Are you a small business owner? Maybe these will help
11 Jun 2010 2 Comments
in Bespoke learning solutions, Business growth, Excel, Small business, Technology, Training
I have often thought how difficult it is as a small business owner to simply get started. You are expected to be the master (or mistress) of all trades, effortlessly managing your business communications, marketing, financial functions, and, these days, your social media presence too.
Exhausting.
Particularly if you are not really sure where to start, and – most importantly – are looking for a cost effective solution that doesn’t mean days away from the function of actually running your business.
I work closely with a number of other small business owners, mostly in the training industry, building trusted networks and referral strategies – if you follow me on Twitter (@lightningtrain), you’ll know how active we are.
I’m always pleased to collaborate with other businesses who share the same approach and attitude towards providing great learning, and so the last few weeks have been exciting as I’ve worked with a good friend, and training colleague, Paula Jones at Sixth Level.
Between us, we have put together a two day Small Business Workshop programme, running across two days in July, which we hope will help address the issues we both experienced when we started our own training companies (all those years ago!!).
Paula and I have known each other for some years now. It’s always fun to work with someone who is also your mate. Even if in our case we pretty much keep Starbucks in profit in York and Harrogate. And buy lots of shoes.
But I digress.
Part of growing your own business means getting out there and stepping out of your comfort zone. We want to help small business owners use our expertise across a range of practical skills to get their businesses growing too. By creating this, the first in a series of workshops we want to roll out this year, we really hope we can share and spread our knowledge.
So, if you are interested, I’ve attached an information sheet about the 5 workshops we are running. And a link to our events listing where you can book a place.
We both have our fingers (and toes) crossed – the initial reaction to our pre-marketing has been really positive. Feedback is always welcome – I really hope to see some of you there in Harrogate at the end of next month.
Small Business Workshops with Sixth Level
Small Business Workshop Events, Lightning Training & Sixth Level
Project Management
06 Apr 2010 1 Comment
in Bespoke learning solutions, Project, Project Management, Technology, Training
I’m delivering some Project 2003 training tomorrow. It got me thinking. For the first time, a client is embracing the blended content concept by asking for some project management training, along with some essential planning skills using Microsoft Project (other project planning tools are available).
I’ve really enjoyed putting their learning package together, making reference to using great social media tools like twitter (@lightningtrain) to encourage up to the minute communication between team members, using the power of diary management to coordinate tasks and who is carrying them out, along with the nuts and bolts skills of using planning software to keep track of it all.
This is great. I hope it catches on! In the meantime – help yourself to this handy tipsheet regarding using MS Project with other office applications – although I wrote this nearly 10 years ago, the skills are still relevant, and they work! Using MS Project with other applications
Working from home – the reality.
15 Mar 2010 2 Comments
in Bespoke learning solutions, Home, RAF, Technology, Training
Everyone I know who doesn’t do this usually says to me ‘Oh you lucky thing’, or ‘Oh, yes ‘working’ from home’, with a heavy dollop of sarcasm attached to the word working. Or I get the knowing look that means ‘yeah right, you spend your entire day shopping on the internet’.
The key word here is ‘working’, and then the assumptions that people make when you tell them you do this from somewhere other than a traditional office.
In this technological age there are very few reasons why working from home cannot be an effective and efficient way to run a business or carry out your role.
Rapidly improving wireless technology and broadband are putting paid to turning your laptop on half an hour before you need to do anything, or having to have bulky great printers cluttering up the place. Scanners can now be so small you can fit them in your briefcase, along with similarly sized projectors. Just visithttp://www.takeware.co.uk/ReceiptAngel/ and have a look to see what I mean.
There are environmental positives to working from home – not least of which not adding to the daily grind of traffic, in my case blocking up the A19 & A64 around York.
Working from home is hard work in ways that some people don’t appreciate. It is very difficult to absent yourself competely from the domestic trivia that surrounds you, the piles of washing/dirty crockery/ironing/grocery shopping or whatever that form 70% of my other job, being Mrs Whyatt.
It is also difficult to switch off. But I try hard to find a balance between wanting to grow my business and having a relationship with my husband, even if I do want to check email at 11pm at night.
There are other down sides. Like the sense of isolation that can creep up on you unexpectedly, or the frustrations that come from having lots to do, and sometimes nobody to talk over how you are going to do it. However, I have found being part of Twitter invaluable in this. Not only can I keep in touch with existing colleagues, who keep my spirits up and offer advice and guidance, but I create new relationships through this platform too.
In my case, there are many personal positives for choosing to run my business from a home office as opposed to a more traditional option.
