Intermediate Project Management
Project management is not just restricted to certain industries, or to individuals with certification as a project manager. Lots of us are expected to complete assignments that are not a usual part of our job, and to get the job done well, within our budget, and on time.
This workshop is intended for those who understand the conceptual phase of a project’s life cycle, including setting goals, creating a vision statement, and creating the Statement of Work. Today will take you through the remaining three stages: planning, execution, and termination.
Intrapreneurship
Intrapreneurship has been described as a great way to make beneficial changes to organizations. People can choose to continue with the status quo, or they can work to make a difference in the lives of themselves and others within the company.
Who wants to feel empowered and recognized for their innovative and creative ideas? Who wants to make a difference? If participants answer yes to these questions, then this course will help them become energized and ready to push their ideas forward. After participants complete this workshop, they will have ways to get started and implement their plans.
Inventory Management: The Nuts and Bolts
No business can survive very long without an effective program of controls over the parts and materials that are used in producing or distributing goods and services of the firm. Like many other things that depend on human interpretation, “control” means different things to different individuals.
This is an introductory workshop for you, the warehouse or stockroom manager, the person in charge of what comes in and goes out of your company. You want a smooth and cost-effective operation, with enough products on hand to satisfy needs without stockpiling too much.
This course will discuss all aspects of inventory management, including common terms, the inventory cycle, how to maintain inventory accuracy, and what some of the latest trends are.
Kickstarting Your Business with Crowdsourcing
Today’s fast-paced marketplace demands that businesses think fast. Crowdsourcing can help all types of businesses keep on top of trends and stay competitive. This one-day course will show you how to leverage all types of crowdsourcing (including microwork, macrowork, crowdvoting, crowdcontests, crowdwisdom, and crowdfunding) to kickstart your business’ growth.
Knowledge Management
Understanding how to manage the knowledge within your organization is the key to business success. Mismanagement of organizational knowledge comes with a price: frustrated employees, angry customers, and decreased productivity. All of these things can affect a business’ bottom line. The purpose behind knowledge management is to help us bridge organizational gaps and to use our greatest asset (our knowledge) to take our business performance to the next level.
The theory of knowledge management has emerged to help us harness and enhance both the individual and collective brain power of our businesses. This workshop will introduce participants to knowledge management tips, techniques, and proven processes.
Leadership Skills for Supervisors: Communication, Coaching, and Conflict
Supervisors represent an important force in the economy. You have the power to turn on or turn off the productivity of the people who report to you. You are the crucial interface between the employee on the shop floor or the service desk and the managers of the organization. Although you usually have more technical experience than the employees you supervise, you may not have had a lot of leadership experience. This one-day course will give you the skills in communication, coaching, and conflict that you need to be successful.
Lean Process Improvement
Lean principles have come a long way over the past 300 years. From Benjamin Franklin’s early ideas, to Henry Ford’s work in the 1920’s and the Toyoda precepts in the 1930’s, to Jeffery Liker’s publication of The Toyota Way in 2004, Lean processes have evolved from a simple concept to a set of widely used best practices.
This two-day course will give participants the foundation to begin implementing Lean process improvement tools in their workplace. The first day will explore the foundations of Lean through the Toyota precepts and the five critical improvement concepts (value, waste, variation, complexity, and continuous improvement). The second day will give participants tools to perform continuous improvement in their organization, including 5S, 5W-2H, PDSA, DMAIC, Kaizen, Genchi Genbutsu, and various Lean data mapping methods.
Logistics and Supply Chain Management
The supply chain is a crucial part of any business’ success. Optimizing the flow of products and services as they are planned, sourced, made, delivered, and returned can give your business an extra competitive edge.
This two-day course will introduce you to the basic concepts of supply chain management, including the basic flow, core models, supply chain drivers, key metrics, benchmarking techniques, and ideas for taking your supply chain to the next level.
