8. How do you prove the value of your department within your organisation?
I think if you are ever in a situation where you are always having to ‘prove’ your value you are probably in a bad place and need to go and do something more useful with your life, because you are either working in a stifling organisational culture or a lot of people don’t like you very much.
9. What is the biggest current challenge for your department?
Its the heady mix of organising and designing global training, with all its multi-cultural issues and where it hits the use of technology such as web-casting, video streaming and virtual classrooms etc. We are inventing (or ‘borrowing’) new ways of delivering learning that are stretching our skills and we are having to learn to organise ourselves in new ways and do new things.
As I am typing this, one of my colleagues is sitting in front of three computer screens trying to get to grips with a very wizzy piece of software that rapidly edits bits of video, synchronises them with pre-built flash animation, attaches power point slides and sub titles to them, uploads onto our intranet and squirts it out to people around the world (it also makes tea – but not very well). Yesterday she was running a presentation skills course.
10. What do you see as the main challenges for training professionals in the next five years?
See nine above!
11. What influences do you think have had the greatest impact on the training sector in recent years?
I honestly don’t know the answer to that – I just focus on my clients. So if you where to ask me what was happening in the legal market I’m sure I could bore you for a few hours with the answer.
12. What is the best lesson you can pass on?
If you can understand the organisation and/or the business as well as your clients then you will usually be doing the right thing in your training. And keep away from software that can’t make a good cup of tea.
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