MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

Study with MindLeaders, pass your certification - guaranteed!

Taking a certification exam requires preparation, commitment, and money. Serious effort and career succession plans are on the line. Want some extra confidence that, when test day arrives, you're properly prepared to pass? To get all Cajun-chef-y, at MindLeaders, we'll "gar-on-tee" that you're ready!

Our Certification Guarantee says that if you pass our study guide courses with at least an 80% score, you will pass your certification test or you'll get your money back. We're that confident that our study guides cover every objective and give you all the tools you need.

There's some back story to the Certification Guarantee. We've just now added this page to our web site and a big splashy Flash piece to the home page, but in reality, we've had this guarantee in place for years. Somehow, as time passed, a lot of people forgot that it was there.

But a month or so ago, a "Whatever happened to..." conversation brought the Certification Guarantee back to life. (Kind of appropriate for Halloween!) So we're dusting off the pledge, shining it up, and putting it in a place of honor so that everyone knows about it.

Study up and get certified. Give new skills and confidence to your IT teams or your project managers (this covers the PMP, too!). We gar-on-tee it!

Squeezing in Time for Training

Several years ago I worked for a newspaper, and one of my co-workers liked to wear a shirt that said, “I was put on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die.” All of us in the office thought it was hilarious and quite apropos. It seemed like we were always on deadline and running behind. And the thought of that making us immortal did lessen the stress.

Not much other than my job titles has changed since then. The workday pace certainly hasn’t slowed. My to-do list hasn’t miraculously gotten shorter, although there are an increasing number of books and tools to help me manage it better. I am always pulled in many directions at once. And I don’t think I am alone. This is the reality of today’s workplace. And it’s a tough competitor when you are trying to squeeze in time for training.

If you and your staff you don’t make time for training, it won’t happen. It’ll get lost in that workday frenzy, buried in the marathon list of to-dos. So here are some strategies that have worked for me over the years to squeeze in the training I needed.

• Block out time on your electronic calendar so that you will be reminded to start training and others will know you are busy.
• Put a sign on your door or cube entrance to encourage others to go away until you are finished. Humor is acceptable.
• Use some earphones to deaden the inevitable noise around you. You don’t have to pipe music into them and no one has to know that but you.
• Borrow a vacant office or small conference room for your session. If they can’t find you, you can’t be bothered. Plus you’ll look like you are doing something really important, which you are.
• Schedule time for group discussions and debriefs to ensure that information is shared at the end of projects.
• Declare a training time-out for you and your staff, say a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon each month. (No one is working on Friday afternoon anyway and the time-out is valuable for everyone.)

This list isn’t comprehensive, but simply things that have worked well for me. What strategies have worked for you? How do you squeeze in time for training?

Keep up with ADA, FMLA, and H1N1 news with our latest courses

MindLeaders has released 27 new elearning courses, with a special focus on the latest in human resources regulations and flu health.

We've updated the "Managing within the Law" series to include the latest regulations for ADA and the FMLA. And for those who subscribe to our Health and Safety package, new courses have been added about the Swine Flu and the H1N1 pandemic.

All of our newest courses are in the following series. These courses are automatically added to your course lists for everyone who has course package subscriptions.

• CompTIA Network+ 2009 (N10-004)
• Managing Within the Law: Complying with ADA Requirements as of 2009
• Managing Within the Law: Family and Medical Leave Act as of 2009
• Visio 2007
• Health and Safety
• Swine Flu
• Pandemic: H1N1 Flu
• Identity Theft: What is it?
• Respirators: Change Schedules
• The Ozone Standard
• Powered Industrial Trucks - Part 1
• Powered Industrial Trucks - Part 2
• Powered Industrial Trucks - Part 3
• Shift Workers
• Boilers

Enjoy the latest, and as always, please let us know any questions or requests!

New e-learning courses on cross-cultural business, PMP 2009, Visio, and more

New courses have arrived in the MindLeaders course catalog! The new topics include the latest PMP certification, tips for doing global business with Chinese and Indian companies, how to use Visio 2007, and the Security+ 2008 and MCTS 70-432 certification tests.

• CompTIA Security+ 2008 (SY0-201)
• Doing Business in China: A Cultural Approach
• Doing Business in India: A Cultural Approach
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Maintenance MCTS 70-432
• Project Management Professional Certification 2009
• Visio 2007

Our two "Doing Business in..." courses are specially designed to help people get information fast before a business trip, conference call, or any other kind of meeting with a Chinese or Indian company. Each of these courses offer fast tips for meetings, business meals, and general protocol.

Each lesson begins with a video introduction to the most important facts; students can watch only the video to get the information as quickly as possible, or can go on into the lesson to get more details about the customs and etiquette involved.

If you have a subscription to MindLeaders courses, these are already in your course lists. Please let us know any comments or suggestions that you have!

2008 results for ThirdForce and MindLeaders

ThirdForce PLC (our parent company that owns MindLeaders and ThirdForce) has announced their 2008 results. It's good news of strong profits, hard to find these days, in MindLeaders' first full year as part of the company. For those of you who dig a financial read, ThirdForce's blog has posted a summary, and there's a good bit of coverage of ThirdForce's progress in the news.