Making Your Business Better
Starting and building a business begins with a great idea. At this moment, there are millions of ‘great ideas’ seeking attention and success. Some of those ‘great ideas’ may be very much like your own. To make your idea not only stand out, but to take root and grow a sustainable, successful business, you need the right team, tools, and expertise. This one-day course will highlight the essentials of business acumen, from relationship selling to and team building, through to planning and marketing, that will position your company to grow and thrive today and in the future.
Managing Difficult Conversations
We have so many interactions in the run of a day, it’s reasonable to expect that some of them are going to be difficult. Whether these are conversations that you have in person, or you manage a virtual team and need to speak with someone in another city, there are things that you can do to make these conversations go smoothly. This one-day workshop will give you the tools to manage difficult conversations and get the best results possible out of them.
Marketing for Small Businesses
Marketing is about getting your business known and building your position within the marketplace. Small businesses don`t always have a big budget for marketing, so they have to do things a little differently than big business in order to grow their presence, increase results, and meet business goals. This two-day workshop will help small business owners and managers develop their marketing message, create a marketing plan, and apply the right strategies.
Mastering The Interview
The interview is one of the key elements of the job search process. As with any skill, we can get better at it with preparation and practice. In this workshop, participants will explore how to prepare for an interview and become familiar with the types of questions to expect, as well as the questions they should think about asking. They will learn how to prepare for second interviews, testing, and shadowing, as well as how to follow up on their interview sessions.
Meeting Management: The Art of Making Meetings Work
Meetings come in all shapes and sizes, from the convention to a quick huddle in an office hallway. This one-day workshop will be concerned with small working meetings; with groups that have a job to do requiring the energy, commitment, and talents of those who participate.
Members of such a group want to get some kind of result out of their time together: solving problems, brainstorming, or simply sharing information. At its best, such a group knows what it is about, and knows and utilizes the strengths of individual members.
Motivation Training: Motivating Your Workforce and Team
It’s no secret that employees who feel they are valued and recognized for the work they do are more motivated, responsible, and productive. This one-day workshop will help supervisors and managers create a more dynamic, loyal, and energized workplace. It is designed specifically to help busy managers and supervisors understand what employees want, and to give them a starting point for creating champions.
Negotiating For Results
Negotiating is about resolving differences. People who can master the process of negotiation find they can save time and money, develop a higher degree of satisfaction with outcomes at home and at work, and earn greater respect in their communities when they understand how to negotiate well.
Negotiating is a fundamental fact of life. Whether you are working on a project or fulfilling support duties, this workshop will provide you with a basic comfort level to negotiate in any situation. This interactive workshop includes techniques to promote effective communication and gives you techniques for turning face-to-face confrontation into side-by-side problem solving.
Networking For Success
Business networking is an effective and efficient way for business people to connect, develop meaningful relationships, and grow their businesses. These achievements don’t come through a direct sales approach, however. They come from being interested in helping others, in listening, and in purposefully meeting and introducing people to one another. In this two-day course, participants will learn the essential ingredients for business networking, including in-person, people-centered connections and online spaces such as LinkedIn.
NLP Tools for Real Life
Neuro linguistic programming (NLP for short) is all about bringing your unconscious thoughts to the surface, so that you can have real choice over how you interact with and respond to the world.
Once you have a grasp on NLP's basic principles, you might be interested in learning about some tools that can help you do more with NLP. This one-day workshop will give you some hands-on experience with important NLP techniques, including anchoring, establishing congruency, developing rapport, creating outcomes, interpreting and presenting information efficiently, and even some self-hypnosis techniques.
To get the most out of this workshop, participants should first complete An Introduction to Neuro Linguistic Programming.
Overcoming Objections to Nail the Sale
If you are like most sales professionals, you are always looking for ways to overcome customer objections and close the sale. This one-day course will help you to work through objectives effectively. We will help you plan and prepare for objections so that you can address customer concerns, reduce the number of objections you encounter, and improve your averages at
closing sales.
Personal Brand: Maximizing Personal Impact
Abigail Van Buren, the writer of Dear Abby, once said, “There are two kinds of people: those who come into a room with the attitude, ‘Here I am!’ and those who have the attitude, ‘There you are!’”
