This kind of silo? Pretty important. The kinds found in your organization? Less so. (Todd Trapani on Pexels)

Is the way your organization is structured a complement to your business, or yet another obstacle for your team to overcome?

Do you have one unified team rowing together, or many different teams rowing at their own pace and in their own directions?

How do you bridge the gap between where you are today, and where you wish you were?

While the temptation is always to go out and buy another tool, plan another reorg or hire more staff, perhaps a better solution is training that helps your management staff break down silos to make your organization more effective and collaborative.

We have just the thing: the Business Relationship Management Professional (BRMP^®) program and certification.

The three-day BRMP program strikes the right balance between creating value today and innovating for the future. It gives you a framework to combine your professional knowledge with the soft skills and business insights required to successfully lead transformation and change.

It also introduces you to — and provides details for — building what’s known as The House of BRM, which includes the following three key aspects of Business Relationship Management:

• The Foundation supports the BRM role and ensures it has the competencies to be effective and deliver value to both the provider organization and its business partners.
• The Pillars define the BRM space in terms of Core BRM Disciplines: Demand Shaping, Exploring, Servicing and Value Harvesting.
• The Roof protects Business Relationship Management as a key aspect of provider capability. It does this by ensuring clarity around the role, discipline and organizational capability of Business Relationship Management in the context of the Provider Strategy and Operating Model.

BRMP training continues beyond the classroom, too. As a program participant, you will receive an introductory offer for a BRM Institute Professional Membership.

Should you become a BRM Institute member, you’ll receive access to their members-only Online Campus and the BRM Interactive Body of Knowledge. Through this campus, you’ll be able to connect with peers working at major multinational organizations such as BMW, Deloitte, General Electric, SC Johnson and the United Nations.

Algonquin College Corporate Training is accredited as a Training Organization by APMG-International to deliver BRMP training and the certification examination.

To get started or for more information, visit the BRMP program page. You can also reach us at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.

Empathetic listening will be important after so many months of not seeing each other face to face. Plus, there will be a lot of stories to catch up on!

For some of us, seeing coworkers in person again rather than via a video app will be a reality soon — if it isn’t one already. That’s because, as the number of people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 steadily increases, offices are reopening.

But they won’t be the same as before. Indeed, along with the excitement mixed with trepidation of returning to one’s office space, there could be a wake-up call: after so long away from a communal work setting, some of us might discover how out of practice we are in relating to others face to face, even in a once-familiar setting.

If you’re worried that might happen to you and you want to sharpen your social skills before you arrive back at your desk — or you think others on your team might benefit from practical upskilling — here are a few courses we offer:

• Empathy in the Workplace – Studies show that empathy has a huge impact on workplace well-being, creating a culture of shared purpose, more effective teamwork, happier employees and better recovery from setbacks. This course helps managers and other professionals foster more positive relationships with employees and coworkers through proven empathy-building techniques and exercises.
• Resolving Conflict – Workplace conflict is inevitable, but the ability to deal with it empathetically and effectively is what distinguishes resilient and high-performing organizations from ordinary or even dysfunctional ones. This course teaches participants how to work through conflicts in ways that lead to more collaborative, respectful and productive teams.
• Navigating Difficult Conversations – Difficult conversations can be rich and productive learning opportunities, helping to resolve conflicts quickly, improve team relationships and build a culture of accountability. This course teaches managers and other professionals how to turn potential confrontations into fruitful conversations for a happier, healthier, more engaged and productive workplace.

Looking for something else? We offer custom training and group delivery of workshops to meet your organization’s specific needs.

To get started or for more information, you can reach us at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.

E-learning with connected gear cogs connected diagram virtual dashboard.top view of Designer hand working with laptop computer on wooden desk as responsive web design concept

Here’s a bit of trivia for you: how many of the world’s top 20 job roles are software- and technology-based?

It shouldn’t surprise you that at least half of the list is dominated by job titles such as data analyst, big data specialist, information security analyst, and software and application developer, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Future of Jobs survey.

But how do you prepare for those careers — especially if you don’t have time to go back to school?

AC Corporate Training is pleased to announce three partnerships with leaders in software development, cybersecurity, networking and other technology solutions that keep organizations running. Check out our courses page to get started, or read on to learn more about these new partners.

Mile2

Whether you have staff looking to attain industry-leading cyber security credentials, or if you need to improve the skills and awareness of your team, our partnership with Mile2 will help you address one of the fastest-growing concerns for organizations today.

