If you are currently struggling in your small business I’m going to guess it’s because you have yet to find the right training. Have you listened to every CD and read every training manual that you can get your hands on? While training methods can be useful in regards to professional development they are not going to magically grow your business for you. It is by applying what you have learnt in the training in the workplace.
Take project management for instance, many organisations large and small struggle to consistently achieve project success yet the right project management training, when put into practise, has been proven to increase the proportion of successful projects. So little wonder that businesses are investing in professional project management courses for their employees, such as the APM Project Fundamentals course. And the same is true of finding the right training in other fields.
Why “On-The-Job” Training Doesn’t Work
I have been in this industry since 2001 and when I first started out my project manager told me everything he knew – that was my “on-the-job” training.
After 16 months and hundreds of working hours as a project manager I had achieved a total of ZERO successful projects. Senior execs in my organisation at the time thought that professional project training for their employees was just a waste of thousands of dollars. Why did I fail in those early months? Simply put, the so-called “on-the-job” training that I received does not work! Here’s why:
Good Managers are not Good Trainers
You can be very good at your job but that doesn’t mean you know how to properly train other employees. Training is a skill, even more so in a profession such as project management.
Our society has learned to shut down when anyone asks them to explain how they do their job. People are not comfortable talking about what they do either because they are worried it will show up gaps in their own knowledge or because they want to keep all their tricks-of-the-trade to themselves to protect their own job.
Why should a PM tell everything they know about APMP, PMP, PRINCE2 or Agile project management to you? They probably don’t trust you.
Why Professional Training Does Work
I like to refer to the above mentioned “on-the-job” training as the “old school” way to develop employees. Yes, these techniques might have worked in the past but that was before the Internet and social media exploded. As a society, we are becoming more and more social but it’s all online.
If you want to build a thriving business you need to tap into the power of the internet. Online training courses are a great way to learn how to properly grow a business.
It is critical to understand that professional training in project management, or indeed any other business field, is an investment in the future of your company. You want to use the recognised methodologies (such as AMP, PMP, PRINCE2) to position yourself as a leader. By doing this, you are going to begin to achieve greater project success for your business!
My advice to you is to ditch the old school ways and embrace the modern training techniques such as podcasts, training videos, online learning even if senior executives don’t have a clue about these methods.