This course is a two-day exploration about the type of impact we want to have in life and work. Participants will consider and define the influence that they can have on their life and work. They will also learn skills for success and how to create those circumstances.
Planning for Workplace Safety
Beginning with the Organizational Safety Policy, the company’s Safety Plan shows that Senior Management takes the commitment to worker health and safety seriously. The safety plan provides a system of policies, procedures and practices to help prevent accidents/incidents, gives workers the knowledge to help them create a safe working environment and outlines a consistent methodology for the company’s approach to Health and Safety. It is one of the more important safety documents that a company can produce.
This workshop will give you the foundation to develop your Organizational Safety Plan and take the next step in building your safety culture.
Process Improvement with Gap Analysis
Charles Kettering, an inventor for General Motors, once said, “A problem well-stated is half-solved.” The gap analysis tool can help you define problems and identify areas for process improvement in clear, specific, achievable terms. It can also help you define where you want to go and how you are going to get there.
This one-day course will give you the skills that you need to perform an effective gap analysis that will solve problems, improve processes, and take your project, department, or organization to the next level.
Project Management Training: Understanding Project Management
Project management isn’t just for construction engineers and military logistics experts anymore. Today, in addition to regular job duties, people are often expected to take on extra assignments and to get that additional job done well, done under budget, and done on time.
This workshop is not intended to take participants from a supervisory or administrative position to that of a project manager. However, these three days will familiarize them with the most common terms and the most current thinking about projects.
In this workshop, you will walk participants through the nuts and bolts of project management, from setting priorities to controlling expenses and reporting on the results. They may still have to cope with the unexpected, but they’ll be better prepared.
Project Management: All You Need to Know
Project management is no longer only for mega projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Small projects can benefit from project management tools. These time tested tools can help you to get that small project done well, done under budget, and done on time. This workshop is not intended for those looking to be certified as project managers but rather for those who complete projects at work from time to time.
In this course, you will gain experience using the most common project management execution tools from Project Tracking Forms, Risk Monitoring Tables to Communications Plans, Change Request Forms, Issues Logs and Lessons Learned Forms. Your small projects will be more successful than ever!
Project Planning: All You Need to Know
Project management is no longer only for mega projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Small projects can benefit from project management tools. Statements of Work, Work and Resource Breakdown Structures and Project Planning documents can help you to get that small project done well, under budget, and on time. This workshop is not intended for those looking to be certified as project managers but rather for those who complete projects at work from time to time.
In this course, we will gain experience using the most common project management planning tools and will completely plan a case study project from Statement of Work through Work and Resource Breakdown, Scheduling and end up with a completed Project Planning Worksheet. Your small projects will be more successful than ever!
Prospecting for Leads Like a Pro
Prospecting is one of the keys to your sales success. Keeping your pipeline full ensures that you will continue to attract new business, and so your success today is a result of the prospecting you did six months ago.
In this workshop, participants will become skilled at prospecting and learn the 80/20 rule. They will learn to target and how to target them, and commit to do some prospecting every day through warming up cold calls, following up on leads, or networking. Participants will also build their personal prospecting plan and learn how to ensure their future by planting seeds daily.
Public Relations Boot Camp
The field of public relations has changed with the evolution of computers and the speed with which information can spread. However, the need for public relations to be clear, concise, and accurate while being completely appropriate for the situation has not changed however. In this comprehensive course, learn how to determine the type of information required, to approach PR strategically, create compelling releases, and manage your media relations.
Public Speaking: Speaking Under Pressure
This workshop has been designed for those in positions where they must speak in front of audiences that are hostile or demanding. This material is also suitable for those who are relatively new speakers who want some encouragement to speak up in meetings or who want some training before they begin making presentations on behalf of the organization.
Speaking under pressure, or thinking on your feet, means being able to quickly organize your thoughts and ideas, and then being able to convey them meaningfully to your audience to modify their attitudes or behaviour. It applies to formal speeches as well as everyday business situations.
It requires presence of mind, goal orientation, adaptation, and judgment. It also requires differentiating between oral and written communications.
