Business, Skills Training Is Becoming a Never Ending Process
Business, Skills Training Is Becoming a Never Ending Process
With it has come a complete change in who we communicate with, the way we communicate with them as well as how we work and worst of all how long we work. While life here in Silicon Valley is akin to working at the edge of disaster, we like to believe that the rest of the country – in fact the globe – is in much the same state of chaos.
Education Environment Has Changed
When I went to college eons ago, we sat in a classroom, listened to the instructor, took copious notes and regurgitated the information on a test. With two degrees we set forth to conquer and change the world. Unfortunately we didn’t change the world. Technology changed the world. The rapid changes in technology are so prolific that it has forced us to become lifelong learners. Rather than rigidly structured process learning is becoming a self-directed process.
There has been more information produced in the last 10 years than during the previous 5,000. A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come in contact with in the last century in his or her lifetime. The change has been the Internet/Web as well as the value of and how we use information.
To understand how quickly life has changed and continues to change for us consider a recent study regarding e-mail conducted by Forrester Research and John Carroll University:
• 1.1 trillion email messages sent annually worldwide
• 3 billion messages sent worldwide daily
• 200 million users sending messages daily
• 250+ million corporate e-mail addresses
• 100 million personal email addresses
• 25 million subscribers to AOL
• 15.6 million users of Lotus cc:Mail
• average cost of e-mail per user per year-- $750
• average value of email per user per year in terms of productivity -- $2,800
• average cost of company to send 20 messages -- $1.05
• average time spent daily reading e-mail – 50 minutes
• average time spent responding to email – 60 minutes
In addition, according to a recent issue of BusinessWeek, every day 10,00 new Web sites are added to the Internet. Increasingly these sites are video enabled. All of this has forced technical people to broaden their knowledge areas and forced people to deal in a rapidly changing environment of uncertainty.
New Type of Worker
Peter Drucker in his book, Post Capitalism Society, notes that already an estimated 2/3 of U.S. employees work in the service sector. Knowledge is becoming one of our most important products. This calls for a different type of worker because a degree and technical experience are far less important than the currency of your business skills.
No one can say what technology platforms will dominate the next century or what lies beyond the Web and enterprise resource planning. As a result, corporations and educational institutions must adapt their training programs to prepare workers for unseen changes. Experts who track technically-based career development and training see some trends emerging including:
• Business skills are becoming as important as technical skills in defining the success of professionals
• New technologies such as Web-based learning and video-on-demand coursework is rapidly supplanting classroom training
• Technical professionals must view education as a continuing and self-directed process.
Many organizations have begun to identify core business competencies for technical professionals and make learning them mandatory. Increasingly they have to learn communications skills, budgeting and finance, strategic planning as well as project and performance management. Firms are rapidly adding on-the-job training by matching people with appropriate learning tools. On-line video-on-demand courses, workshops and seminars are required for people at all levels and of all disciplines. Some firms have gone so far as to establish required courses, electives and degree certificates.
Addressing Larger Issues
While selected technical skills in almost every organization continue to be in critically short supply, organizations also understand that they must help employees understand larger business issues including finance and marketing. However, Gartner Group reported earlier last year that corporate technical staff skills will shift from 65 percent technology to 65 percent business and management skills by this year. While technical skills will continue to be important, much of that work will be outsource and key internal personnel will be involved in business and technical management.
Because of the growing supply versus demand problem, traditional business schools are beginning to shift to competency-based education.
For example the governors of the 14 western states and CEOs of major corporations created the Western Governors University (WGU) in Slat Lake City three years ago. The University enables students to earn credits toward a diploma by taking skill assessment tests rather than courses. The goal was to respond to business and industry needs by providing a means of certifying that an individual can do the job rather than simply prove that he or she has a diploma.
Educational Shift
Gartner Group predicts that training delivery will shift from 25 percent technology and 75 percent instructor based to 50-50 by the end of the year. Video on Demand and Web based training will grow rapidly over the next two years. Organizations of all sizes are beginning to view training not as a cost but rather as an investment in key members of the organization.
For many, the accelerated pace of technology change over the past 10 years is straining their ability to keep up. Fortunately our generation X workers view skill development quite differently. For them, ongoing learning is a reality and part of the cost of participating in the world. They have become very adept at gathering, processing, analyzing and interpreting information – retaining and discarding data as needed. It is all part of the “normal” day.
