Barack Obama, Workin

A few links on this beautiful Sunday:

• Problem Chylde parodies “Jack the Knife” after I tweeted: “@blogdiva Mr. [Rahm] Emanuel is really dedicated to his faith. But he def. believes in separation of church and state. And by state, we mean knife.”
• Bam’s got a little venom for the Barack-haters.
• JD does a good job of succinctly saying what many of us educator / skeptics felt about Barack.
• NYC Educator debunks you center-right propagators. Good read.
• Daily Intelligencer discusses the lesser-known stories of the election, including Palin coming out in a towel for official business. Whoops.
• Deadspin premieres Smooth LeBron kickin’ it (in more ways than one) to Nicole Scherzinger of Pussycat Dolls fame.
• I really can’t believe Barack took Michelle to go see Do The Right Thing on their first date. (Props to the Telegraph, UK)

Efficacy: (n) the power or capacity to produce a desired effect.

A theme we can’t seem to escape as the buzz of the election has somewhat died down is the idea of efficacy, and how we need to focus on results and “GTD” rather on the emotional aspect of things. Facebook may anger people with its constant redesigns and weird downtimes, but does it keep people connected? Yep. Even in this past presidential election, we notice that Barack Obama had these soaring speeches that helped galvanize his believers into buying into his system, but he really started to show gains in the polls when he toned it down in favor of boring policy. That’s when conservatives also started believing in the president-elect. That’s the difference between a blue-state plan and a 50-state plan. Come to think of it, his appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff is perfect because, although he’s feared, he also gets the presidents’ work done.

So now, when I think about the jobs we have, and how cluttered they can be, encumbered by dumb stuff like favoritism and bureaucracy, isn’t this the perfect time to getting real results? And I don’t mean taking some numbers, putting them in an Excel spreadsheet, and changing the scales until it actually makes it say what you want, but real and authentic results. That’s the movement, and that’s what I’m trying to learn.

Question: in your place of employ right now, what would make you more effective in any of the roles you take on? Whether you’re a teacher teaching children or a human resource person trying to make the job easier, I’d like to know.

Just as an example of things that might make it simpler to work:

• Better professional development
• Supportive environment
• Better time management
• More efficient ways of data management

How about you? What would help you get better results at your job?

jose, who loves inspiring others to set up their own blogs …