Mile2 has developed and provides 15 internationally recognized, proprietary cyber security certifications, which have been accredited by CNSS 4011-4016 and are approved on the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Security Careers and Studies’ (NICCS) training schedule for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Mile2 is more than just a certification organization; it is a leader in cyber security training, with renowned authors who have developed cutting-edge training and labs. Mile2 certifications are approved by the U.S. National Security Agency and are used to train the American armed forces.

Another appealing feature of Mile2 courses is that the cost includes not only training, but also all courseware in digital and printed formats, as well as an exam voucher. Each course can be delivered in live-remote format, as well as onsite. For onsite courses, the exam is given at the end of class and participants walk out with both knowledge and a new certification.

NTerOne

Change is the rule of technology as much as it is of life. Keeping up with the latest developments requires the right training, tools and support to stay current in an evolving IT landscape.

Through our partnership with NTerOne, you get access to an expert team of professional content developers who can design specific, outcome-oriented training, and NTerOne’s consulting engineers who can help separate the technology from business requirements.

You’ll find the VMware and Cisco online training and other courses that you need to stay up-to-date.

Each instructor has real-world IT experience and can provide your team with training or certification that’s required to become a Cisco Certified Network Associate, for example.

Web Age Solutions

Web Age Solutions is a leading provider of technical training, collaborative mentoring and custom curriculum development to many of the world’s leading organizations.

Web Age‘s expertise in SOA, Cloud Computing, EA, WebSphere, WebLogic, JBoss, Web services, Web 2.0 and J2EE Frameworks, together with its ability to customize courses to satisfy its clients’ needs, sets it apart as a technical training provider.

All training is reinforced with real-world illustrations and hands-on exercises designed to ensure effective transfer of practical knowledge and skills.

Contact us today

As a strategic learning partner, AC Corporate Training will help you plan, implement and measure the results of a wide range of solutions designed to meet the needs of your workplace. Now, with Mile2, NterOne, and Web Age in our partnership portfolio, we’re here to help you deploy a whole new type of Learning for Performance™.

To get started or for more information, you can reach us at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.

If you or your coworkers are facing skill gaps, would you rather take years to fill them or months? Tough choice!

If you had a problem in your business and you were told it would take years to solve, how would you react?

Chances are you might start looking for other options.

Yet, when people are seeking to advance their career, they often simply accept that it will take longer than they might wish to get ahead. They enrol in a traditional degree or certificate program to fill a gap in their résumé.

While sometimes that is the best approach, it’s not the only one. And it’s certainly not the fastest or most affordable, as a recent Financial Post article highlighted.

At the same time, companies often can’t afford to wait for workers and will look to skilled immigrants to fill vacant job roles. However, that isn’t always the right answer and, besides, Covid-19 has slowed immigration into Canada.

So, increasingly, companies are looking at rapid training programs to quickly fill gaps.

That is where we enter the picture. Algonquin College Corporate Training works with organizations to deliver both off-the-shelf and custom training to help upskill and reskill their workforce with courses focused on technology, leadership and business skills, and other in-demand proficiencies.

Additionally, through a partnership we formed with four other Eastern Ontario colleges, we work with the province and federal government, as well as job seekers and employers, to respond to specific industry needs.

For an overview of some of our work, watch these short videos featuring just a few Eastern Ontario College Consortium (EOCC) clients.

You can learn more about the EOCC at eocc-cceo.ca.

Remember when desks looked like this? (Adobe Stock)

With the end of 2020 just over a month from now, it turns out the year that brought us everything from Covid-19 to “murder hornets” has one more curveball in store.

You see, when 2020 goes, it is taking Adobe Flash with it.

First released in 1996, Flash is a program used to create animations, applications and games. It reached the height of its popularity around 2005, following the launch of YouTube.

Unfortunately, the program’s limitations and cyber security issues eventually outweighed its benefits. A famous memo from Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2011 outlined the company’s decision not to support Flash on its products, spelling the beginning of the end for the program.

A few short years later, HTML5 debuted and developers had a strong alternative to Flash. With a rapidly decreasing userbase, Adobe announced in 2017 it would discontinue support for the program at the end of 2020. (For more Flash history, read this article on ArsTechnica.)

Despite that multi-year countdown, a study by W3Tech suggests as many as 2.5 percent of websites on the internet continue to use Flash. That number doesn’t count the many offline and internal applications that still rely on the aging software.

Indeed, Flash remains popular in e-learning. The reason is simple: it is easy to use and engages learners through animations and other interactive elements.

That means a lot of courseware will need to be converted — a task that many organizations are unprepared to manage on their own.

If you’re with one of those organizations and you don’t have a plan to transition your e-learning applications to HTML5, consider calling for back-up. Depending on how your courses are set up, there may be significant re-work or new content needed to ensure a smooth changeover for your learners. The time to start is now!

