How to – Create Your Own Training Plan Without a proactive plan, training programs become reactive. It’s not great for business to un around putting our fires rather than providing employees with ideas about how to prevent little and big blazes.

Whether the needs are micro (one person's needs, or a small population) or macro (large group of employees, or an entire population within a job classification) they must be recognized, and more importantly, be met. Early recognition requires no crystal ball. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, what you are looking for may be in your own back yard, provided if you keep your eyes open and you pick up the signals.

Basic signals about training needs come from monitoring the ongoing operation. Signals about micro training needs are pursued by using further inquiry and analysis with the manager of the potential trainees and the participants themselves. Signals about macro training needs of the organization are validated by further inquiry in the form of surveys and interviews. New signals which come from the surveys and interviews are validated by reference to the "hard data" from the operational monitoring. To be most effective in needs assessment, you must be consistently aware of the signals transmitted. But you have to know where to look and recognize what you see.

Signal Sources:

New Facilities or Expansion of Facilities
Signals hiring new people for new positions.

New Products or New Equipment
Signals either implementation of new technology or amending current technology.
May signal new positions and/or new people.

Regular Management Reports:
Ongoing report to management measure production, warehousing, inventory problems, trends in turnover - a whole array of things that should cause us to ask if human performance might be the cause. Discover what the bosses say they need to manage the company.

Special Reports and Requests:
These usually focus on future plans, shifting priorities, problem areas, successes and failures. Many will involve human performance and potential inadequate human performance inventories.

Reorganization:
Mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, work redesign, or a shift in priorities give clear signals that employees will need assistance in transition, minimizing resistance, maintaining productivity and in assuring clear and credible communications.

Change in Standards/Laws:
Such revisions indicate that large numbers of people need to be informed. Incumbents need to know about the changes, understand the reasoning behind the transition so they can accept it more easily and respond effectively.

Trends:
A signal for training needs in the population.

New Policies:
New policies usually mean new expectations - both by employees and employers. How will they hear about new policies and new expectations?

If an intelligent use of these signals is made, then you can avoid "putting out fires". You can be proactive, rather than reactive. You can solve potential problems before they become actual performance problems. Offer good training programs before damaging deficiencies occur.

A nationally recognized management development training consultant, speaker and author, Joni Daniels is Principal of Daniels & Associates, provides solutions to training needs and conducts programs on personal and professional development. As a Consultant to Fortune 500 companies, she has successfully addressed a variety of audiences, written a wide range of articles on professional issues, serves as a resource for business publications, TV, and radio. Joni is frequently quoted on management topics and is the author of “POWER TOOLS FOR WOMEN®: Plugging into the Essential Skills for Life and Work,” (Three Rivers Press, 02/02) and, Reach her at www.jonidaniels.com

Labels: Training

  1:06 PM •  0 Comments •

How to - Maintain Solid Footing When Change Occurs There are some significant trends that create an impact in every workplace. It’s important to recognize and understand the trends in order to use them to your advantage or to avoid letting them derail your career plans.

• Technology – Every media outlet advertises the encroaching tentacles of the Internet and technology. It certainly seems to be evolving into a dot-com world. Many people are logged on to the Internet, tracking data on their Palm Pilots, speaking into mobile phones, plugging into Ipods, and using new acronyms that sound like alphabet soup.

• Changing Business Landscape – Mergers, acquisitions and start-ups create new companies, morph old companies, and some companies disappear from sight completely, never to be heard from again. Companies tank, rise like a phoenix from the ashes and reinvent themselves on a daily basis, in an effort to stay viable and competitive.

• Career Development – Not so long ago, career development was fostered by the place where you worked. Today you are on your own when it comes to learning and development. The ability to promote yourself as a solution to a company’s problem is more critical today than how you will grow and develop with them. The message seems to be –“produce on our time, learn on your own.”

What You Need

As these trends shake things up, there are a few key skills that will help you keep your footing and thrive in the changing workplace:

Lifelong Learning – The ability to obtain and understand new skills is one of the most useful abilities you can have. A demonstration of your willingness to keep up with the evolving world can be in the form of taking a class, keeping current on recent publications, and attending professional meetings and seminars.

Navigate Your Own Career – Make sure you are able to communicate what you have done, can do, won’t do, and want to do. Your ability to handle autonomy can be seen as initiative. The old paradigm of being shepherded through your career is gone. It’s replaced by the new reality that says “no one cares about your career as much as you do,” so tend to your own development and growth.

Promote Yourself – Your work does not speak for itself. Success is often a combination of what you know, whom you know, who knows you, and who knows about you. Get the word out.

Flexibility –Your ability to change and to make transitions efficiently is a very attractive commodity. Being able to maintain your motivation and prevent paranoia, as things evolve, creates an appealing energy that employers look for.

Labels: Career development, self promotion

  4:04 PM •  0 Comments •

How to – Ensure that New Leaders Do Not Fail Even though it is rarely stated, expectations are high when an organization hires a new leader. But studies indicate that 60% of new leaders fail within 18 months of taking their jobs.

New executives respond to the pressure of being new by doing more of what made them successful in the past, but the skills and knowledge that got them to the new level are not the ones that area now needed.

What do New Leaders need now?

If you are a New Leader, you need to build a presence at the personal, team and organizational levels.


• A Personal Presence -- Rather than rely on technical and functional skills, exude confidence that you can contribute to the next level. Rather than go until you hit the wall, this is the time to renew your energy and get a different perspective; connect with diverse stakeholders; tune into the diverse needs of the organization.

• A Team Presence -- Rely on the team and not on yourself. Delegate effectively by defining what needs to be done, not how to do it. Accept accountability for many results

• An Organizational Presence -- Look left and right (not up and down) as you lead. Strengthen your peripheral vision and know what your peers are doing. Meet with everyone on your new executive team to understand who they are and where they are. Learn their history. Establish yourself as an equal player at the table. Show that you now have an inside perspective of your function which means that it’s business first, function second. It’s time to think strategically. Be aware that you are being watched and are expected to make a significant and bigger impact on a regular basis.

Labels: leadership

  10:11 AM •  0 Comments •