Okanagan Training Solution

What counts is not the number of hours !

Okanagan Training Solution — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:56:39 +0000

……you put in, but how much you put into the hours

In ancient Greece and Rome, slaves had a hundred holidays a year, more days
off than many executives take today in the headlong pursuit of success.

If you’re an executive, you probably work over fifty seven hours a week. Your
problem isn’t simply one of long hours, however, it’s also one of frenetic,
mind-numbing activity. Chances are you attend five meetings a day and return to
a burgeoning e-mail in-box, cluttered desk and tweeting smartphone. And you’ll
be interrupted once every 12 minutes!

Which of us hasn’t wished at some time that we could turn our back on this
kind of success, quit our job with dignity, don bib overalls, and carve wooden
birds for a living?

If only life were that simple.

The truth is that, as workaholics, we’d probably be mass-producing birds in no time!

You see, the problem is not with our job; it’s our attitude. Somehow, we have convinced
ourselves that it’s not enough to be in charge – we have to be in control.

But, the more we try to control, the greater our frustration and disappointment
become.

The only thing you can control is your outlook on life.

The Priority way to improve your outlook is to click below:

Working
Smart with Outlook

Working
Smart with Lotus Notes

Working
Smart with GroupWise

Training
Curriculum

For more information see The SEVEN Traits of aWorkaholic

To learn more about Priority’s training and development curriculum contact:

David Anderson
Okanagan Training Solutions
Priority Management Interior BC
250 762-5096 / 1-877-762-5096
prioritymanagement@shaw.ca
http://www.okanagantrainingsolutions.com

Building Action Into Decisions

Okanagan Training Solution — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:04:45 +0000

by Dr. Peter Drucker

A decision is only a hope until carrying it out has become somebody’s
work assignment and responsibility, with a deadline.

A decision is a commitment to action. Until the right thing happens, there has been no decision. And one thing can be taken for granted: the people who have to take the action are rarely the people who have made the decision. No decision has, in fact, been made until carrying it out has become somebody’s work assignment and responsibility – and with a deadline. Until then, it’s still only a hope.

A decision will not become effective unless needed actions have been built into it from the start. Converting a decsion into action requires answering several questions:

Who has to know of this decision?
What action has to be taken?
Who is to take it?
What does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it?

The action must be appropriate to the capacities of the people who have to carry it out. This is especially important if people have to change their behavior, habits, or attitudes for the decision to become effective.

ACTION POINT: Think through a decision you have made. Who has to know of the decision? What action has to be taken? Who has to take the action? Make sure the people who have to take the action are able to do so.

To learn more about Priority’s training and development curriculum contact:

David Anderson
Okanagan Training Solutions
Priority Management Interior BC
250 762-5096 / 1-877-762-5096
prioritymanagement@shaw.ca
http://www.okanagantrainingsolutions.com
http://okanagantrainingsolutions.blogspot.com/

How To Survive And Strive In A Team Environment

Okanagan Training Solution — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 11:57:19 +0000

TEAMWORK

No one says it’s going to be easy. It takes work to get a team functioning well. There are specific strategies that help individuals get the most out of teamwork, all contributing to the success of the team.

Here are eight key ‘must do’s':

Articulate and share goals.
Rather than assuming team members know the desired result, make sure specific goals are clearly articulated. Using an annual strategic plan, monthly and project plans, you can ensure energies and efforts are working in the right direction.
Embrace change.
The nature of teamwork is that your job will constantly change. You will probably be a member of many teams, encompassing many different personalities and working styles. You need the flexibility to adapt to different situations.
Communicate well.
Be aware of the 55-38-7 equation. Fifty-five percent of what others gain from your presentation comes from non-verbal communication such as eye contact, hand gestures and body language. Thirty-eight percent comes from the sound or tone of your voice. Just 7 percent of the message received is based on the content of what you’re saying. Keep communications organized and documented. Use software such as Outlook, Lotus Notes or GroupWise to their maximum.
Get more out of meetings.
Team meetings are a vital element in an interdependent. Improve the productivity of meetings by developing your meeting skills and using Meeting Planners.
Commit to learning.
You will be a better team member if you have relevant skills. This means you have to be continually learning, whether it’s through continuing education, training programs or reading. By learning how to communicate or manage more effectively, you can work more effectively in teams.
Learn to be a leader and a follower.
As you move from team to team, your role will change. Depending on the dynamics of the individuals in a team, you could be a leader in one team and a follower in another. No one individual is always the boss in a team environment. Leaders who can’t follow, and followers who are unable to lead, will have limited value in teams.
Trust your teammates.
You can’t do it better on your own! While individuals have different strengths and styles, you must trust other team members to fulfill their functions adequately. This trust will build strong relationships and strong teams.
Look for win:win opportunities.
Forget the old ideas of winning and losing. Just because one group wins, doesn’t mean the other group has to lose. Use the creativity of the group to develop situations where you can win because someone else wins.