My unique challenges when working from home are my ‘staff’ (two elderly lady cats and a year old golden retriever), and the fact that I live just by the end of the runway at an RAF flying training base. Both of which make conference calls in particular especially tricky.
I have to plan my time accordingly and attempt to only call clients when the flying programme is taking a break – but then find myself removing a grumpy cat from my keyboard, or a filthy chewed item of what was clean laundry from the dog in the middle of the call anyway. On one memorable occasion, when delivering an online webcast for the Institute of IT Training recently, one of the cats tried to jump on my lap, missed, and drove her claws squarely into my bottom. Not quite in the script.
Apart from that (!) I find basing myself at home incredibly beneficial to my state of mind and productivity.
I am able to keep my costs down significantly and can pass that benefit onto my clients.
I can focus on a task and give it all my attention – brilliant when planning or carrying out routine tasks.
Great technology allows me to do pretty much everything that I would in a ‘normal’ office, and being close to York means I can get around the UK via public transport pretty quickly.
So if my only distractions are of the purring, panting and pilot variety, I think I am doing pretty well, and feel overall, my unique challenges ultimately enhance my workplace by making me work effectively and efficiently to cope with them.
Training Needs Analysis – Why bother?
05 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Bespoke learning solutions, Excel, Intermediate, Survey Monkey, TNA, Training, Training Needs Analysis
If you are looking to really give your clients a good return on their training investment, you need to be sure that you are giving them what they need, as opposed to what they think they need.
Perceived and actual skills are often very, very different. The classic example is the daily Excel user who carries out a few tasks every day, but never creates a calculation or a formula. To put this user directly onto an intermediate course, ‘because they are using Excel’ is a bit like putting me in a Formula One car just because I can drive.
However, mention a Training Needs Analysis and your clients can often react in the same way that people do to finding a spider in the bath. Some shriek. Some ignore it and hope it will go away. Some frantically try to drown it back down the plughole.
A well designed and delivered TNA is not something to be scared of. If you take the time to plan and construct easily accessible surveys, you can create a powerful tool in your training arsenal.
Ideally, a TNA should not be something you use to generate revenue – but should be a service you provide your clients to make sure they are getting the best from you. You can also think of it as a roadmap to assist your clients to make the right choices about the services you offer.
By using an online survey, you can make the whole process a lot less personal.
Applications training is a bit of a minefield. Adding egos to the problem can make it very difficult to explain that you don’t feel the delegates you are discussing are suitable for an advanced course, even if your client is telling you they are experts.
When working with clients who are looking for a blend of training options, I can also use these online surveys to determine prospective delegates attitudes towards learning, what their ideal learning styles are, and produce reasoned proposals for consideration rather than just offering ‘off the shelf’ solutions.
For example, if a client is considering running Presentation Skills training, I’ll suggest putting the delegates through a PowerPoint TNA. I can then offer a customised learning solution that encompasses the manual skills of putting a presentation together, with the professional presenting skills to make sure it is used effectively. The same applies with Project Managment. An online survey which determines the skills that are missing when using Microsoft Project, allows me to suggest a training programme which covers aspects of project management, and the elements of using project planning software.
Using an online TNA to focus on checking actual knowledge rather than assumed knowledge can give you a report that allows you to align the skills gaps you identify with the training you offer. The TNA’s I use can be anonymous – although I prefer to get the delegates to at least use their names to allow for easier reporting afterwards.
I use Survey Monkey to present and deliver the Online Training Needs Analysis surveys that are on offer to my clients. The surveys can be customised to suit specific job requirements, product knowledge, skills or even to support the rollout of new technology in the workplace. I use them as part of my training provision to make sure that any new enquiries for training can be discussed with a benchmark of a TNA report behind them.
Delivered via an email invitation or weblink, these surveys can be completed at a time to suit the individual, meaning less disruption for the client, and no tedious printing and collating of paper TNAs. I generally follow them up once or twice in the TNA period to try and get as many responses as I can. All of the surveys for the applications training side of my business are aligned with Microsoft Certification – removing the personal aspect, and relieving any concerns that they are not just questions I made up whilst lying in the bath.
All of the data is then gathered into spreadsheets, and a customised report summarises the results.
My goal when using the survey is to provide my clients with a valuable tool to help create a comprehensive training program within their company – whether they want one day, or one year’s worth of training, it allows me to make recommendations based on knowledge based questions – not a tick list of meaningless options such as ‘Do you use Absolute Cell References – Y/N’.
By using a TNA process to create bespoke solutions to training needs – I can focus on designing programmes which provide the essential plugs for the skills gaps, and the next steps to improve knowledge and efficiency.
I want my clients to get the best training I can give them, and I firmly believe that a TNA helps me do that. Simples!
