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Training
Laypersons' Answers
What's Coaching?
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Prelude
I've been working with PCs since late Apple ][ and early IBM PC. I'm writing this to discuss and make you aware of the current trends
in PCs and the learning experience. Possibly, this will spread more positive
attitudes and reward you and those who work with you.
Background
Computer learning in Melbourne, Australia appears to be in the doldrums - not
a lot of activity and the activity is relatively listless in comparison to the
heyday in the mid '90s when we migrated from MS-DOS to MS-Windows. Several
phenomena are in play but I believe the prime factors are:
- a jadedness with the PC - it is no longer new - everyone has seen or used
one.
- a jadedness with personal productivity. Personal Productivity was an early
catch cry for the PC industry. Lots of people got excited with the fact that one could generate
much better results by moving away from tedious paper shuffling to using a spreadsheet,
word processor or a database. Lately, in the midst of the new millenium,
where we're pre-occupied with other things, people have generally forgotten
about personal productivity and/or taken that for granted.
- an assumption that any viable employee would already know how to use MS
Windows and Word, Outlook and even Excel.
What People are Missing Out On
Jadedness is infectious. That's why companies die / get absorbed / go
bankrupt. That's why we search for new whiz kids and pay them big money to lead
the company in restructuring, reinvention, renewal. Here's why the previous
three points are in error:
- the PC may no longer be new, but the nominal Joe/Mary has NOT
figured out / been taught how to use it effectively or efficiently.
I'm not talking about major initiatives like installing SAP in your company.
I'm talking about the fact that many people currently treat the PC like a piece of
furniture - a stapler or three ring binder. You can give employees good PCs
with the latest software, but how effectively do they actually use Outlook or
Excel or Word?
- Lots of work circles have not figured out how to calendar
their activities in Outlook.
- Lots of people don't know that 10% GST is
actually Gross Sale Price / 11, much less know how to do it in Excel.
- Lots
of people still hit space, space, space, space (or tab, tab, tab) to line up
words on different lines.
- Personal Productivity and therefore Corporate Productivity is potentially
not a lot better than pen and paper of 1981. And that's really sad when we
have, for example 2Ghz Pentium 4 right now compared to a 1Mhz Intel 8080 in
1985.
So what do you do?
Can you make a difference? Sure you can. How? By
- cultivating positive approaches to productivity.
- empowering the crew - get your workplace skilled up. Not in mince grinder
courses (high volume, low skill/knowledge
delivery) but in more relevant and focussed courses. Have a look at the
syllabi yourself, go for a couple yourself and the figure out whether you
are buying into the right traininers, the right manuals, the right content
and the right post course skills.
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