Click below to learn more about how Priority can help strengthen your teams and teamwork.

Workload Management

Influencing

Meetings

Negotiating

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The spirit of performance

Okanagan Training Solution — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:44:22 +0000

by Dr. Peter Drucker

The purpose of an organization is to enable common men and women to do uncommon things.

Morality, to have any meaning at all, must not be exhortation, sermon, or good intentions. It must be practices. Specifically:

The focus of the organization must be on performance. The first requirement of the spirit of performance is high performance standards, for the group as well as each individual.
The focus of the organization must be on opportunities rather than on problems.
The decisions that affect people – their placement, pay, promotion, demotion, and severance – must express the values and beliefs of the organization.
Finally, in its people decisions, management must demonstrate that it realizes that integrity is one absolute requirement of any manager, the one quality that he has to bring with him or her and cannot be expected to acquire later on.

ACTION POINT: Focus on performance, opportunities, people, and integrity.

TRAINING ACTION: Click here to learn more about how Priority can help you as your organization perform at the top.

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Resolving Conflicts

Okanagan Training Solution — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 12:41:19 +0000

By Dr. Peter Honey

Every difference of opinion, every disagreement, is a conflict, either with a big or small ‘c’ depending on the magnitude of the difference. Conflicts between people are inevitable as they try to agree priorities, make decisions, solve problems and work together. If there weren’t differences of opinion it would probably be a sign that people were apathetic or acquiescing by ostensibly saying yes, but in reality hiding major reservations.

Whilst conflicts are rarely welcomed, they offer splendid opportunities to:

Reach a better solution than would have been possible if the conflict hadn’t arisen
Learn from the experience of facing the conflict squarely and addressing it constructively

It sounds pious to say it, but as a leader the way you handle conflicts is a decisive factor in whether they will result in win-win or win-lose outcomes and whether they will result in beneficial learning.

Broadly there are three different ways to react to conflict:

#1 – Avoid it. Typically this involves:
- denying the conflict exists
- circumventing the person/people with whom you are in conflict
- deciding not to make the conflict explicit or to raise it.

#2 – Diffuse it. This involves:
- smoothing things over, ‘pouring oil on troubled waters’
- saying you’ll come back to it (as opposed to dealing with the conflict there and then)
- only dealing with minor points, not the major issues.

#3 – Face it. This involves:
- openly admitting conflict exists
- explicitly raising the conflict as an issue
All three approaches are genuine options when conflicts arise. There may be occasions when it is best to let it go (why win the battle but lose the war?) and there will be other occasions when some pussy-footing is appropriate. Usually, however, facing conflict rather than avoiding it or diffusing it offers the most potential. But how you face it makes all the difference. You can face it aggressively or assertively.

People who face conflict aggressively

Are secretive about their real objectives
Exaggerate their case
Refuse to concede that the other person has a valid point
Belittle the other person’s points
Repeat their case dogmatically
Disagree
Interrupt the other person

People who face conflict assertively

Are open about their objectives
Establish what the other person’s objectives are
Search for common ground
State their case clearly
Understand the other person’s case
Produce ideas to solve the differences
Build on and add to the other person’s ideas
Summarize to check understanding/agreement

You can convert conflicts into useful learning opportunities by refusing to adjudicate and doing everything you can to foster assertive behavior amongst protagonists. If you put your energies into helping them to find some common ground, however tenuous, and to build on it, then you not only make a constructive resolution more likely, you also make people work for it and learn as they do so.

Click below to learn more:

Priority Training Curriculum

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Tips and Techniques to improve your memory

Okanagan Training Solution — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:32:47 +0000

Memory Strategies – do what the experts do!

Memory isn’t like a muscle, something specific you can exercise. It’s a way of organizing information in your brain. So to improve your memory, you need to change and re-organize the way you think and this will help to support how your memory works.

How to improve

There are two main approaches you can use to help your memory – external aids and internal aids. Memory champions use internal aids, these are techniques we can use in our heads to help us remember, and anyone can do it. Dr Chris Moulin from the Leeds Memory Group describes for us five tips – try them out today and pass them on to your family!

1. Chunking
Don’t swallow it whole!

When someone gives you a phone number to remember, use ‘chunking’ as a way of remembering it. Short-term memory is limited so chunking helps us process long bits of information in more easily digestible chunks.

