What we're thinking

Highly recommended for anyone involved in creating, evaluating, selling or buying creative work.  It’s great to read the views of someone who has done the job, won awards and all fairly recently.  There are some real nuts and bolts, basic things to get right, such as emphasising selling the client’s product or service when you’re… Read more

How do you know if someone’s performance is up to the mark?  Here’s a clue: it delivers against objectives.  No more, no less.  Simple, innit?  Well it would be, if only people could write clear objectives.  SMART goals.  Something for someone to aim at that is actionable, measurable and describes a result rather than a… Read more

Recent research by online learning provider Citrix GoToTraining suggests that employees value provision of training – even though many are unhappy with the training they get. Main gripes: Thankfully, my company doesn’t get involved in compulsory, irrelevant training (though maybe there’s an opportunity…to do it right), and content is updated regularly. Feedback is what keeps… Read more

Here’s a pet rant: learning objectives that begin with ‘understand’ or ‘know’. Yeah right, people will just ‘know’ the stuff they’re being trained on. How will we know they know? How will we be able to tell they understand? What will be the signs? What will be better, different? How will an impartial observer be… Read more

According to the National Employers Skills Survey of almost 80,000 employers, published by the Learning & Skills Council, £38bn a year is spent on training.  Now, as that figure was published in May 2008, it’s reasonable to guess that maybe, just maybe, training budgets have taken a bit of a hit recently.  Even so, we’re… Read more