Practical tips. Prompts to get you thinking. The odd rant.

Something that’s been vexing me recently is how hard it is for companies to get a full turnout for training courses. You’d think that, given the continuing economic hardship that employers and employees are experiencing, if someone is given the opportunity of attending a training workshop, they’d be there. Yet we keep seeing and hearing… Read more

Oooh, now there’s a question – should you take a personality test? What if you failed?!? Let’s get one thing straight: you already have a personality, and if you complete an assessment of it, you may get some useful insights. And yes, there are books and websites that will claim they can help you ‘pass’… Read more

The best way to work effectively with your project’s different stakeholders is to first of all find out their expectations, what works (and doesn’t) for them. You may think you already know this, because a) you’ve worked with this person before on a different project, or b) you’ve worked with their colleague who does a… Read more

Even the word can provoke anxiety attacks in some quarters; in others it may be met with a slightly baffled, “Don’t have ‘em round here”. Or maybe the term seems somewhat quaint, officialese, and ‘big organisation’ to you. Fact is that whatever sector you’re working in, size and shape of organisation, and yes, even if… Read more

Scope creep is a rare term for those unfamiliar with project management lingo: it means exactly what it says. So you scope out a project: what, how many, by when, for how much, from whom and so on. Then other stuff creeps in – if you let it. The savvy project manager doesn’t let scope… Read more

Here’s a cute quote from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s latest Employee Outlook survey: “There is a significant contrast between how managers say they manage people and the views of employees toward their managers.” (it’s on page 9 under ‘people management practice’). Hmmm. Do you meet each person you manage on a weekly basis?… Read more

OK, I’m confused. According the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD)’s latest Learning and Talent Development survey, 46% of their 700+ respondents put coaching in their top three most effective learning and development practices (note this is down from 53% last year). And when asked what three talent management activities their organisation used which were… Read more

OK, so you’ve started creeping round the web, you’ve watched a few videos of professors explaining strategy, checked out some different resources (and if you haven’t done any of the above, check out Part 1, then come back). Maybe you’ve chewed through the business section of your weekend newspaper – well done. Now you want… Read more

This is something I’ve been hearing a lot lately. For people who’ve found themselves working in a highly commercial, entrepreneurial environment, yet whose further education was anything but commercial, this can be a tough one. Watching reality TV shows featuring people in suits might be entertaining, but it won’t really fill the gaps. (It’s also… Read more

So if the UK isn’t as productive as it could be (according to the Office of National Statistics, UK GDP per worker fell relative to all the other G7 countries except Italy and Germany), and yet we’re seeing continued investment (albeit reduced in some sectors) in training, what’s going on? I think there are several… Read more