somehow you have to get the IT and business folks aligned.”

Lars Bjork

CEO, Qlik Tech

“What it all comes down to is you’ve got to motivate people. Why do they come to work? How can you assure yourself that they will come back to work the next day? Payment is not the No. 1 driver for young people today. It is feeling motivated, being engaged, making sure that they can contribute to the overall cause of the company, doing something that’s meaningful to them—which could well be financial success, but I don’t think that’s the sole driver.”

M. Christine Jacobs

CEO, Theragenics

“If I’d say anything based on my experience [maintaining alignment though a massive strategic shift that involved reorganizing and downsizing], it would be don’t you dare delegate this. Don’t let the HR people say, ‘I can do it for you, Chris.’ No, they can’t. You have to sit with the folks. You have to not delegate away your messaging to your people, because they are going to need you at that moment. I followed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and I said, I’m going to change the company; this is how I’m going to change it; and here’s how it affects you. I spent the majority of my time on the employees, because I felt these folks were the most important to the long-term success in transforming the company into a diversified medical device company.”

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