Most people can remember seven things, plus or minus two, which means that you’ll usually be able to remember between five and nine things at most. So when given a string of numbers to remember such as 123957001066, break it down! 12 39 57 00 10 66 or even 1239 5700 1066 (chunks of numbers). You may find it easier to chunk numbers according to something you find meaningful, like the age of someone you know, an address or a famous date (1066 Battle of Hastings). These attached meanings can then form a story to help remember a really long sequence.

2. Cramming
Cramming doesn’t work!

Repetition and rehearsal can be useful as ‘practice makes perfect’. But psychologists have learned that it’s better to space out your learning than to mass it all in one lump.

When practicing a word in a foreign language, don’t repeat it over and over. Repeat it to yourself once or twice, then try something else (learn something else, or just have a break). Then come back to it. And don’t cram for exams, things just won’t sink in.

3. Cues
Give us a cue

If there’s something you have to do every day at a specific time and often forget, then this technique, called implementation intentions, should help and it’s very simple.

Give yourself a cue to help your intention to do something. Doctors use it to help people’s health behavior. For example, say to yourself ‘whenever I have my first cup of tea in the morning, I will also take my pills’. Or ‘I’ll first open my email inbox after morning coffee’

4. Me! Me! Me!
Remember – it’s all about me.

Called the self-reference technique, this is really one of the best and simplest methods of all, so much so that we tend not to even think about it. Simply refer any information to yourself and it makes it easier to remember. It can work on a mundane level – meeting someone called Peter and associating him with other Peters you know. On a deeper level, making personal associations with important facts or ideas – political, moral, social, etc. will help you remember them.

5. Place it!
Location, location, location

One kind of visualization technique is also called the ‘method of loci’ or the ‘Roman Room’ method. Fans of the dreadful Hannibal Lecter will recognize this technique.

However, it’s a very good way of remembering a sequence of related information such as a list of names. Use a mental image of a place you know well – such as your home – and take a mental walk through the rooms in a set order. Then, put the names from your list one by one into the rooms.

Suppose you want to remember the names of your friend’s children in order of age. Visualize Harry the eldest in your front room, then Sally the second in the back room. Molly the third is in the kitchen … and so on.

To recall the names later you repeat the mental walk. Loci seems a strange way of remembering but with practice it is very successful.
Need convincing? Try this: ask someone to read out a list of ten random words slowly but steadily and only once. About one word per second should be fine. Now, don’t use any specific method – just try to recall the words in order a few minutes later.

Try it again using the loci method. Visualize your home and all the rooms. Move between the rooms and find a starting point. Now when your friend reads the list of words again, try to create visual images of the words associated with one of the locations. It’ll take a bit of practice but keep trying and you should improve each time. For those having difficulty with only a small number of rooms etc. Make up a few more fantasy rooms and don’t just put the things you want to remember in the rooms all alone – associate them with things in the room like furniture etc – and stick a few memories on the ceilings/windows/walls/ chandeliers etc. there are endless possibilities. oh and don’t forget the fridge – a good place to store those things you need in the longer term!

However, one of the very best ways to improve your memory is to have an organized way of managing the myriad of details that make up the day, freeing your mind for richer and more important thoughts.

Click below to find out more:

Working Smart with Outlook

Working Smart with Lotus Notes

Working Smart with GroupWise

Priority Manager

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How to appraise people

Okanagan Training Solution — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:27:58 +0000

How to appraise people By Dr. Peter Honey

Appraisals are invariably unpopular mainly because they are a device for forcing reluctant managers to sit down and discuss an employee’s or colleague’s performance at least once a year. No-one likes to be coerced into doing something they’d rather not do and appraisals often fall into this category, especially where they are seen as part of a bureaucratic system. The answer, of course, is to adopt the practice of having frequent mini-appraisals with your colleagues, so that the annual appraisal just becomes a formality.

Appraisals, done properly, are an honest attempt to review someone’s current performance and help them identify how best to improve. The accent is on current performance not speculations about someone’s potential. Learning and development is always about the ‘here and now’ as the best investment for the future.

There may be a number of reasons why you are reluctant to appraise your staff:

fear of upsetting the appraisee
fear of sounding condescending
feeling once removed and unsure of the ‘facts’
employees who are defensive or touchy
employees who seem self-sufficient
employees who never solicit feedback
lack of skill

Undoubtedly the easiest way to overcome any reluctance on your part is to arrange things so that your employees take the initiative and ask you for an appraisal. Proactive people, determined to extract every bit of help from you, wouldn’t hesitate to assert their right to feedback. The less assertive people will need your active encouragement to take this bold step. An excellent way to bring this about is to solicit feedback from them on your own performance, making it more likely that they will ask you to reciprocate.

