Business

Key Focus Areas of the Workshop:

• Benefits of using a creative approach
• Facilitator presentation, participant personal introductions and ice breaker
• Recognising the difference between creativity & innovation
• Understanding the cycle of innovation
• Facilitator presentation and group discussion
• Breaking through thought patterns and assumptions
• Recognising left and right brain thinking
• Identifying how creative we are
• Individual creative thinking exercise, group review and self assessment questionnaire
• Enabling creativity
• Simple methods and techniques to develop creativity
• Identifying ways to further develop creative thinking
• Individual practical exercises and group review
• Methods and tools for generating ideas
• Brainstorming or blue sky thinking session
• Reverse brainstorming
• Sort cards or mind maps
• Sticky notes/Metaplanning technique
• Identifying when best to use each idea generation technique
• Facilitator technique demonstration with group plus learning review
• Logical versus lateral thinking
• Recognising the differences between lateral and logical thinking
• Appreciating our strengths
• Energiser exercise, short presentation, ‘Message in a bottle” exercise, review
• Creative problem solving
• Creative problem solving techniques
• Using the problem checklist, “go wild” and 5 whys
• Applying to work related problems
• Facilitator demonstration of techniques, pairs or trios exercise
• Applying the learning
• Turning creative ideas into action
• Small group practical problem solving and creative thinking activities, group feedback and review
• Reviewing the learning and next steps
• Review of learning and action planning

Learning Methodology

This practical workshop will provide managers and specialists with a range of simple creative thinking techniques that they can use to generate ideas and solve problems at work. Real life work problems and opportunities can be built into the workshop, enabling participants to leave with some ideas and potential solutions that can be implemented at work.

Who Should Attend
Managers, team leaders, directors, project managers and supervisors.

Benefits 

By the end of the three-day creative thinking tworkshop, the participants will have:

• An understanding of why some people are naturally creative, but also how everyone can develop their creative skills
• Knowledge of how to use a range of creative thinking methods, tools and techniques to generate ideas and solve problems

Duration
3 Days.

Critical thinking helps you step back, examine your thought processes and make them more effective. The aim of this workshop is to train you for crisis situations by forcing on two critical elements: crisis management and communication during crisis situations and get hands-on experience to help you make critical thinking an indispensable part of your skill set.

What You Will Cover

• Crisis Management
  Crisis prevention
• Assessing risk and repercussions: potential risk, cause, affected areas, probability, severity, degree of damage
• Reflex Phase: initial questioning phase and mobilization procedures
• Identification of crisis factors
• Creating efficient work conditions within cell structures: crisis sector (ergonomics and equipment), filtering calls, stress management, interfacing with national/international parties involved
• Operating within the crisis cell: characteristics, specific operations surrounding the driving force, contamination linked to the operation of crisis cells
• Techniques to aid in anticipating and making decisions
• Safety measures when facing crisis: avoidance strategy, mitigation strategy, acceptance
• Driver’s tool kit: caption’s journal, mapping & routings, follow-up on confidence

Communication in Crisis

• High priority acts of communication
• To express or not to express oneself
• Preparing key messages for emergency situations
• Selecting spokesperson
• Positing oneself
• Mastery of announcement and interview techniques
• Stress management and non-verbal issues

Recognizing the Value of Using Critical Thinking in Business

• Defining critical thinking
• Characteristics of effective critical thinkers
• The role of critical thinking in meeting business challenges
• Understanding the Components of Critical Thinking
• Using the Agile Critical Thinking (ACT) Framework to relate critical thinking to business challenges
• Describing Critical Thinking using the RED (Recognize assumptions, Evaluate arguments, Draw conclusions) Model
• Positioning the RED Model within the ACT framework
• Identifying practices and techniques in each part of the framework

Obtaining Feedback on Critical Thinking Skills

• Recognizing the value of gaining insight into one’s critical thinking skills
• Relating critical thinking skills to other business skills
• The purpose of the Watson-Glaser II Critical Thinking Appraisal
• Identifying the contents of the Watson-Glaser II Critical Thinking Development Report
• Interpreting a sample Watson-Glaser Profile
• Your personal Watson-Glaser Development Report

Applying Critical Thinking in Personal and Business Situations

• Identifying personal situations or in a real business situation where critical thinking has been and could be used
• Selecting techniques for using critical thinking skills in the ACT framework and RED model
• Relating insight from Watson-Glaser feedback to a personal critical thinking situation and creating an initial action plan for development of critical thinking skills

Who Should Attend
Directors, supervisors, managers, team leaders, administrators, office managers and executive secretaries/assistants.

