Training vs. Education

"Training is nothing but a short term event, so we don’t offer that. We deliver Education which lasts a lifetime."
   —Carolyn Warden

Tennis

Until you master the fundamentals of this game players beat themselves by making errors – much more so than being beaten by a better player. Many managers also have problems of their own creating because there is no "Managers Camp" for them to attend for 2 weeks. Shared Resources offers mentoring and coaching practice that helps managers at all levels.

Volleyball

Even a star can’t win the game by herself – that’s the lesson I took from playing Volleyball in High School. There is a reason you’re allowed 3 hits per side – each individual contribution equals a better result than any one individual can deliver. Even managers who have mastered all of the skill sets of operating their organization face 2 problems:

1. burn out from doing everything or being the human encyclopedia and
2. developing others skill sets for succession planning and vacation coverage!

Bowling

The more lessons I took the worse I got! Bowling just isn’t my thing. Nothing wrong with recognizing your limitations. Sure reduced my stress level when I stopped trying to do something I just didn’t have the aptitude for.

Shared Resources partners with the industrial psychologists at The Plotkin Group. These guys are experts at selecting the proper aptitude test to fit the job needs and interpreting the test results to identify the candidates most likely to succeed. (It cost 50% more to make a bad hire, so it's worth taking the additional steps to find a successful candidate) A modest investment in testing saves time & uncertainly in hiring process. The Plotkin Group also has aptitude tests for existing employees to assure they are in the "best fit" positions. Just because you have a round peg in a square hole doesn't mean you should adjust to the pinch it creates.

Avoiding a weakness is NOT the same as dropping out entirely: I can always be the bowling team’s cheerleader, and fetch the snacks!

Trivial Pursuit

OK it’s not a sport, though it is a team effort. Recognizing that I know nothing about sports and very little about classic literature I try to find people with those interests when putting together a team. 

Picking the right strategy to reach a goal usually means bring new talent onto the team, even it's just for the time it takes to reach the goal.  It should be obvious to the board that is the CU had all the resources it needed then the policy manual would be up-to-date, all employees would be working on obtainable growth goals, and there would not be 20 years of old records in the storage room.  Should be obvious, though sometimes they need a little help appreciating the real world. 

That's why our name is Shared Resources.  You don't need to pay for some skills every day of the year. Some you need to someone to share with you, to get you caught up, and then you can take it from there.

Weight Loss

For 40 years I was either going down or going up, staying in the same place was impossible.  True, in life it's impossible to stay in the same place, no matter how hard you try, so weight loss & stabilization seems to be, well, frustrating as all get out, for one.  It's not the opposite of education either, because failing to practice what skills you learn means you lose the benefits of the learned behaviors.

Then I stopped resisting what "they" all said.  You have to exercise regularly to build muscle so you burn more calories & lose weight more easily and so you stay toned or you if you are over 40 your skin will look like a Shar Pei puppy's. This was not new news to me.  It was something I just didn't think I had to do. (and who hasn't had a resistant employee or co-worker like that?)  I had to reach a point where the pain & frustration of staying the way I was greater than the (assumed) pain & frustration of learning & adopting new behaviors.

I really like being at my gym. It's a positive attitude place.  I don't like all the aspects of working out, though I see that doing it get me more of what I want and less of what I don't. So I'm sticking with it. 

Practice is necessary to keeping up your skills just as working out 3 times a week is necessary for me to maintain my 65 lb weight loss. Kind of a "Like, Duh!" statement, I know though for me it took a light bulb moment to really "get it." Which is part of human behavior - no one escapes it.

To lose more weight and to learn more skills, it takes more practice... 25% to 50% more, in my case, depending on the goal & how fast I want to reach it. 

While maintaining weight loss is good, where I am now is not my goal, so I have to keep practicing the behaviors that I know work.  Thinking about practicing, talking about practicing, and teaching others what works equals ZIP in terms of realizing change.  

It's harder now to lose weight, not only because my body's needs & expectations have changed, but also because my Internist thinks this is as good as I'm going to get. She may be right, though I'm not adopting her view.  I'm not willing to give up the thrills of putting on the clothes I wore last month & finding they are now so loose they look sloppy, or the compliments I get from my friends.  External feedback, especially the positive kind, keeps me motivated.  It's a part of human behavior that applies to everyone else, too.