If, after suitable encouragement, your employees fail to solicit appraisals then you must take the initiative, override your doubts, and offer feedback. The soundest way to do this is to give feedback against some agreed standards of performance; praise when the performance matches or exceeds the standards and criticism when it does not. The agreed standards make the whole process less invidious and less dependent on personal whims and perceptions. Often an appraisal discussion will result in the clarification of an existing standard or the creation of a new one and in this way perceptions of what is expected of the employee will gradually coincide.

Top priority, however, is that each appraisal discussion results in an action plan to improve some aspect of performance and, preferably, that you too come away from the encounter having committed yourself to further actions that will support the person in his/her quest for continuous improvement.

If you are serious about helping your people to learn and develop you will be a regular and frequent appraiser.

Click here to learn more about Priority’s training curriculum.

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How to relax

Okanagan Training Solution — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:24:43 +0000

Some stress may be unavoidable but these seven habits should help keep the damage to a minimum. Time Magazine gives this advice on relaxation:

BREATHE DEEPLY
Regular, slowed breathing — a common characteristic of meditation and prayer—alerts your brain that you are in a safe place far away from predators. It also relaxes your heart, decreases blood pressure and removes wastes from the bloodstream.

TAKE A VACATION
A change of scenery clears the head, recharges the batteries and, according to a recent study sponsored by Air New Zealand, improves reaction time 82%—provided that you ignore your e-mail and allow a couple of weeks to disengage and unwind.

MAKE FRIENDS
Social isolation increases the physiological damage caused by stress. A 2006 survey found that Americans have only two close friends with whom they can confide their deepest concerns—down from three friends 20 years ago.

EXCERISE REGULARLY
It protects the heart, which is often the first to feel the effects of stress. Studies show exercise also helps maintain the brain’s ability to change focus quickly from one situation to another.

EAT PLENTY OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
The antioxidants and other ingredients they contain counter-balance the inflammatory proteins the body produces under stress.

DON’T STAY UP LATE
Irregular sleep increases the effects of stress on your body, setting you up for metabolic imbalances that increase your risk of heart disease.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE
Having a sense of mission about your job makes it easier to deal with inevitable set-backs. (You will still need to take those regular breaks from work.) And if you can’t find meaning in your job, look for it in a hobby or through participation in religious or community organizations.

Priority’s advice is to copy this page and stick it up on your fridge door for a couple of weeks! Priority’s training emphasizes a healthy work/life balance.

Click below to find out more:

Working Smart with Outlook

Working Smart with Lotus Notes

Working Smart with GroupWise

Training Curriculum

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Defining Business Purpose and Mission

Okanagan Training Solution — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:17:53 +0000

What is our business? by Dr. Peter Drucker

Nothing may seem simpler or more obvious than to know what a company’s business is. A steel mill makes steel; a railroad runs trains to carry freight and passengers; an insurance company underwrites fire risks; a bank lends money. Actually, “What is our business?” is almost always a difficult question and the right answer is usually anything but obvious.

A business is not defined by the company’s name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the want the customer satisfies when they buy a product or service. To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business. The question “What is our business?” can, therefore, be answered only by looking at the business from the outside, from the point of view of the customer and the market. What the customer sees, thinks, believes, and wants, at any given time, must be accepted by management as an objective fact and must be taken as seriously as the reports of the salesperson, the tests of the engineer, or the figures of the accountant. And management must make a conscious effort to get answers from the customer themselves rather than attempt to read their mind.

Action Point: Talk to one customer every day this week. Ask them how they see your company, what they think of it, what kind of company they believe it is and what they want from it. Use this feedback to better define your business.

Click here to learn more about Priority’s Training Curriculum.

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Leadership

Okanagan Training Solution — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:15:19 +0000

Deadly Sins and When to be Flexible

Here are some memorable tips from leading experts that you may want to apply in 2011.

The seven deadly sins to avoid as a leader are: not having integrity, not having a vision, not being clear, not developing others, not listening, not being decisive and not being flexible.
If you want to climb to the top of the corporate ladder, you need to change your decision-making style at the midpoint to be more flexible. Successful executives start as front-line supervisors who are quite directive, but midway up the ladder they find that decisions are more about listening than telling and understanding than directing.
The first step in any change process is to assess the level of agreement among staff along two critical dimensions: values and priorities, and cause and effect (which actions will lead to the desired outcome).
To improve trust, managers must display five behaviors: consistency, over time and in different situations in treatment of employees; integrity, doing what you say you are going to do; sharing and delegation of control; open communication; and demonstration of concern and sensitivity for employees’ needs and interests.
Color-code your knowledge on an issue, with red for what you know, green for what you assume, and blue for what you“know”?because of what you assume.

Priority Management trains leaders around the world. Click below for more information.

Training Curriculum

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