How You Will Benefit

• Acquire knowledge, reflexes and behavior specific to crisis management to allow you to remain operational at any time a crisis may occur.
• Develop both the capacity for action and strategic analytical skills for crisis management.
• Become a key point of reference in managing critical situations and engender a feeling of support and confidence.
• Explore why critical thinking is so important and learn to use the skills when making business decisions.
• Choose the right techniques to recognize assumptions and draw conclusions.
• Know how to translate an abstract idea into something tangible.
• Minimize the impact of job pressures on your thinking processes.

Duration
3 Days.

Aim

The course introduces time management tools and techniques that will allow participants to manage their time more effectively and feel more in control. This enables participants to identify areas of their job where time could be better utilised and the actions necessary to alleviate problems identified.

Objectives

By the end of the time management workshop course, the participants will have:

Identified their biggest ‘time stealers’ which reduce their productivity and established solutions to reduce or remove their negative impact. Acquired practical time management skills for scheduling, planning and prioritizing work. Discussed and practiced a range of recognized time management techniques such as effective delegation, assertively saying ‘no’ and negotiating alternative solutions

Course Overview

• Identifying your greatest ‘time stealers’
• Ice breaker exercise, small group and individual reflective exercise
• Guiding principles of time and self management’
• Planning and controlling your workload
• Keeping yourself motivated to achieve tasks
• Reducing travel time and how to optimally use the time available to you
• Managing communication
• Small group exercise with presentation feedback and group discussion
• Identifying and managing peak physiological performance time’
• Peak physiological performance and time
• Importance of breaks and the negative effects of stress
• Presentation followed by individual exercise and group discussion
• Saying ‘no’ and negotiating solutions’
• Ways to say ‘no’ assertively
• Identifying potential win-win solutions
• Demonstration, group discussion, pairs practical exercise
• Prioritising workload and key tasks’
• Need for task prioritisation and ‘Eating your frogs’
• Methods of task prioritisation
• Presentation, group discussion and individual exercises
• Planning and prioritising your own workload’
• Templates for planning and prioritising projects, goals, tasks
• Planning essentials and practical
• Presentation, individual practical activity and facilitated group discussion
• Delegating tasks’
• Defining delegation and identifying why we tend not to delegate
• Benefits and art of effective delegation
• Presentation, demonstration, group exercise and facilitated group review
• Assigning tasks to be delegated’
• Team skills matrix
• Identifying best person for the task
• Presentation, individual exercise with feedback and review
• Solutions for managing time effectively’
• Finalising our time management strategies to resolve time stealers
• Individual reflective and action planning exercise with colleague support
• Next steps’
• Review of learning and action planning
• feedback

Who Should Attend
Time management workshop is ideal for team leader . Supervisor and Manager.

Duration
2 Days.

This three day workshop will provide participants with a range of business networking tools and techniques that will allow them to develop a networking strategy and plan to achieve their goals. Participants will develop their business networking skills to ‘work the room’ with confidence, develop relationships and convert them into business.

Objectives

By the end of this three day networking for business workshop, the participants will have:

• Understood the full scope and benefits of networking as a tool to raise the profile of their organisation, their team and themselves.
• Prepared for networking events and other networking activity to achieve their objectives.
• ‘Worked the room’ confidently with starting conversations, keeping conversations going and moving on with ease.
• Facilitated conversations between others.
• Removed any mental barriers between themselves and effective networking.

Key Focus Areas of the Workshop

The PINK approach to networking – introduction to networking

• Applying networking to your role and objectives
• Mapping your network – uncovering the contacts you already have in your network
• Improving the quality and quantity of your contacts– activities and skills
• Developing existing contacts
• Asking for referrals, resources, help and advice
• Removing the mental barriers to networking – confidence building
• Playing to your strengths
• Making new business contacts including ‘working the room’ skills
• Making contact
• Approaching people
• Starting conversations
• Keeping it going
• Moving on
• Following up
• Maintaining contact
• Networking action plans

Learning Methodology:

The facilitator will demonstrate and present a range of business networking techniques and facilitate participants’ contributions to ensure an engaging and interactive session. There will be a range of individual and small group exercises, facilitated group discussion, group practice sessions followed with a personal action planning session

Who Should Attend

The business networking skills workshop is designed for individuals wanting to develop their skills, confidence and strategy for networking to win business.

Duration
3 Days.

Objective

On completion of Business Analysis Practice training, delegates will be able to:

• Describe the development of a business strategy
• Use strategic analysis techniques
• Describe the need for project discipline
• Explain techniques to investigate the business systems of an organisation
• Describe an approach to improving business systems
• Use a stakeholder analysis technique and explain why stakeholder management is important
• Use techniques for the analysis and modelling of business systems
• Describe how to identify recommendations for business improvement
• Describe the contents of a rigorous business case to develop and implement business changes
• Identify costs, benefits, impacts and risks for an option in a business case

Workshop overview

Business Analysis Rationale
What is a business system?

