Every organisation wanting to lead its field is always looking for new ways to improve the way they do things. While external consulting, improving systems or a raft of other measures can help, it must also be remembered that an organisation is only as good as its people.
The ability and potential of each person within the organisation can be expanded through professional development courses on a regular basis. While many such P.D. courses, as they are known, are focused on hard skills such as retraining to use a new software suite for instance, in fact it is often those courses that focus on more personal skills that achieve the greatest overall improvements.
As anybody who has spent time in University and then experienced a successful and profitable career knows well, it is not so much what you study at the time but how your brain is trained to think from that study. Indeed, analysis of The Sunday Times Rich List, indicates that while a majority of Britain’s wealthiest individuals are tertiary educated, they have often strayed far from their field of study to build successful businesses.
A good and typical example of this is Martha Lane Fox who read ancient and modern history at Oxford University but then went on to build lastminute.com, one of Europe’s most successful online travel businesses. Ms. Fox has remarked in interviews it is the ability to think that is more important than undertaking a particular area of training.
Technology is also improving speed and availability for personal professional development courses. An example of this is the speech development and communication courses offered by SpeechSchool.TV. These courses make use of online video and an assessment system and have already been awarded internationally. By undertaking speech training, organisation members can improve their communication skills and be better understood in the workplace, creating improved efficiencies and outcomes.
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