business Archives - Keystone Development and Training Ltd

Effective training doesn’t have to be boring!!

November 26, 2018Blogbusiness, design, management, OD, talent, training

I can say with confidence that the Johnson’s Apparelmaster Academy is a highly effective training programme. Not only did it win the Personnel Today award for Talent Management on 21st November 2018, but the feedback from delegates offers plenty of proof. When Keystone Development and Training Ltd had finished delivering our part of the Academy, I asked for feedback. here are just some of the things that people said: I am more efficient when dealing with problems. People now trust me to sort things out. This has given me so much confidence in my ability. I now feel able to step outside of my comfort zone. Because of the training, I was able to bring an angry and disruptive (but very influential) team member on board to implement a necessary change. My line manager has seen my confidence grow and now gives me more strategic work to do. I’ve been able to adapt my management style and achieve 180% of our target. I am now able to get my production team to work as a team – which is quite an achievement. And in terms of the style and content of the programme, I’m delighted that our brain-friendly approach to…

How to Create an Award Winning Development Programme

November 22, 2018Uncategorizedbespoke, business, coaching, design, HR, management, managers, OD, performance, talent, training, training design

In L&D circles, the fashion is for agile learning; for bite-size sessions, or even micro-learning; for self-direction and curation. Surely no-one still attends workshops? Even worse, 18 month programmes? Well. Yes they do, and there’s a reason for it: They work. They work AS LONG AS the right people are on the programme in the first place, the programme is designed to take them on a development journey, AND those people are given high levels of support and challenge. I’m delighted to have played a supporting role in such a programme for the last 9 months – The award winning Academy at Johnson’s Apparelmaster. The Academy is multi-layered (internal) development programme that I’ve been supporting for the last 9 months. Here I am (on the right) with (L-R) Charlene Howard, Michela Deegan and Jan Fisher-Payne who each manage and deliver a specific stream. I have been supporting the largest group – the Intermediate level. Although my part has ended, the Academy is just half-way through. Twenty-Four people have been through 9 months of structured development, including self-directed learning, five 2-day workshops, telephone coaching and practical assignments. So far, the results have been pretty impressive. I’ve seen the majority of these…

World of Learning – L&D as Change Makers

October 21, 2018Uncategorizedbusiness, HR, managers

This is a short blog post based on the notes I made during this session at the World of Learning Conference in October 2018. It may not be complete or totally accurate – it’s just what I took away. Melanie Lepine talked about the VUCA environments that we all operate in, and what this means for the skills our leaders need, including commercial acumen, resilience, emotional intelligence, curiosity and creativity and cognitive agility. This has an impact for L&D. Again themes of curation, blended learning, agile learning and connecting people came through, as did the importance of demonstrating the value that L&D adds – not just to senior managers but also to the people you want to embark on learning. She suggested that to drive change from within L&D we need to: Connect people and with people… AND engage in PR in our own organisations! Link and label content – find/create great contact and explain how it adds value Hold up the mirror to ourselves Be pro-active – don’t wait to be asked by the business for a solution Be agile – we shouldn’t be driven or bound by rigid processes Know what metrics matter to the organisation and deliver…

Bring WHY to life to unlock performance

August 13, 2018Uncategorizedbusiness, performance, training

Last week, I was involved with the #LostCastles project – where giant carboard castles were built across the region and on display for one weekend only. There are LOADS of learning points I could share from this experience around planning, teamwork and communication but instead, I’m going to focus on the importance of vision, and why HOW we communicate that matters. Early in the week, the volunteers were in a large room in the Town Hall making boxes – the ‘bricks’. It was fun for about 30 minutes, but after an hour it was dull. Then we (me and my kids) were asked to tape bricks together – that was surprising hard work and after another hour, we were bored again. We could see other people making more complex shapes and we wanted a part of it, but these people already knew what to do and they didn’t really need any more. We’d been shown the diagrams of how the castle would look, and a very interesting video showing the construction of a castle elsewhere. This was great, and we tried to keep it in mind, but the fact is, we were just making bricks. Yes – there is a…

The Secret Benefit of being a Bespoke Training Designer

March 26, 2018Uncategorizedbespoke, business, design, OD, training, training design

In my last blog, I questioned whether bespoke training was always the right thing to offer. Creating programmes especially for a client, reflecting their culture, structure, language and good practice means that there is always the danger that boundaries aren’t being pushed. BUT, pushing boundaries isn’t always what’s needed. Often, we need to share good practice and help people to achieve high standards (which have been agreed) across the whole organisation, and that’s where bespoke training really adds value. As a bespoke training designer, I need to really get to know the business to do this – recently I’ve been getting to grips with Industrial laundry. It also means working closely with the internal L&D team and taking a steer from them about what should be included. And this is where I benefit personally. If I was a typical training provider, I would have a handful of set courses that I was an expert in, and clients would select the workshops (or programme) that they felt best meets their needs. If I’m selling a set programme, it’s set. I would deliver the same thing over and over, reinforcing my expertise in these areas, yet having no incentive to diversify. Any…

