One way I explain 'what we do' is as a sort of alchemy. We turn the base metal of dry management theory and turn it into the pure gold of business performance.
Now although parts of the PRINCE2 reference book on project management include passages originally written by yours truly and more recently and extensively by my colleague and fellow-blogger, John Edmonds, nevertheless I will admit something...
... the PRINCE2 reference is quite a boring read.
It's boring if you try to read it from beginning to end, as you would, say, a novel. It's dry if you read huge chunks in one go. (Although I do know clients who have done this.) It does not have any unifying 'story' of a project to lead you through it by example.
So our business is simply to bring this dry book - and others like it such as MSP, P3O, M_o_R, Making Sense of Change Management, and so on - to life. We turn the lead into gold.
I say 'simply', but these seems to be beyond many in the management training business. 'Bringing to life' for me includes:
- catering for different and complementary ways of assimilating information (the visual, aural, intellectual and kinaesthetic)
- the element of colour, surprise and fun
- encouraging clients in what they aleady know and understand
- bringing fresh, value-added stories, images and research to reinforce the core material
- using conversation to lead people into new, profoundly more effective, ways of seeing things and doing things.
I've bemoaned often enough the black-and-white slide copies that pass for course materials or study guides, how PowerPoint visuals are mistaken for dense bullet lists, how material is presented in a way that suits the lecturer, not the delegate.
I continue to bemoan these practices because they are becoming all the more common, it seems. In these lean times, we see a resurgence of this as the norm, particularly as the market demands 'commodity training' to be delivered ever more cheaply.
When will the people who buy such nonsense ask themselves what outcomes they are really buying? If you pay base prices, you are likely to get base metal.
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