News>Bite-Size Training

Preliminary report into the Bite Size Training module we, in London Region, have started in response to the answers from a region wide survey prepared by Paul, collated by Heather.

The delegates were from a variety of companies and were predominantly “Young professionals”, which was one of the aims of the exercise. It was to be accessible in both time and monetary terms, as it was assumed that in today’s tough trading situation many companies would not release personnel or pay their fees. Three members of the London Region committee were present, and another nine delegates, supported by two from the CPD Dept from Corby.

The driving force behind the project was to provide a ready made, easily accessible form of training that was not sector specific, and would help our younger professional members get a better Life-Work balance. There are plans to offer other units in the future- Watch This Space!

The session was arranged and provided by Red Ochre (www.redochre.org.uk) with the agreement of Head Office at Corby. It is accepted as part of the CPD portfolio and any requests or queries may be directed through Corby or directly to Red Ochre.

The session started at 14.00 hrs, and after the normal formal introduction Uday began the unit on Personal action Plans.

The object of this being to establish where you intend to be in X (Months, Years) time, where you are now, and then attempt to plan milestones on the route. Many people have a very organised approach to this in their working environment, but ignore their private needs.

In creating a route to personal development, one becomes a more rounded individual and ultimately more employable! A number of short exercises involved marking various “life style” criteria out of ten. These marks were then transferred to a “life balance” wheel, and the points joined up. A perfectly balanced life would result in a regular circle, most were flat tyres or multi-pointed stars!

The point of all this was to establish where you are at this point in time, the next exercise was to map the route to where you would like to be. By selecting two or three important (to you) areas, action plans could be made in small incremental stages, each within an acceptable time frame and each with its own success criteria.

A further exercise was available for careers areas, but time constraints meant that this was left for delegates to complete in their own time.

After tea and biscuits, we started on the Time management unit.

This started with the premise that you would be given £1,440 each day. It couldn’t be saved, transferred, banked or altered in any way, just spent! Sounds good? But how long could you keep it up?

1,440, the number of minutes in a day, and they cannot be “managed” but you can learn to use those minutes more efficiently!

The top time wasters are:

• Meetings
• Communication from others
• Communication to others
• Micromanagement by your boss
• Company processes which comply with the company rather than doing the job efficiently.

Again, exercises were introduced to show how “time audits” can show where time is being wasted by bad habits.

One should learn to say “No” more often. When asked to carry out a task, ask ”Why” up to five times, it could save everyone time and trouble.

One of the most beneficial exercises was the Cash-in model for information (particularly emails)

• CURRENT Current projects/Workload
• ACTION What action is required?
• SUCCESS What will success look like?
• HOW How do I get things done? tools/support
• What’s in it for Me? What’s in it for Me?

Reading emails for 2 hours per day will WASTE 18 days (of your life) each year.

When writing emails use the Cash-in model and keep them short. To be effective all relevant information should be within the first 100 – 150 words!

Learn to terminate tedious telephone conversations that are going nowhere! Stand up to give emphasis to your words, it works.

The last exercise was a simple matrix to help one prioritise tasks, with a flow chart to help you decide where to place the difficult tasks.

One point that came out of the afternoon was that when you succeed you should pat yourself on the back. Reward is a very underrated motivator.

Altogether a very interesting afternoon and one that I would have appreciated about 50 years ago!

There were a few other comments from other delegates but the two most interesting were:-

…”Inspirational” and ”Run it again, my whole company could benefit from this I’m sure”

Graham Walker, prime mover behind the event, and myself will be holding discussions over the next couple of weeks and hope to have another training event available before Easter.

This will be a valuable addition to the benefits that we are able to offer our members in the future.

Author Sid Foster, Chairman, London Region