Training Design – More than just a typing job

February 26, 2018Uncategorizedbusiness, design, training, training design

I attend a lot of networking events, and often find myself explaining what it is that I actually DO for clients and trainers. Clearly I need to work on my communication skills because people assume that I’m some sort of programmer, creating sophisticated e-learning packages. I can just about manage social networking platforms, and am one of the least IT literate people I know!. Or, when I describe that I create live training sessions, I’m told “Our administrator does that for us”. I then have to politely explain that “No, they don’t”. What you administrator does is prepare your training materials. This is quite different from designing training. I am not a typist. My typing skills are average. I’m competent in the use of Word and PowerPoint, but I’m no whizz, but that’s not what my service is about. Indeed, I sometimes employ graphic designers and typesetters myself. I am a degree-level educated person with over 20 years experience of learning and development in commercial environments. People don’t use me (or my associates) to do a typing job for them, they employ me to create a coherent, robust learning and development solution to address a specific business need, that can be…

One simple status update… HUGE learning

February 4, 2018Uncategorizedbusiness, HR, OD, training

I’m a member of a social media group for independent trainers and small training businesses. It’s a fabulous group: very active, very supportive and very helpful. It seemed to me that lots of people were posting successes and small wins, so I posted something a long the lines of “Everyone seems to having a great start to the year”. Boy oh boy, did that open the flood gates! I have since deleted the (what turned out to be a) contentious statement and taken from it two very important learning points. Something I should (perhaps) have thought about as I am in the L&D field. One is around communication and one is around team work. Let’s explore the communication issues first: My simple statement included a massive generalisation and a massive assumption: “Everyone” and “Great Start”. The group comprises over 100 people, yet I had based my post on the updates of perhaps 20 people at most. So, not everyone: Everyone who has posted recently. Of course, people who didn’t have great news to share or specific questions to ask/challenges to discuss didn’t post anything – the silent majority. “Great start” is very subjective. The more established members of the group…

Divided by Digital Learning

November 21, 2017Uncategorizedbusiness, OD

There’s an item in the news today about how the elderly are feeling increasingly alienated in the high street. The introduction of self-serve checkouts, automated ordering points and lack of seating mean that shopping isn’t the social experience it once was. The modern high street doesn’t meet their needs, so they are starting to stay away. That’s a shame because the elderly form a significant part of our population, they have money to spend (if we make it easy for them) and more than that, we will all be elderly one day! It’s a similar story with digital learning. Everything I’ve read or listened to this year has been about making learning digital and instantly accessible. People want learning via an app on their smartphone; we can use virtual reality to simulate real life; ‘everyone’ accesses YouTube every day to learn something. Well I don’t. This is partially down to preference – I prefer to learn via other people, whether that’s formally on a workshop, or (more likely) informally via a conversation, group discussion, unconference or social media chat…all happening live and in ‘real time’, so I have some input into the learning. But mostly it’s down to the technology…

Groundhog Day at the CIPD Annual Conference

November 9, 2017Uncategorizedbusiness, HR, management, managers, OD, training

Today I popped along to the exhibition and free seminars at the CIPD conference in Manchester. I go most years, and to be honest, I have mixed feelings about it. This year was no different. On the plus side, it’s a great way to stay up to date with what the hot topics are, and thanks to twitter and the blog squad, you can get a lot of information from the key-note speeches without having to attend them. It’s also a good place to meet virtual contacts in person, and catch up with people you haven’t seen for a while. This year was no exception. On the down side, I’m getting fed up of hearing the same old things: We need to be more agile; we need to cater for millennials; we need to put the people back into people management; we need to use analytics; what can we do to be taken seriously by the Board? OK, things ARE moving forward, but it’s very slowly. There’s no doubt in my mind that HR people attend this conference for personal development and bench marking. They leave all fired up with ideas, armed with useful data to make their argument, and…

The Customer waits for the Fish

July 4, 2016Blogbespoke, business, OD, training, training design

On Friday, by some fluke of nature, both hubby and I were working at home. We decided to treat ourselves to fish and chips from the local chippy at lunchtime. I went in and placed the order “One large fish, chips and peas please” (It’s plenty for 2 – especially at lunchtime). Despite it being 12.30 and with no-one else in the shop, I was surprised when the cook started to batter up a fish to fry. “Haven’t you got any ready?” I asked. “No. I only cook them when they are ordered. The customer must wait for the fish. The fish doesn’t wait for a customer. That way they are fresh and crisp.” I was told. And I realised that I apply the same principles to my business. Recently I’ve been sent lots of training requests. All great opportunities, but none of which I can take advantage of. Each opportunity is like a shopping list: The vendor must have role/industry-specific experience The provider must have a course ready The ‘syllabus’ must meet XYZ standards The course must be accredited with this body or that body The course must cost X and be able to be delivered in Y town…

Tag: business

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