How to Raise Billions for Public Education

K-12 is based on a fill up the bucket model. You start with 13 years and then fill it up with topics or subjects. If you have an empty space you can fill it up with a home room or study hall. The same holds true for a 4 year degree in college or even a two-day training program in business. The calendar is the boundary and filling it up is the goal.

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Driving the Waste Out of Training

Waste is defined as anything that doesn’t add value. Eliminating waste is one of the easiest and least costly thing to do because it usually means deleting training programs or portions of training programs. If a learning activity doesn’t improve proficiency or shorten time to proficiency, it’s waste. Here are some examples of waste.

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Variety vs. Variability

There seems to be a built in resistance to looking at taking the variability out of training, learning or education because people are different and have different learning styles. Some people are looking a variability as a good or necessary thing. I think what people are confusing is the difference between variety and variability.

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Reducing Variability a Key to Quality Training

Variability is a key enemy of quality.

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Social Networking and Sales Training

he first question is how does social media change or effect the way salespeople can and should prospect? On everyone’s prospecting plan there should be a strategy for networking and in many cases, social media can be faster, more wide ranging and effective than traditional approaches such as association meetings or even trade shows.

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The Link Between Six Sigma and Training

Thinking about a green belt or brown belt project around training or employee development? Here’s the key. You have to think about learning as a process and not an event or series of events.

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Teams vs. Individuals

Do teams always outperform individuals? If not, when to individuals excel over teams?

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Top Leaders vs. Top Performers

Many people will tell you that top performers don’t make the best managers or leaders. So what I wanted to post here are some of the things that only top performers bring to the position of manager or leader.

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The Problem with Competency Models

Competency models look at a task, job or something like teamwork or leadership and ask the question what are the skills, knowledge and attitudes required. Some models replace attitudes with attributes. For our discussion either one fits. What you end up with is groups of statements that break everything down into small pieces. A sales competency might be around something like asking good questions or questioning skills.

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Before Yogi, There Were Still Great Quotes

Quotes from Casey Stengel.

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