Jesse Freese
Many years ago I was working with Michael Krzmarcik and Best Buy to provide project management training. Mike was responsible for IT training and I’ll never forget the sign that Mike had hanging in his office. It said:
“Train them and they may leave, or don’t train them and they’ll stay.”
I really like the quote and have used it many times in front of classes, audiences and clients. But I rarely get any sense that the people I’m talking with appreciate the irony and comedy of the underlying message. This was recently reinforced when I was working with our graphics artist on a handout for our local International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) Chapter. Fissure had signed up to create some informative handouts to help Business Analysts (or anyone in a skilled position) justify training and attending conferences to their management. We were designing a main handout to include information on the more detailed handouts. Of course I wanted it to have a humorous aspect and had decided on the above quote. Needless to say the graphics artist didn’t get it until I explained the message in detail. Thinking back to my previous experiences in sharing the quote I decided Mike and I are just one of the few with that particular understanding and sense of humor. If most people don’t “get it” without great explanation, it is not going to work as a simple handout. As a result, we decided to go another direction with the handout.
The good thing that came out of the IIBA handout effort was some helpful tools for planning and justifying your career path development. You will find the following tools in this newsletter.
• 10 Steps to creating your Personal Development
Road Map
• Training justification letter
• Conference justification letter
• Calculating training ROI.
In working on the training justification handouts and watching the Olympics I was struck by how often we are asked to justify to management that spending money on our individual development will create a long-term benefit. I’m watching athletes that are investing 10 hour days for four years to shave a minimal % off their time, add another % difficulty to their routine, or a % more distance to their throw or jump. Now I realize that Olympic athletes are an extreme example, but no one questions their need for training and the associated investment. The question, which is the same question both business professionals and Olympic athletes need to answer is; will the desired training provide the process, tool and behavior changes required to produce the desired benefit/result? It’s easy to identify benefits, but will you actually receive and be able to apply those benefits to your work routine? Evaluate potential training not just on cost and topic, but also on how the training will actually help you start applying your new skills, tools and techniques in class and increase the likelihood of achieving benefits on the job.
We are working on expanding our presence on the social networking tools of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We will use all three networks to let you know about upcoming workshops and webinars, including workshop discounts.
To educate and guide us through the process we hired a recent college graduate, Nathan Plaunt. Nathan has done a great job and we are getting to the point where we need a little help from our friends.
Our upcoming public workshops and webinars can be found on our website: fissure.com.
Our computer simulation powered workshops are the most effective and fun way to learn AND EARN PDUs.
Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your 2012.