For some less financially-bent news, MindLeaders launched nearly 3 million courses in 2008. Our five most popular courses of the year were in (drum roll, please):

1. Excel 2003 (twice!)
2. Customer Service (also twice!)
3. Time Management Fundamentals
4. Basics of Business Math
5. Computer Basics

To me, this list is a stark example of how much e-learning has changed, from a purely technical training medium to one that is being used by everyone, not just the techies, to learn software and business skills. E-learning has gone from being an end in itself ("Have to learn a computer topic? Use a computer to do it!") to a means, a tool that can be used towards almost any learning need.

Know of an interesting way that e-learning is being used? Please let us know in the comments!

Earn and keep your PMP certification

Getting and staying certified by the Project Management Institute takes a hefty number of education credits, or Professional Development Units (PDUs). You must take a certain number of PDU credits to qualify for the PMP or CAPM certification, and you must continue to earn PDU credits every three years.

MindLeaders is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute, and two more of our series have been approved for PDU credits.

You can take any of the following series for PDU credits. Project 2007 and Project Management from a People Perspective are the two new ones. Each of these courses include the ability to print out the necessary paperwork for your credits.

• Project Management Professional Certification 2005
• Project Management
• Effective Business Communication
• Fundamentals of Business Management
• Project 2007
• Project Management from a People Perspective
• Time Management Fundamentals
• Time Management for Maximum Productivity

Check out our Project Management certification information sheet for more details or drop a note in the comments if you have any questions.

New e-Learning courses released today

It's course release day at MindLeaders! Today's new arrivals are full Spanish translations of the Certified Professional Food Handler and Certified Professional Food Manager courses, plus new courses in the following topics:

• Innovation in the Workplace
• Problem Solving through Productive Thinking
• Lotus Notes 8.5

Full descriptions of these courses are available in our catalog. If you're a MindLeaders student, these are now available in you course listing.

More courses and tools to come. Please let me know any questions you may have!

How the economic crisis is a call to action for trainers and human resources

It's a sign of how bad the economy has gotten that this weekend, when I saw friends I haven't seen in a month or two, their first question wasn't "How are you doing" or "How's the family," it was "How's your work? Is your job safe?"

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Speaker of the House just published this chart comparing job losses in the past three recessions. Numbers like these aren't going to make anyone feel any better.

As trainers, we're charged with not just worrying about ourselves, but with providing information that other people need, too. We're the ones who will be teaching new skills to workers who are being asked to do more duties with fewer resources. Eventually, this recession will be over and we should be ready for the next onslaught of onboarding/orientation training, too.

MindLeaders is doing some things to try to help in this economy. We have a new white paper coming that we'll be announcing later this week (stay tuned). And we've put together a new Career Shift package of courses to help people who are looking for a new job. The package includes courses on building resumes, interviewing and negotiating, managing time and selves, and building up skills in the latest Office products.

We're offering this new package to companies that have had to lay off workers to use in their severance packages, and to state agencies and resellers who can reach job-seekers directly.

What are some of the other biggest needs in today's economy that we trainers can meet? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

[Update 2/11/09: Janet Clarey has posted a version of the above chart with even more recessions tracked, all the way back to 1948. Our troubles today look no better.]

Assigning Leadership or Project Management Roadmaps to students

I designed our new roadmaps - leadership and project management so far, more to come - to help people find the best courses to build competencies in the skillsets they're most interested in. It was great to have that on paper, but now we've taken it a step further: roadmaps can now be assigned to students' course packages.

Training administrators, you can now assign an entire roadmap or specific competencies to your students. To turn on these packages for your organization, contact your Account Manager or Education Services Representative.

Are there other features you'd like to see, or a topic you think would be great for a roadmap? Please drop a comment and let me know!

The Top Ten Training Needs

MindLeaders gets a lot of information about what people want to learn more about. We hear it through our clients, usage of our courses, the topics people ask us for or search our listings for, and conversations with others in the industry. An important part of my job is trying to distill all that information to figure out what training topics are important, and who they're important to.

Here are the latest results of the top ten topics that have the most demand for online training:

1. Microsoft Excel
2. Communication
3. Customer Service
4. Project Management Professional (PMP)
5. Project Management
6. Time Management
7. Microsoft Access
8. Microsoft Word
9. CompTIA A+
10. Management

A couple of notes about the results:

• Excel is #1 by a HUGE margin. It seems to be a perfect storm of an application in ubiquitous use and complex enough that lots of people feel a need to know more about it.
• Project Management is so gigantic that I track the PMP certification separately from general project management, and yet the split vote still makes #4 and #5 on the list. (Combined, they still wouldn't quite beat Excel for the #1 spot.)

According to Bersin & Associates' brand-new Corporate Learning Factbook 2009, the topic areas this top ten falls into (Desktop Applications, Interpersonal/Soft Skills, and Management/Supervisory) are #9, #6, and #5 on their survey of training priorities. I think the difference is because they're tracking overall training programs (so company-specific information is easily #1), while I'm tracking the e-learning needs in particular. My results are a subset of the larger training industry.

What do you think of this top ten? Does it cover the topics you think of first when you think about online learning needs for yourself or your company?