MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

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!

Sales training roadmap lists resources to build sales skills/competencies

Successful sales is about more than just following a sales process correctly. The best sales staff use many interpersonal and networking skills as they shepherd prospects into customers.

MindLeaders offers 2,500 courses and 1,000 books. Our roadmaps break down the skills that are used for important roles, and then recommends courses that will strengthen each of those skills. Each roadmap also includes a list of some recommended titles from our Reference Library.

Our new roadmap tackles the skills and competencies used in sales. We break these down into four major categories:

• The sales process
• Cultivating new business
• Finding solutions with the prospect
• Closing business

The MindLeaders Sales Roadmap PDF is available for free download. We also have roadmaps on Leadership skills and Project Management skills. Please let me know any comments you have, or if you have any topics you'd especially like to see a roadmap on.

PILAR Award open for nominations

The 2009 MindLeaders Performance Improvement and Learning Achievement Recognition (PILAR) awards are open for nominations - have you submitted your company for recognition?

Award submissions - any award submissions, although I have a personal particular love for this one - are a great way to take stock of learning programs and how they're doing at achieving their goals. Of course, they do this while also offering a chance for some useful recognition of yourself and your work.

Nominations are open until August 31, and will be awarded at another great Award Dinner event.

The award categories are:

• Best First Year Program
• Best Marketing Program
• Best ‘Blended Learning’ Solution
• Most Innovative Channel Partner
• Best Measured Results or Impact on an Organization
• Founders Award for Overall Program Excellence

Hope you'll think about applying; the 2009 PILAR PDF will give you all the information about the award and the application process.

MindLeaders joins Twitter with learning tips and ideas

While many of us within MindLeaders are on Twitter (check out our Twitter addresses), I hadn't built a MindLeaders-specific Twitter account. The big question was: what would a MindLeaders Twitter account talk about?

Our personal Twitter accounts, I think, give a great view into the cool people at MindLeaders and the e-learning and training issues and ideas that we're batting around. We had a lot of hallway conversations about what we would want a MindLeaders Twitter account to "say."

Today, we're announcing that Twitter account. Our idea is that the MindLeaders Twitter stream will share all the good training, e-learning, and learning tips and thoughts that we share with each other and our clients. A few of these might be MindLeaders-content-specific, but mostly will focus on ideas that can be helpful to any trainer or HR leader.

Please check us out on Twitter, say hello, and share the word with any other friends in the training industry. If you have any ideas or suggestions about what you'd like to see from us there, please let me know here or in the tweeting world!

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!

Expect the unexpected: Fire alarm at MindLeaders

So there I am today, working diligently and getting ready to attend a webinar, when the fire alarm goes off.

At MindLeaders, we used to work in a building where the fire alarm would go off every week or so for no good reason, so we're conditioned to respond to such an event in one way only: we all mill around in the hallways and ask each other "You think that's for real? Hmmm."

It took an announcement from our receptionist, Ruthie, telling everybody to get out, for us to actually evacuate.

Thank goodness the weather was mild enough today that it was no heavy burden for us to make jokes in the parking lot until the impressive number of firefighters (3 trucks!) could declare the building all clear. Rumor is that someone burned up a toaster oven in the offices above ours.

Only harm from the event: I missed my webinar. Oh, well. But it got me thinking about a couple of things:

• I'm a big believer that trainers are uniquely suited to helping build and communicate emergency procedures for your company. In the case of MindLeaders, today's lesson is that we ought to add a procedure that Ruthie will not only announce when a fire drill is expected, she will also announce when a fire alarm is unexpected.
  
  Stay on the lookout for ways that you can help your company be prepared. It's good karma that comes back to you manyfold: you're not just keeping people safe, you're proving the value of the training group and building valuable networks with Human Resources and other highly-connected teams in your organization.

• The unexpected make people sit up and take notice. It's one of the core principles in the book Made to Stick, which I highly recommend for trainers and presenters. A change in the routine makes us look around with new eyes.
  
  I'm not suggesting pulling any fire alarms in your next training session, but as I see in our courses every day, changing things up is the way to keep people's attention.

May your day be free of fires, but full of unexpected lessons!

New white paper: the investment benefits of training

"We can help."

The economy is slamming all of us. Here in Columbus, Ohio, we got word today that two major local employers, Limited and Longaberger, are laying people off. Everyone seems to be worried about protecting our companies and our jobs.

We've released a new front page for our web site and a new white paper with a common theme: We can help. Training can help.

Our new white paper, Training in Troubled Times, gives some facts and figures about the ways that investing in training helps a company during a recession and beyond. Companies that train their employees make it through recessions better and come out the other side stronger and more ready to capitalize on the recovery opportunities. If you're involved in making budget decisions about training, I hope you'll take a look - it might provide some good statistics for you as you justify your budget costs.

I'd love to hear any comments you have about the new web front page, too! It's the first step in a larger web site redesign by our resident web genius, so any feedback will be immediately useful for us.

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.]