ItsDevelopmental - content + technology + people

Picture: Online training session at RBI

 

I've been talking about landing pages and online treatment of articles. Goos sessions. Keyword research exercise proved interesting. Better to say 'Tesco won' than 'Sainsbury's lost'. 

And here is Adam's picture from the online journalism session.

Career advice: the three things about me to market to others

Had a some good advice recently on how to tell others - collleagues, bosses, friends and family - what you want from work and life.

The advice - and it was more focussed on work, although life outside work is also key for me - was to think about the three things that I want my colleagues and bosses to know about what I want from work.

This is important as I need to be clear on what these priorities are for me. Once I am clear then i can start telling others and kep it repeating it so people know what is important for me.

This is a kind of personal PR plan and a very simple one at that.  I like the idea it enables others to see what I want from work and life and to see this is an honest appraisal.

I'm working on my three points right now . . .

UK snow: what I learned today

It has been a long day which has been shaped by heavy snowfall - not in my hometown but where I work.

I'm tired but wanted to share a few thoughts:

• Don't beleive what First Great Western staff tell you. At Bath station this morning I asked if transport in London was affected by the snow. I was told no - the truth was that most of London transport had ground to a halt and the station nearest to my work was closed.

• It takes longer than you think to get messages to a team which is dispersed geographically. First we  had to clarify message amongst management team then text, email and call.

• Facebook and Twitter are powerful. Team members let each other know what was going on. 

• Remote working is still something my company is trying to succeed at. Key members of our team were away on business and those left to cover did not have laptops and remote access to the business.

• The snowfall meant we and the wider business had to rely on people who could walk to work. And that was not a lot of people.

• Once there they had no access to the canteen.

• We overloaded on emails to the team.

• On a day like today some had to work a lot harder than others.

• We relied on a freelancer who became the unsung hero of the wider business - she was one of the few who could walk in.

• I got my snow news from Twitter NOT from the BBC. Nor for that matter from journalists.

• UK plc ground to a halt and that is a good thing. Some things are bigger than us and our work. We need to remember that.

• My children love the snow. They had fun.

Guerilla training

A few of us at work - Adam, Andrew and Karl - have been working on a programme of short, sharp and very regular (weekly) training sessions. The media is changing rapidly so there is a need to show and tell what we are up to. We are a large company - with many brands - so there are a) lots of people doing interesting things and b) huge opportunities to share knowledge.

BUT - we are a corporate so tend to be conservative in our approaches to learning and develepmont. 

The issue of rooms and timings seem to have stifled plans to get the programme off the ground. So far, that is.

With Flashmob activities in the back  of my mind, I am thinking we add a bit of spontanaeity to proceedings - different venues, posters/fliers around the place. Obviously this is not radical - but it is more radical in a corporate setting.

And we are a media company. We are meant to be creative, so why not in the way we enagage and develop our people? 

Who knows if we can get some guerilla training off the ground. I am up for trying though.  

Effective brainstorming

Attended an all day brainstorming session yesterday which was very productive. Why?

• Attendees knew what was expected of them before the event - we received topics we were due to brainstorm around, were given some related background reading and a timetable for the event

• The plan for the day involved morning divergence (opening out the discussion to brainstorm new ideas) and afternoon convergence (organising the ideas and  turning them into achievable actions)

• First part of the day was spent capturing insights around the topic areas ie our thoughts on the topics

• From this we then spent some time brainstorming around selected insights.

• In the afternoon we reviewed the morning, set out all ideas on the table mapped them to domains - there were three that grew out of the ideas

• We then mapped these clusters of ideas on to a time/competencies graph

We left with tasks that we had the competencies and time to complete and development strands that plotted development of more complex and time-consuming project.

Training needs analysis for media law

Been given a nice little project by our OD director to do some analysis on what our editorial community needs from media law training.

Thought I would start by talking to a couple of chief subs (those at the coal face) to get a temperature check on the issues and then do a quick and dirty survey of chief subs and editors to see the knowledge gaps on media law.

I'll share the plan in our new Linkedin editors group and then get going. I hope this approach will highlight the knowledge gaps and provide me with an accurate analysis of what kind of traing we require.

Timeline: UK redundancies

Wow, this is powerful. My first stab at Dipity - have created a timeline of a 'UK redundancies' feed from Google news UK. needs some refining but it's a start . . .

 

Press release: Train to Gain cash for leadership and management training

As unemployment spirals towards two million (1.92 million), the Learning and Skills Council is urging employers to take advantage of a leadership training fund to protect themselves and staff from redundancy in the tough times ahead.

The Learning and Skills Council’s (LSC) Train to Gain service has dedicated a pot of money for leaders and managers to improve their skills. Now, more Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can benefit from it, including the most vulnerable companies with just five to 10 workers.

Chris Banks, chair of the LSC said: “These are clearly turbulent times. No one can be in any doubt as to the global impact of the credit crunch. It is on our doorsteps and UK businesses are clearly suffering.

Links

Leitch: the Aftermath

KPMG staff told to take sabbaticals to save jobs

Future bright for jobs in education and business

A bank too far

Job boards or job networks

Resources for team exercises

I'm building up set of tools in Deilicious and was just going to link to Teampedia there but thought it worth a mention as it is a wiki full of team exercises. loads in there and a great collaborative project.

Training exercises on my Delicious page are here - not much to look at just now!