The Learning Professional

Organizational support for employee development ranges from non-existent, to ad-hoc, to structured but not well-funded, to well-structured and well-funded (if you're lucky). Regardless of the level of organizational support, all individuals should have a professional development plan that:

a) identifies current strengths and areas for improvement

b) defines how to develop in areas for improvement

c) sets a timeline for completion for each professional development activity

If you don't already have a comprehensive professional development plan, don't wait for your manager to do this for you!

Practical Emotional Intelligence
Gary C. Hinkle

Many people have now heard of this phenomenon called “Emotional Intelligence,” (EI) using emotions as information (in decision-making, in interactions with others, and more) as well as the ability to regulate oneself, knowing what to do in emotionally charged situations. It’s also increasingly common knowledge that professionals with EI succeed, where those without struggle.

But from a management practitioner’s viewpoint, the Emotional Intelligence challenge is this:

How do I apply emotional intelligence at my company?
How do I instill it, develop it, in others?
The touchy-feely “training” sessions don’t get me there.
I see the value, but I don’t know how to bring it into our organization and make our management team stronger, readier for challenges, using and growing their EI.

Linking EI capabilities to the work at hand is the focus of our class, Emotional Intelligence: A Guide for Project Managers. The class bridges the gap between knowing what EI is and knowing how to develop and use one’s own, as well as how to help develop it in others. Want practical, proven techniques to apply specific EI characteristics to projects? This class is loaded with them.

Taught by an instructor with 25 years of corporate IT management experience who’s done considerable research in EI, she brings together the practical with the theoretical in a way you can take it back to work and use it tomorrow! Follow-up coaching is also offered.

What is Auxilium?
Gary C. Hinkle, President, Auxilium, Inc.
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When people ask me what we do at Auxilium, I’m usually under pressure to give my best “elevator pitch” – so I usually say something really brief like, “we help product development organizations improve processes and collaboration,” or, “we organize continuing education seminars.” If I’m lucky, I get a few more seconds to clarify.

It becomes more difficult to clearly state what we do in just a few words as we grow. Since I have more than a few seconds to describe what we do for those who are interested in reading further, here’s an explanation.

Click here to read the entire article.

Accelerating Product Development Through Improved Customer Intimacy
José Campos
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How many hours have you spent in contact with your customers in the last 90 days? If you are typical of the industry, probably no more than 14 hours or 2 to 3% of your time. Most of us spend little time with our customers. Nor do we spend enough time talking about our customers with others in our organization in order to understand the very people who provide our profits.

Customer Intimacy is the ability to understand and then internalize customer needs in order to generate new value in the form of new products and services. "Value" is always determined by your customers, i.e. nothing is valuable until a customer says so.

Thus, customer intimacy improves profits. Given that it takes purposeful interaction with customers to internalize customer needs, rethinking this time allocation can contribute significantly to creating new value — and by the way, spending only 2% of your time doing it will not work — much more is needed.

Click here to read the entire article.

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