This course is aimed at improving your skills and learning some new techniques which will give you the persuasive edge when you are making a presentation, fielding difficult questions, or presenting complex information.
Purchasing and Procurement Basics
Purchasing and procurement functions are about much more than bringing goods and services into an organization. They are the foundation of strong, collaborative relationships with suppliers. Since many companies source products from around the globe more frequently than ever, a procurement manager needs strong capabilities. These skills cannot just be learned on the job: they need to be taught. As well, the value of procurement is now recognized as an integral part of cost control within the organization.
In this course, you’ll learn the basics of procurement, including what a supply chain looks like, the purchasing cycle, essential tools and strategies for making the best purchasing relationships work, managing bids, and more.
Research Skills
In this age of information overload, it can be hard to know where to find good information that you can trust. If you’re doing research for an important project, report, or proposal, how do you find information that you can count on?
This one-day workshop will teach you how to research any topic using a number of different tools. We will start with basic techniques, such as reading, memory recall, note-taking, and planning. We will also talk about creating different kinds of outlines for different stages of your project, and how to move from the outline to actual writing, editing, and polishing. Most importantly, we will talk about how to use all kinds of sources, such as journals, print media, and reliable online sources.
After you complete this course, you’ll be ready to find reliable information on any topic, and turn that information into a compelling, accurate piece of writing.
Self Leadership
Self-leadership puts together taking responsibility for our outcomes, setting direction for our lives, and having tools to manage priorities. Self-leaders work at all levels of an organization. They are front-line workers in every possible role, middle managers, and CEOs. Self-leaders like Walt Disney and Wayne Gretzky worked hard to achieve their dreams without using the term self-leadership. However, they have clearly demonstrated that being in control of their behavior and results, focus, practice, and learning were necessary to achieve their goals.
Self-leadership requires a commitment from individuals to decide what they want from life and to do what’s necessary to get the results they want. This course will help participants internalize the four pillars of self-leadership and to make meaningful, empowered choices while taking action to get where they want to go.
Selling Smarter
It’s no secret that the sales industry continues to change and evolve rapidly. This is an exciting and dynamic profession, although it is often underrated and misunderstood. The back-slapping, high pressure, joke-telling sales person has disappeared. In his place is a new generation of sales professionals: highly trained and well groomed, with the characteristics of honesty, trustworthiness, and competence.
This one-day workshop will help you teach participants how to be one of those smart sales professionals.
Six Sigma: Entering the Dojo
Six Sigma is a set of qualitative and quantitative quality tools that can help a business improve their processes. The efficiency built into the business processes brings about improved profits, confidence and quality. Ultimately this effort is there to ensure customer satisfaction.
The term Six Sigma comes from statistics to indicate that the process outputs fall within three standard deviations from the center (expected value) giving a range of six standard deviations (or 6 sigma- 6 σ). As a result in terms of individual outputs it means you would have 3.4 defects per million items.
This course is designed to introduce students to basic concepts of Six Sigma particularly in continuous process improvement. Various quality tools used in process improvements will be explored as well as the importance of customer relationships. Courses in Lean, quality and teams will provide knowledge on the other aspects of how Six Sigma works. It is a predecessor to studies in Six Sigma Yellow, Green and Black Belt.
Skills for the Administrative Assistant
Work is not the only thing that matters in life, but most of us want to take pride in what we do. While we don’t have to like the people we work with, or report to, at the very least we should be able to interact positively with them. The biggest influence on our job satisfaction is our relationship with others.
Our work should not be a burden to us and our offices shouldn’t be battlefields. We are human beings working with other human beings. This two-day workshop is about working to the best of your abilities, and encouraging the best in those who work with you, or for you.
Strategic Planning
If you and the people who work with you don’t understand where the company is going, they may all develop their own priorities and actually prevent you from getting where you need to be. Part of getting everyone on board is creating a strategic plan complete with the organization’s values, vision, and mission. Then, there’s the challenge of bringing these principles to life in a meaningful way that people can relate to. This two-day course will help you describe what you want to do and get people where you want to go.