The place of business analysis Business analysis vs. systems analysis Approaches to business analysis The business change lifecycle Roles in business analysis Strategic analysis in context Understanding the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses External analysis – PESTLE, Five Forces Internal analysis – Resource Audit MOST Building a comprehensive SWOT analysis Measuring performance – the Balanced Business Scorecard Critical success factors and key performance indicators A Project Approach to Business Analysis Business analysis studies as projects Terms of reference and project initiation Assuring business benefit

Understanding the situation/issues

Types of business ‘problem’Rich pictures and mind map Defining the problem Review of investigation techniques Business perspectives Analysing stakeholders Stakeholder management strategies Business perspectives – introduction Defining the perspective – CATWOE

Analysing and modelling the business activities

Modelling business activities Five types of business activity Consolidating perspectives and business activity models

Identifying potential solutions

End-to-end process models Exploring the gap between the current and desired situation Areas for business improvement (organisation context, processes, people) Holistic approach to business solutions

Who Should Attend

Anyone who requires an understanding of Business Analysis including business analysts,business managers and their staff,business change managers and project managers.

Duration
3 Days.

Objectives

This Sales Management workshop will ensure that Sales Management is approached with a clear and necessary balance between achieving business objectives and maintaining a motivated and committed sales team.

Overview

The role of the sales manager

• What is the responsibilities of the sale manager
• The image of the sales manager
• Projecting an image commensurate with the job and the market

Recruitment

• Identifying the recruitment process
• Building the essential skills of interviewing
• Questioning/rapport/communication
• Identifying and measuring the right role
• profile
• The CV sift
• The telephone interview
• The face to face interview
• Making a fair factual decision

Goal and target setting

• Setting goals and targets in line with business.
• Requirements.
• SMART targets.
• Reviewing targets.

Training (Induction)

Identifying the key skills and levels of competence that all new starters need to demonstrate Sources of training and the various types of training available

• Goals and objectives
• Measuring success
• Staff development
• Identifying the skills gap
• Goals and objectives
• Sources of training and the various types of training availabled your own text

Coaching

• Adapting your style
• Giving effective feedback
• Identify individuals coaching needs
• The learning process
• Linking coaching to reviews
• Gaining commitment
• Effective communication in coaching.

Motivation

• The importance of team identity
• Understanding motivational factors and how they differ from person to person
• Getting to know your team members
• Incentives
• Building on the contribution of each team member
• Devising incentives and linking to commercials
• Short term and long term incentives
• Reviews
• The importance of consistent feedback (link back)
• Keeping everyone focused

Forecasting and Action Planning

• Keeping on track
• Keeping on track of the activities of all the team
• Using statistics to check validity
• Sales plat forming using past data to maintain the pipeline

Time management

• Planning you time across team, individual,customer and the office
• Allocation of priorities for the best effect
• Admin .v. field activity, which comes first, the boss or the team?

Who Should Attend
This Sales Management training workshop is designed for Sales Managers, newly appointed Sales Managers and Sales Staff who are expecting to be appointed to Sales management in the near future

Review of Programes

• Other Recommended Programmes
• Coaching & Mentoring Skills
• Building High Performance Teams
• Building Managing & Motivating Remote Teams

Duration
3 Days.

how to identify potential problems arising and suggest actions which can be taken. It also looks at ways of improving financial control using budgets, so as to avoid reduced profits and/or financial problems.

Objective

• Our Budgeting & Cost Control course will teach you:
• Basic concepts of budgeting
• Budget types
• Analysing variances and corrective action
• Updating and Flexing the budget
• Preparing the budgets and forecast
• Budgeting to control costs

Introduction

• The importance of budgeting?
• What are its aims?
• How do we make budgets effective?

Budget Types

Capital, revenue and cash distinctions How do these relate to the basics of a balance sheet, profit & loss account and cash flow statements Concept of accruals

Budget reparation Process

• Constructing forecasts
• Limiting factors
• Sensitivity analysis
• Break-even analysis
• Preparing a forecast
• Using the budget to control
• Variance analysis
• Flexible and static budgets

Who Should Attend
Administrators & financial workers looking to improve their budgeting skills and small businesses who want to take a practical approach to their finances.

Duration
2 Days.

This workshop will prepare you to make significant strategic contributions to your company’s future e-marketing activities. Participants will be given the framework to implement an e-marketing plan that is based on documenting objectives, implementing to best-practice levels and forecasting realistic predictions of ROI.