If you need help converting your e-learning applications, please contact us for a free 20-minute consultation. You can reach us at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.

Need to execute your strategy, but not sure how to start? Coffee helps. So does taking matters one step at a time. (Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash)

You spent months refining your strategy. You surveyed the landscape, did the research and consulted the consultants. The finished document was released to critical acclaim.

Then, nothing. The document did not translate into meaningful action or organizational change.

Does that sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone.

A 2019 PwC study found that nearly two-thirds of executives (65 percent) did not believe their company’s strategy would lead to success. Of that pessimistic bunch, nearly three of four (74 percent) believed their organization’s strategy had not been translated into tangible action.

Even more shocking was a study cited by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in their influential book The Strategy-Focused Organization, which was published in 2000. It found that just one in 14 employees (seven percent) said they fully understood their company’s business strategies and what was expected of them to achieve desired outcomes.

Not much has changed in the last two decades, it would seem.

Indeed, it’s clear that for many organizations, it is a struggle to close the gap between strategy and execution. What’s the secret, then?

The answer is found in a framework designed specifically to drive organizational change and growth.

Three steps to success

The practice of setting clearly defined objectives and key results — or OKRs, as they are known — was developed at Intel in the 1970s, although it has exploded in popularity in recent years.

There’s also a third step. Let’s look at each of them more closely:

• Objectives: Statements that inspire and set direction. These define where you want or need to go.
• Key Results: These measure progress towards each objective. They tell you how you know you’re getting to what you’re trying to accomplish.
• Initiatives: The work required to drive progress on key results. Initiatives tell you what you will do to achieve your results — and, ultimately, your objectives.

It sounds simple enough, but of course there’s a lot more to it. This re:Work with Google guide to OKRs might be helpful.

If you’re interested in improving your strategic thinking and goal-setting, consider registering for one of our leadership courses. You can also reach us to discuss your learning needs at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.

While robot arms may be handling the fine details on this car, there is still plenty of other human-led work to be done! (Lenny Kuhne on Unsplash)

It’ll end work as we know it.

Most jobs will become obsolete, and our economy will be transformed.

We’ll become slaves to the machines.

That is, of course, if it succeeds — although, as telecommunications expert Waring Partridge cautiously observed in 1995, “Most things that succeed don’t require retraining 250 million people.”

Those predictions from the 1990s all revolved around the consequences of the internet going mainstream.

Many of the warnings were needlessly alarmist and, not surprisingly, did not translate into the dystopian future that some imagined.

Sure, the global economy has been transformed, but it has been in largely positive ways. The digital revolution gave rise to new jobs and made possible ways of working that increased — rather than diminished — job security in many sectors. Moreover, it provided a path to business continuity — and, for some, economic growth — during the best and worst of times, as we’ve seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Still, it’s hard not to see some of the same faulty assumptions being made around automation, as a report from the World Economic Forum highlighted.

Most experts agree that reskilling and upskilling for many workers is needed. That’s partly because as machines and artificial intelligence handle more basic tasks, humans will be increasingly tasked with the kinds of work that only humans can do. The WEF points to a growing need for data analysts, process specialists and information security experts, for example, and believes that growth in these categories will outweigh job losses in others.

However, there are still areas of concern. As far back as 2018, McKinsey has pointed to an underinvestment by some employers in upskilling and reskilling as an obstacle to this transition.

They also note that the changes brought by AI are occurring quickly. This means organizations looking to insulate themselves and their teams from potential disruptions brought by the changing world of work — including as a result of automation — need to act now.

Want to learn more and stay ahead of the curve? On Wednesday, November 25, Sunil Johal with the Public Policy Forum will be joining our Future of Work Speaker Series to discuss upskilling and reskilling for the 21^st century. Register today for this free virtual event.

If you are looking for courses on cyber security, Lean management, business analysis and process improvement or other key Future of Work skills, let us know. You can reach us at  training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.

Less than 20 percent of Canadians are registered organ donors, according to the McGill Journal of Law and Health. However, in countries such as France, Austria and Poland, organ donation consent exceeds 99 percent.

Do the people of those countries have radically different views on the subject? No. The difference is due to the power of the default option.

In France, Austria and Poland, as in many countries around the world, organ donation consent is presumed unless an individual chooses to opt out. Until that happens, a decision in the matter is already made — and potentially saving more lives, as a result.

We see the default option around us every day. It happens when your fast-food meal includes fries rather than onion rings, or when your computer comes with a pre-installed web browser to go along with your operating system, for example.

