At a recent Igniting Performance SpeedTraining Workshop we had an interesting discussion about the place of strengths-based development in organisations.  You know the theory – that generally we spend too much time and resources focusing on ‘correcting’ our weaknesses (usually things that we are never going to be that good at anyway), rather than identifying, and then further developing, our true strengths and talents – and finding a way to use these more in our work (and life). read more »

‘Generation Y’, the collective name given to those people born approximately between 1982 and 2002, are the fastest growing sector in the world of work. By 2018 they will make up the majority of the workforce. They are confident; know what they want; are challenging and want to be fulfilled. They are happy to multi-task, collaborate; and communicate constantly and concurrently via smart phones, texts, instant messaging and social media networks etc.

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I’ve read with interest the debate over the last two weeks in the Sunday Times, “Entrepreneurs: born or made?”.  The debate centres on whether people with entrepreneurial skills are born with those skills, or can they be ‘made’.

Entrepreneurs seem keen to preserve their exclusive status. They believe they have innate skills, attributes and even, what Ken Burgess (of Sportsunite) describes as, a “special spirit”. Their view is that no-one else can simply learn these skills. Others, such as Nadia Finer co- founder of ‘More to Life than Shoes’, insist entrepreneurs are made. Andrew Hirst, senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University perhaps takes a more balanced view: he is quoted (Sunday Times, 11/7/10) as believing, “entrepreneurs are both born and made”.

What we notice in the organisations we work with read more »

It’s Adult Learners Week this week, championed by the Campaign for Learning, with the national Learning at Work Day  (LAW) falling on Thursday 20th May 2010. SpeedTraining is joining in the campaign by offering free access to our specially designed Time Management resources on SpeedTraining Online.

There is a wider question here: how do we motivate ourselves to really engage in our own learning? And, more broadly, how do we harness the motivation of other people, particularly those who have not been involved in formal learning for a long time, or just feel under-confident about their own abilities? read more »

National Learning at Work Day 2010 will take place on 20 May this year. The Day is about workplaces making a public commitment to learning and skills by holding events and activities for their employees.

Learning at Work Day has been run by the Campaign for Learning since 1999 as part of Adult Learners’ Week. They believe: ”it is more important than ever that workplaces and individuals maintain and develop their skills levels in order to adapt and thrive in the economic downturn”. read more »

A recent Harvard Business Review blog, called the ‘Six Social Media Trends for 2010′, describes the massive growth of social media in 2009 (Twitter alone grew 1,382% year on year in February) – and makes predictions for 2010.

The author believes that in 2010 social media will get even more popular and more exclusive. He describes social networks filling with ‘noise’ – and how we may all begin to get more value out of our networks by ‘filtering out the clutter’. read more »

Leadership: understanding your constituents

In The Next Generation of Leadership  Jim Clifton (Chairman and CEO of Gallup) believes that organisations and leaders, “must understand their constituents’ [i.e. their teams and customers] state of mind”. His view is that organisations have “maximised every possible benefit from process improvement …and these practices have hit a point of diminishing returns”. read more »

I was interested to read in the Sunday Times (11/10/09) an article by Suzy Woolfson (of PWC) that “better cashflow is key to surviving an upturn” – and indeed it is! However the reduction in so called “discretionary spend” that might include spend on training may be a false economy – if it impacts employees problem solving, innovation and creativity. read more »

According to People Management magazine, Black & Decker are another successful company using a bite sized approach to making more creative use of their training budget. read more »