What You Will Cover

E-marketing Vehicles

• Elements on your website
• Elements off your website
• Elements in other media
• Elements in the customer environment

Rich Media Vehicles

• Banners and vokens not dead yet
• The best and worst of rich media
• Interactive on-page campaigns
• Podcasting – building relationships with audio

eMail Marketing

• 20 must-haves for a great eMail campaign
• How to measure email success
• Privacy legislation regarding email
• Case Studies: Excellence in email

Search Engine Optimization/Search Engine Marketing

• Differences and definitions
• Key technical criteria
• Understanding customer behaviors

Social Marketing

• Blogs and Wikis as marketing tools
• Twitter and Facebook – Can they deliver?

Globalization

• Samples of globalized e-marketing
• Managing expectations for a global customer base

Viral Marketing

• Everybody wants a chicken
• The 5 immutable laws of viral marketing
• Case studies: viral victories

Integration of Online and Offline Marketing

• Mixed media success stories
• How to integrate your marketing mix
• How integration improves measurability
• How integration gives you more bang for the buck

Building an e-marketing Plan

• Business case template
• Cost parameters
• Success measurements

Measuring the ROI of eMarketing

• Tools for POS measurement
• Technical applications for measurement (metrics)

Candid Assessments

• Live critiques of participant websites/ eMarketing campaigns

Who Should Attend

Marketing managers, sales directors and VPs

• Website designers and content managers
• Communications managers
• Advertising and multimedia managers
• E-commerce specialists and systems managers
• Business owners and strategic planners
• Customer service executives
• Directors of operations and information system

Benefits

• Identify the key components of an e-marketing Plan.
• Recognize the importance of tying e-marketing to business objectives.
• Analyze a range of different e-marketing tools (e.g. SEO, email campaigns).
• Review mobile marketing case studies aimed at iPhone and smartphone users.
• Separate the hype from the truth about social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
• Systematically evaluate a variety of e-marketing vehicles for B2C, B2B and B2E audiences.
• Create an e-marketing business case that allows you to plot costs against returns.
• Integrate your existing marketing mix with the web.
• Lower your marketing costs while building the relationship with your customers.
• Understand when and how to use technology to maximize marketing effectiveness.
• Troubleshoot your current online marketing presence to identify potential enhancements.

Duration
2 Days.

The workshop focuses on the core business disciplines of strategy and management and takes participants through a transnational journey on how their leadership, decisions and behaviors impact overall business, employee engagement, organizational culture and performance. This program helps in broadening individual’s scope of vision and the sphere of influence cultivated in the past and bringing in change.

Key Focus Areas of the program:

• Aligning individual and team’s vision with organization’s vision.
• Critical appreciation of the most important business discipline needed for a senior management role.
•  Valuable insights into self-leadership style and its impact.
• Deeper understanding of the interplay of organizational dynamics, people management and systems thinking.
• Become a more effective change agent, facilitating and increasing positive results from managers.
• Practical insight to the importance of physical and mental well-being to maximize performance and tactics – Coaching skills to build succession plans.

Learning Methodology:

The workshop encourages self-reflection and learning about existing and new skills and theories of leadership and management. Experiential learning will be an integral part of the workshop, which will engage in a variety of activities, simulations and experiments. Simulations will encourage and improve group dynamics, communication and decision-making skills

Who Should Attend

This program aims at those who are already having strong management experience and area tipped to take up higher responsibility. They should be in the same organization for more than 2 years and have managers reporting to them.

Benefits

• Understand how to manage performance across team members.
• A coherent understanding of the interplay of organizational dynamics both people and systems.
• A key stakeholder and change management plan.
• Develop an action plan for improved management of time, people and business with multiple teams.
• A critical appreciation of the most important business disciplines needed for General Managers.

Duration
3 Days.

Being a vital link between support functions and the top management team, involves a great amount of negotiating with peers, contractors and stakeholders. The potential to influence, impact and change is unique to this role.

A strong middle management team will produce outstanding operational results, easing the need for top managers to oversee and intervene directly in day-to-day operations.

Knowledge Valley provides participants with the opportunity for reflection, feedback, skill refinement and planning for change.

’Key Focus Areas of the Workshop:

• Understanding the role of a middle manager.
• Understanding various stakeholder’s perceptions and their behaviors.
• Manager’s role in setting individual and group objectives.
• Conducting effective business reviews.
• Business communication with internal and external stake holders.
• What to delegate and methods to monitoring progress
• How to provide effective feedback under difficult situations.
• Handling team conflicts and performance related issues.
• Coaching Concepts.

Who Should Attend
The workshop encourages self-reflection and learning about existing and new skills and theories of leadership and management. Experiential learning will be an integral part of the workshop, which will engage in a variety of activities, simulations, and experiments. Simulations will encourage and improve group dynamics, communication and decision-making skills.

Benefits

• Able to enhancing self & team performance.
• Better understanding & value the multiple roles played by the middle manager.
• Develop insight into change management plans Enhanced persuasion skills Ability to coach team members.

Duration
3 Days.