Stress Management
Today’s workforce is experiencing job burnout and stress in epidemic proportions. Workers at all levels feel stressed out, insecure, and misunderstood. Many people feel the demands of the workplace, combined with the demands of home, have become too much to handle. This one-day workshop explores the causes of such stress, and suggests general and specific stress management strategies that people can use every day.
The Professional Supervisor
With a host of new challenges and responsibilities to tackle, new supervisors need training that helps them adjust to their new role. Learning how to supervise your new employees on a trial and error basis can lead to discouragement. This three-day workshop can help you overcome many of the problems a new supervisor may encounter, and to set the groundwork for a successful change in your working life!
Time Management: Get Organized for Peak Performance
Time is money, the saying goes, and lots of it gets lost in disorganization and disruption. We also deal with a constant barrage of technology, people, and tasks that can contribute to that disorganization. Many people find that they flit from one task to another, trying to get everything done.
In this one-day workshop, you will learn how to make the most of your time by getting a grip on your workflow and office space, using your planner effectively, and delegating some of your work to other people.
Trade Shows: Getting the Most Out Of Your Experience
Most companies spend huge amounts of time and money designing, construction, outfitting, transporting, and setting up their trade show booth. This course aims to have you understand some of the basic skills that would allow you to get the most out of your trade show experience.
The workshop will start by looking at who attends trade shows and why they are there. It will explore a number of things that should be done before the show even starts, including setting trade show goals, understanding your company, and developing good trade show introductions. It will then look at trade show etiquette and skills emphasizing active listening, body language and questioning. A special emphasis will be placed on conducting prospecting. The workshop will end with an exploration of the follow-up necessary after the show. This course will highlight basic skills that should allow you to generate more leads, prospects and especially qualified prospects at your next trade show.
Working Smarter: Using Technology to your Advantage
Rudeness in the workplace is increasing to the level that universities are studying it. Everyone is busy, everyone is stressed, and most people take it out on their colleagues at one time or another. We’ve all been in a situation where we need to print something ASAP and someone has left the printer jammed, or we need coffee and the coffeepot is empty. Technology is supposed to make life easier and simpler, but most managers find themselves cleaning up the messes caused by too many gadgets. This two-day workshop will show participants how to leverage technology to work smarter, not harder.
Working with the Media: Creating a Positive Working Relationship
The media is more widespread and pervasive than it’s ever been and its reach is growing all the time. Depending on your line of work or hobbies, or just a plain twist of fate, you could end up being the answer part of a question and answer session with a member of the media.
It’s easy to become nervous or tongue-tied when being in this situation. Plenty of people get distracted when they consider that what they are saying could very soon be on some news organization’s website or Twitter feed.
Being uneasy is perfectly understandable, but you can learn to deal with the media, on a one-off basis, or as a recurring situation. This course will give you the tools you need when dealing with the media and putting your best foot forward without putting your foot in your mouth.
Workplace Success: Eight Key Skills You’ll Need
There have been a number of studies that identify the key skills that workers need to be successful. Various studies call them different things - critical employability skills, soft skills, or transferrable skills. Regardless of the name these skills are critical for workplace success.
Eight of the most commonly identified skills are: Being a Productive Team Member, Flexibility, Problem Solving, Resourcefulness, Giving and Receiving Feedback, Self-Confidence, Creative Thinking and Emotional Intelligence. Many of us possess one or more of these attributes already and perhaps all of them. Luckily these skills can be improved upon through training.
This course looks to take you from where you are now to a new level of understanding for the key skills that will help to make you successful at work.
Writing a Business Plan
This two-day course is designed for business owners and entrepreneurs who are ready to create a business plan. All the essential steps are covered, including drafting the original document; identifying the audience; gathering information; researching; describing product plans; and marketing, sales, and accounting terms. Students will come away from the course energized and prepared to write their business plan.
Writing Reports and Proposals
It is essential to understand how to write reports and proposals that get read. We write reports in a range of formats and a variety of purposes. Whether you need to report on a product analysis, inventory, feasibility studies, or something else, report writing is a skill you will use again and again.