It’s important to continue investing in yourself, , , just as you need to invest in your employees. Every year, you should develop an employee training and education plan and invest in developing the skills of each and every employee on your staff. Doesn’t have to be all formal education, , , much of it can be internal training held by yourself or others on your staff.
The point is that you need to be developing the skills of each and every employee on your staff. It will pay big dividends over time.
Don’t forget yourself, , , it can be easy to forget about developing your own skills, , , and you need this investment as much as anyone. The challenge is that you may not have anyone in your company looking out for “you” unless you personally are taking the time to focus on your development.
Just as every employee on your staff should have a personal training and education development plan each year, so should you.
Identify what you need to improve key skills and carve out budget and time to make it happen, , , it won’t otherwise.
I’m doing this for myself this coming weekend. I’m investing in developing my marketing skills, , , something I need as a small business, , , but not something that I necessarily like to focus on. This is a key point!!!!
I don’t really like to spend time in marketing, but if my company is to grow, I have to do some things (or hire it done) that I may not be all that excited about. Even if I hire out our marketing efforts, I still need to understand things about marketing to be able to make prudent business decisions about where we spend marketing dollars.
I would rather spend my time teaching IT management classes, developing new training materials, writing articles, , , or playing golf :). But I can’t get around the fact that marketing is a key to any small business so I need to make the investment in time and money to improve my marketing knowledge and capabilities.
On Thursday I leave for Atlanta to attend a 3-day Internet marketing program. I’m excited about what I might learn but not so much about the networking during lunch and breaks, , , you see, I’m shy and more introverted like most people in IT. Still, , , got to do it and make the investment in myself.
I decided to take my wife’s 1st cousin with me. Kenny is more like a big brother to her. He was also my band director in high school so we have been good friends for over 30 years. Kenny knows very little about internet marketing but needs to learn about it for his photography business and the community volunteer work he does. It should be a fun weekend and beneficial for both of us.
Attending the class with a friend will allow us to discuss questions or points of interest and will help us network with others, , , it also gives us someone to have dinner with. More importantly, it may help each of us implement some of the concepts we learn about and to support one another later on. I see this quite often when managers of the same company attend my IT Manager Institute, , , I always hear about how much more it means to them when they are able to share the experience with someone they work with.
It is easy to just do the work day after day after day, , , but if you are going to become more strategic about your work and continue to grow, , , you need to invest in your knowledge and professional skills. Make an investment in your staff and don’t forget to invest in yourself.
ITLever™ 