Sometimes, the consequences of defaults are not necessarily in our best interests, and yet they prove difficult to resist. In a Bloomberg opinion piece, Cass Sunstein, one of the foremost experts in the growing field of behavioural economics, documented how several Americans were tricked into paying for a worthless subscription by a telemarketing company. Even when they were presented with the opportunity to opt out, many who had been paying the company for six months already did not. The default option for many was to stick with the status quo, and so they did.

Meanwhile, in the world of work, a 2016 study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that benefits are the third-most important factor influencing job satisfaction, but just over a quarter of employees are very satisfied with their pre-defined benefits package.

Clearly, the power of the preselected choice can appear in both mundane and life-or-death situations. That underscores the importance of applying careful thought when designing your training programs, your products and even your policies as an organization.

If the vast majority of your employees or clients will take the path of least resistance, where do you want that path to lead them? Should it be somewhere that benefits you the most, or another outcome? While experts like Sunstein argue the “choice architect” (you, in this case) has a responsibility to nudge choosers towards the decision that is in their best interest, it isn’t always easy to know what that is. But even not making a decision is a choice!

If you’re looking to apply more thought and care to the way you design your organization, offerings or even your life, be aware of the defaults around you. And, if you’re looking to learn more about leadership, check out our course page for upcoming sessions. You can also reach us at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.

If you’ve never had an epic breakaway stopped due to the goalie building a snowman in the net, you can thank hockey legend Roger Neilson. (Chris Liveran on Unsplash)

Have you ever inspired a new rule — either at your workplace, somewhere you volunteer or maybe your childhood home?

Sometimes we’re responsible for the creation of new rules by noticing safety hazards, or seeking ways we can improve the environment around us. Other times, new rules are made because someone actively seeks to bend — if not break — existing norms.

This is one of those stories.

Roger Neilson should be a familiar name to hockey fans in Ottawa. He was an assistant coach for the Ottawa Senators in 2002, and logged his 1,000th game as an NHL head coach while working for the team.

Neilson died in 2003 after a three-year battle with cancer; however, his legacy lives on in several important ways. Roger Neilson House and his presence in the NHL’s Hockey Hall of Fame are two of the most noteworthy examples. But another way his impact is still felt today is through a series of rules the NHL had to put in place because of Neilson.

You see, during his lengthy coaching career, Neilson found not one, not two, but three loopholes he was able to exploit to gain an advantage over an opposing team.

One of those involved leaving obstacles such as a goalie’s stick or a snowman in the net when pulling the goalie for an extra skater. Doing so was not explicitly against the rules — until Neilson did it, of course, and the league had to respond.

Although the NHL’s management likely did not appreciate some of Neilson’s antics at the time, what he did has enhanced the game for players, officials and fans. By spotting gaps within the rulebook, Neilson forced the league to make improvements.

Who is the Roger Neilson of your organization? Do you have someone pointing out your vulnerabilities — whether for your advantage, or their own? In what ways could your business be improved by having someone regularly looking at and improving your rules and procedures?

If you’re ready to drop the puck on some enhancements to your organization, consider our courses in business analysis, Lean management or leadership — a hat trick of options to help you work better!

Want to know more? You can reach us at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.

For an entertaining conversation about how Roger Neilson bent the rules of professional hockey, watch this six-minute video from SB Nation (but note: it contains some salty, possibly NSFW language).

Next time you’re flying, count your olives and know that, even if you aren’t, someone is! (Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash)

Are you meeting expectations your customers don’t have?

American Airlines discovered it was doing that — and it was costing the company tens of thousands of dollars each year.

If you’ve ever researched flight prices (pre-Covid, anyway), you know it’s a competitive business. Although some airlines try to differentiate based on customer experience, the lowest price usually wins. That’s because no matter which airline you choose, you probably have low expectations for your flight experience. You assume you’ll be cramped, uncomfortable and not particularly well fed.

It was that latter belief that former American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall honed in on in the late-1980s. With most customers expecting a poor meal, he realized the company could remove a single olive from every customer’s in-flight salad and save the company $40,000 a year.

Since most customers did not have high expectations for airline food, whether the salad had three olives or two was immaterial to them — but not to the company. While the airline could not easily cut costs on maintenance, fuel or salaries, a simple change — likely to go unnoticed by customers — meant thousands back in the company’s coffers.

Applying this kind of thinking is an example of Lean thinking. By cutting the “extra olives” in your business, you could benefit from having more resources to deploy in places where your clients will actually notice the difference. You can also use this approach to find areas where you could be improving your efficiency, productivity and client experience as an organization.

Whether you’re looking to keep planes in the sky or work with clients here on terra firma, we can help you go from a white-belt novice to black-belt Lean practitioner. Learn more about our Lean Management courses or contact us for information. You can reach us at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.