As a director/ manager who is faced with the need to trim costs, it feels dishonest to make promises and invest in training for staff who you think you’ll possibly make redundant in the next few months. One consequence of this ‘pulling back’ is that staff tend to misinterpret this as the boss thinking “there’s no need to motivate you – you should be pathetically grateful that you’ve not been made redundant…yet”. One way to start rebuilding bridges is through team-building – although, one health warning: a poorly contexted and executed team-build can simply surface long-running grievances rather than dealing with them constructively.

On Fri 17 Sept, the Trainers & Developers Network brings together over 100 years of experience of running team-building events. Learn some of the tips, tools and tricks from those who have made team-building work. This will be invaluable in the event that your boss has the bright idea that what we need now is some team-building.

Coming back to Lilia, having grasped the idea that you need to wait for the green man before we can cross the road, she has been interested to discover that in the car “red circle” means we have to stop and that “green circle” means that we can go. However there are several things that she will refuse to be taught e.g. that straight edges go on the outside of a jigsaw puzzle.

My hypothesis is that adults and children are not so different – adults would refuse to sit through much of the substandard stuff that is dished up by our educational establishments, and so do many of our kids – see Donald Clark’s blog for more polemic on this. A good learning experience happens when you have motivated learners with the capacity to learn, good information, well communicated and reinforced – simple…one day we’ll crack the jigsaws…

Who said there were any new ideas in training?

The consensus from the compliance managers in the room was that the number one thing that they want from their businesses is for their company’s leaders to walk the walk when it comes to compliance.

Legal and regulatory requirements are there for a good reason (usually…). When it comes to chasing up staff who have not completed mandatory training/ e-learning, compliance departments need to know that the business is supporting them with real sticks and carrots e.g. non-completers get called in to explain themselves to their head of department. If the company’s leaders don’t visibly support compliance, the work of chasing up and enforcing compliance becomes a frustrating and ultimately futile experience. This presents company leadership with a balancing act – championing compliance internally whilst arguing against the burgeoning of further compliance requirements

The number two thing that compliance managers wanted/ valued was a good system to take the pain of reminding and chasing people up to do their compliance activities. It was heartering to hear that one of the particpants spontaneoulsy described REDTRAY’s ALTO system with its Pursuit function as just the tool to do this.

There are a number of barriers specific to the public sector which make this all the more challenging:

1. Complexity of defining what success looks like – quintessentially different political parties have (or should have) different ideas on this
2. Blind pursuit of targets e.g. if the NHS is aiming to prevent illness, why are targets mainly about treatment? See also http://rondon.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/a-blind-pursuit-of-targets/
3. Established media narrative of criticising – as it’s usually only possible to achieve two out of quality, speed & cost; there’s always an angle that’s open for criticism
4. Political interference – can you imagine politicians acknowledging that they would be doing a better job if they created fewer policies?
5. Difficulty in firing underperformers

I’ve yet to see any of the political parties make a real commitment to reduce these barriers. The only one of these which may be up for grabs is the last one. The status quo is framed too much for the benefit of the individual who has a right to underperform, rather than the underperformer’s colleagues who end up having to do more than they should. Reducing the individual’s right to underperform will help create a culture of higher performance, which benefits not only the hard-working people in the organisation, but our society at large.

1. Never try to run a webinar on your own – there 3 or more distinct roles: host (ensures the technology is working & everyone is logged on), presenter (talks and in charge of what the participants see), chat meister (moderates and prompts postings in the chat box and makes suggestions to presenter). These 3 roles are too much for one person. Also the participants will benefit from these roles being rotated
2. Remove technology barriers – consider running a pre-session where you can ensure that everyone has the plug-ins that they need and can get familiar with the user interface
3. Have a Plan B – have activities that the rest of the group can engage in if you need to take time out to help one participant
4. Audio – mute people selectively so that the background noises from people being in several locations can be reduced
5. Video – this adds rapport at the start, but there is no need to have video on the whole session
6. Voice – even more than face to face delivery, take care over the words that you emphasise
7. Environment – what distractions and interruptions might there be in the presenter’s environment? How can you prevent/ mitigate them?
8. Time – 90 minutes is the absolute maximum for a session, 30 minutes is better. Aim to never go more than 3 minutes without asking a question, changing the presenter, something to re-grab the participants’s attention
9. Script – script and rehearse the session thoroughly, especially the points at which you will handover to other presenters
10. Expect people to multi-task – you often multi-task on a conference call or a webinar, so do your participants
11. Provide a back channel – expect that some people will be tweeting or texting. Is there a virtual space that you can provide which allows participants to interact…this means that they’re more likely stay on focus, or at least be discussing something that is linked to the subject matter of the webinar
12. Don’t panic – agree panic phrases with you co-presenter(s) so that they can jump in seamlessly when you don’t know what to say next

Anyway, it seems like an entertaining debate about how tidy your desk should be has kicked off on the AccountingWeb website.

Also noone seems to have pointed out yet that the article gave a bonus extra myth…so far 5740 accountants have either failed to count to 6, have decided that the difference between 5 & 6 is not material, have realised they won’t get paid for correcting this, or are beautifully polite.

This makes the preparation extra challenging…but think how much the average Board Meeting would be improved if directors had to give their update presentations in this style…6 minutes 40 seconds of well thought through presentation would free up a lot of time for questions and debate.