Employees who are planning their future in an uncertain environment have to realize that just as they need money for food, rent/mortgage and utilities, they also need to have money for education. When firms “re-engineered” themselves to become “lean and mean” they reduced their training programs. As a result, those who plan on being productive realize that they must invest in themselves.
While some may disagree, we feel that the shift is healthy. Today employer and employee loyalty is dead. As a result, employees don’t have to feel guilty or obligated to pay back the organization for the training since the individual is paying for tomorrow’s training himself or herself.
Expanding, Changing Our Skills
As we move forward in the 21st century, traditional technical workers will have to expand their business skills while other office workers will have to become more proficient in their understanding and use of technology. People across the board will need to not only know how the applications work but what the data means.
Increasingly the lines between technology and business practices will blur.
Good management skills will be more valuable and more respected as w move into the new century because they are a combination of courage and strong, genuine care for individuals, the company, society and the customer. Good management skills are based on the individual and how he or she executes programs. As a result they are more difficult to acquire than course-taught capabilities.
In today’s global business environment, business skills – knowledge of your company, its mission, the industry and your competitors – are becoming vital survival skills. They are skills which change with every tick of the clock.
Everyone today is under pressure to leverage knowledge and information in everything that they do. People must diligently leverage knowledge in innovative ways on an ongoing basis and people must become a critical resource of creating, maintaining and making available knowledge and information.
############
Business Skills Training Is Becoming a Never Ending Process - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Marken's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
No technology in history has grown as quickly as the Internet. Backbone bandwidth demand has been doubling, not every 18 months as with Moore's law but every 3.5 months. That's a 10X growth or 1,000% a year. The increased bandwidth is also fostering video technology and applications to expand almost as quickly.
With it has come a complete change in who we communicate with, the way we communicate with them as well as how we work and worst of all how long we work. While life here in Silicon Valley is akin to working at the edge of disaster, we like to believe that the rest of the country – in fact the globe – is in much the same state of chaos.
Education Environment Has Changed
When I went to college eons ago, we sat in a classroom, listened to the instructor, took copious notes and regurgitated the information on a test. With two degrees we set forth to conquer and change the world. Unfortunately we didn’t change the world. Technology changed the world. The rapid changes in technology are so prolific that it has forced us to become lifelong learners. Rather than rigidly structured process learning is becoming a self-directed process.
There has been more information produced in the last 10 years than during the previous 5,000. A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come in contact with in the last century in his or her lifetime. The change has been the Internet/Web as well as the value of and how we use information.
To understand how quickly life has changed and continues to change for us consider a recent study regarding e-mail conducted by Forrester Research and John Carroll University:
• 1.1 trillion email messages sent annually worldwide
• 3 billion messages sent worldwide daily
• 200 million users sending messages daily
• 250+ million corporate e-mail addresses
• 100 million personal email addresses
• 25 million subscribers to AOL
• 15.6 million users of Lotus cc:Mail
• average cost of e-mail per user per year-- $750
• average value of email per user per year in terms of productivity -- $2,800
• average cost of company to send 20 messages -- $1.05
• average time spent daily reading e-mail – 50 minutes
• average time spent responding to email – 60 minutes
In addition, according to a recent issue of BusinessWeek, every day 10,00 new Web sites are added to the Internet. Increasingly these sites are video enabled. All of this has forced technical people to broaden their knowledge areas and forced people to deal in a rapidly changing environment of uncertainty.
New Type of Worker
Peter Drucker in his book, Post Capitalism Society, notes that already an estimated 2/3 of U.S. employees work in the service sector. Knowledge is becoming one of our most important products. This calls for a different type of worker because a degree and technical experience are far less important than the currency of your business skills.
No one can say what technology platforms will dominate the next century or what lies beyond the Web and enterprise resource planning. As a result, corporations and educational institutions must adapt their training programs to prepare workers for unseen changes. Experts who track technically-based career development and training see some trends emerging including:
• Business skills are becoming as important as technical skills in defining the success of professionals
• New technologies such as Web-based learning and video-on-demand coursework is rapidly supplanting classroom training
• Technical professionals must view education as a continuing and self-directed process.
Many organizations have begun to identify core business competencies for technical professionals and make learning them mandatory. Increasingly they have to learn communications skills, budgeting and finance, strategic planning as well as project and performance management. Firms are rapidly adding on-the-job training by matching people with appropriate learning tools. On-line video-on-demand courses, workshops and seminars are required for people at all levels and of all disciplines. Some firms have gone so far as to establish required courses, electives and degree certificates.
Addressing Larger Issues
While selected technical skills in almost every organization continue to be in critically short supply, organizations also understand that they must help employees understand larger business issues including finance and marketing. However, Gartner Group reported earlier last year that corporate technical staff skills will shift from 65 percent technology to 65 percent business and management skills by this year. While technical skills will continue to be important, much of that work will be outsource and key internal personnel will be involved in business and technical management.
Because of the growing supply versus demand problem, traditional business schools are beginning to shift to competency-based education.
For example the governors of the 14 western states and CEOs of major corporations created the Western Governors University (WGU) in Slat Lake City three years ago. The University enables students to earn credits toward a diploma by taking skill assessment tests rather than courses. The goal was to respond to business and industry needs by providing a means of certifying that an individual can do the job rather than simply prove that he or she has a diploma.
Educational Shift
Gartner Group predicts that training delivery will shift from 25 percent technology and 75 percent instructor based to 50-50 by the end of the year. Video on Demand and Web based training will grow rapidly over the next two years. Organizations of all sizes are beginning to view training not as a cost but rather as an investment in key members of the organization.
For many, the accelerated pace of technology change over the past 10 years is straining their ability to keep up. Fortunately our generation X workers view skill development quite differently. For them, ongoing learning is a reality and part of the cost of participating in the world. They have become very adept at gathering, processing, analyzing and interpreting information – retaining and discarding data as needed. It is all part of the “normal” day.
Employees who are planning their future in an uncertain environment have to realize that just as they need money for food, rent/mortgage and utilities, they also need to have money for education. When firms “re-engineered” themselves to become “lean and mean” they reduced their training programs. As a result, those who plan on being productive realize that they must invest in themselves.
While some may disagree, we feel that the shift is healthy. Today employer and employee loyalty is dead. As a result, employees don’t have to feel guilty or obligated to pay back the organization for the training since the individual is paying for tomorrow’s training himself or herself.
Expanding, Changing Our Skills
As we move forward in the 21st century, traditional technical workers will have to expand their business skills while other office workers will have to become more proficient in their understanding and use of technology. People across the board will need to not only know how the applications work but what the data means.
Increasingly the lines between technology and business practices will blur.
Good management skills will be more valuable and more respected as w move into the new century because they are a combination of courage and strong, genuine care for individuals, the company, society and the customer. Good management skills are based on the individual and how he or she executes programs. As a result they are more difficult to acquire than course-taught capabilities.
In today’s global business environment, business skills – knowledge of your company, its mission, the industry and your competitors – are becoming vital survival skills. They are skills which change with every tick of the clock.
Everyone today is under pressure to leverage knowledge and information in everything that they do. People must diligently leverage knowledge in innovative ways on an ongoing basis and people must become a critical resource of creating, maintaining and making available knowledge and information.
############
Business Skills Training Is Becoming a Never Ending Process - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Marken's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 | |
 |
No article feedback found. |
| |
Leave Your Feedback |
 | |
| |||
John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
|||
David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
|||
John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
|||
Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
|||
Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
|||
Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
|||
Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
|||
Cheryl MatthynssensCheryl is a life skills coach, licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and a 20 year entrepreneur. Cheryl's dedication to achieving a life of balance led to her expanding her teaching from the simple managing of life's daily challenges to adding financial well being as well. A direct marketer with DrinkACT, she is gaining ground in the online community with her concepts of making sure business owners, entreprenuers and employees have well rounded life styles. She opened up a small affiliate site - The Balance Guide- to help others find resources for mental and emotional well being. Visit Cheryl's blog to see more of the diversity beyond business she has began offering online at www.thebalanceguide.blogspot.com - Visit Cheryl Matthynssens's Website |
|||
|
To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us. | |||
 | |
|  |
Subscribe to Andy's articles
 | |
|
|  |
 | |
|
| |
 | |||||||
|
 | ||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
| ||
 |
| Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details. |
|
|
 |
| Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media |
|
|
 |
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"
Click Here To Learn More |
|
|
|
|
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
|
|
|
 Making Networking Work Best Cover Letter Instant Business Letter Customer Focus The Evolution Of Networking |
|
 | ||
 |
Top 50 Productivity Blogs
Top Blogs To Watch In 2008 | |
 |
Top 50 Geek Business Blogs
Top 50 Geek Business Blogs | |
| ||
 | ||||
| ||||
|
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
|
|
|
