One day I went to HSBC to interview my customers and their non-native English speaking colleagues. I wanted to understand their communication case better and get greater insight into Anglophone and non-Anglophone interactions.

During one interview, I was amazed at how eloquently one individual, Mr. Boyer, clearly expressed the essence of Sustainable English:

“An environment is friendly when everyone understands the stakes, objectives, and viewpoints of others.”

As I was preparing my program and notes, I had originally defined it as:

An environment that is friendly towards non-native speakers – it consists of clear English, collaboration, and focus on mutual understanding.

Mr. Boyer expressed exactly what the communication-friendly environment has to offer, when it is implemented and fully operational.

Every native English speaker has the potential and ability to create his/her own personalized environment to accommodate non-native speakers.

Less frustration. More success.

1) The Conference Board published a good report in 2005
titled America’s Aging Workforce Posing New Opportunities
and Challenges. Quotes:

“Some 64 million baby boomers (over 40 percent of the U.S.
labor force) are poised to retire in large numbers by the
end of this decade. In industries already facing labor and
skills shortages, forward-thinking companies are
recruiting, retaining, and developing flexible work-time
arrangements and/or phased retirement plans for these
workers (55 years of age or older), many of whom have
skills that are difficult to replace. Such actions are
putting these companies ahead of competitors who view the
aging workforce largely as a burden putting strains on
pension plans and healthcare costs.”

“More older workers want to remain in their jobs for both
personal fulfillment and financial reasons. In a related
forthcoming study from The Conference Board, more than half
(55 percent) of older employees surveyed said they were not
planning to retire because they find their jobs
interesting. Significantly, 74 percent also cited not
having sufficient financial resources as a reason they were
continuing to work, and 60 percent cited the need for
medical benefits.”

Not only in the US: the largest single group within the UK
workforce in 2006 was comprised of people between 45 and 59.

2) Some consulting companies like Accenture seem to be
betting that the solution will be to improve technology for
knowledge transfer and train younger employees as soon as
possible.

3) And the market for Talent Management and Succession
Planning solutions such as Taleo (whose VP of Research led
us to some of these reports) has been growing steadily, and
has more room to grow.

4) Preparing for an Aging Workforce: A Focus on New York
Businesses, is a survey of 400 HR managers sponsored by
AARP. One interesting tidbit I found in the report: when
asked about “Strategies to help employees work past
traditional retirement age”, the top answer was “Training
to Upgrade Skills (out of 8 such as “easing into the
retirement” or “working part-time”).

5) In the Talent-Shortage Myth article, Workforce
Management editor John Hollon he tries to debunk the myth
of a massive, simultaneous worker shortage, highlighting
that many baby boomers will want to remain in the workforce
for many more years.

6) Many people are asking “Does your organization have-or
need-a baby boomer exit strategy?”

7) Companies need a comprehensive strategy, more than a
baby boomer “exit” strategy: hiring and training younger
employees, ensure knowledge transfer, manage talent and
sucession planning, AND training baby boomers who want to
stay. I tend to agree with John Hollon that there won’t be
a massive shortage. Many baby boomers will want to, and
need to, keep working. But it will be important for sectors
like government, communications, energy, utilities, to
manage their worforce of people over 50 and ensure flexible
and appropriate workplace arrangements, and start planning
now for those arrangements.
An important component of that strategy, that seems to
be overlooked so far, is how to Train those Employees to
ensure maximum Productivity and Health. We have been
discussing the growing research behind brain fitness and
cognitive training and the increasing number of tools.
Won’t companies incorporate them in their Corporate
Training initiatives? won’t an employee with top attention
span, processing speed, memory and executive functions be
in a better position to keep adding value, to be more
healthy and productive?

9) Which is why we have started to help educate companies
and professionals with articles such as Ten Important
Truths About Aging: How we age is at least partially under
our control, By Elkhonon Goldberg and Alvaro Fernandez,
published in The Complete Lawyer.

10) At a glance, those Ten Truths are:

- Neuropsychology Indicates That We Can Control Our Aging

- Aging Means Lifelong Development, Not Automatic Decline

- Some Skills Improve With Age

- Some Skills Need To Be Continuously Nurtured And Trained

- Not All Instances Of Forgetting Are Of Equal Concern

- We Are In Control, To A Large Extent

- There Are Four “Pillars Of Brain Health”

- Cross-Training Our Brains Builds Up Cognitive Reserve

- Computer-Based Brain Exercise Programs Can Help

- Embrace “Good” Stress; Eliminate “Bad” Stress

- Retirement Is Overrated

So, let me ask, does your organization have-or need-a
comprehensive baby boomer strategy? Does that strategy
include a Brain Fitness Training component? Is your HR
department taking proactive steps in this area?

—————————————————-
Alvaro Fernandez is the CEO and Co-Founder of SharpBrains,
which provides the latest science-based information for
Brain Fitness and Brain Exercise, and has been recognized
by Scientific American Mind, MarketWatch, CBS, Forbes, and
more. Alvaro holds MA in Education and MBA from Stanford
University, and teaches The Science of Brain Health at
UC-Berkeley Lifelong Learning Institute. Learn more at
http://www.sharpbrains.com/

The top 1% of sales people and sales driven organisations
operate completely differently from all the rest! Their
ability and approach to successfully selling higher margin
solutions, products and services than their counterparts
with less stress, sets them apart.

The M.O.S.T model recognises this approach and provides
quantum shifts in sales performance: M.O. S.T  stands for
Mindset, Objectives, Strategy and Tactics. If you want to
get the MOST out of your sales training and sales
development efforts read on:

M Mindset is crucial to sales success. Attempting to
improve performance in any significant way without creating
the appropriate mindset is a waste of time. Since most
sales training is focused PURELY on sales strategy and
tactics, this would make it a waste of time. The key is to
worrk with individuals and organisations to develop a
mindset and environment conducive to quantum shifts in
sales performance.

O  Organisational and individual goals and objectives tend
to be too small. There is a crisis in business where most
managers and sales people refuse to set “Big Hairy
Audacious Goals” for 3 main reasons. Fear of Failure,
Absence of Evidence that the goals can be achieved and the
need to Manage Expectations. Yet most CEOs, MDs and Sales
Directors want them to think bigger and commit to setting
and achieving bigger goals. What’s the answer? Before you
can think bigger and achieve bigger. YOU HAVE TO THINK
BETTER. Sales managers and sales people can and will set
bigger goals, which they will achieve, when they have the
RIGHT mindset.

S Strategy is determined by objectives therefore it is
limited by the size and quality of objectives. The bigger
and more exciting the objectives the more creative and
effective the strategy will be. The degree to which a sales
strategy gets buy-in and support will be determined by the
mindset of those involved in supporting that strategy.
Without that support the strategy will flounder.

T Tactics are seen by most organisations and sales training
companies as the key to improved sales performance.
Ultimately the way people act will influence their sales
results, so selling skills are important and I teach them
as-well. That said; the fact of the matter is that very few
sales training methodologies and programmes effect quantum
shifts in performance unless there is a permanent shift in
the paradigm of sales people and their management conducive
with the desired shift in performance. For this reason the
best programmes provide sales professionals and teams with
a shift in mindsets that ensure they maximise traditional
sales skills training and generate pragmatic solutions that
compound results.

—————————————————-
Buki Mosaku – Results Oriented Sales Coach, Author,
Speaker,  is the founder of Inquire Management an
international corporate development and sales training
consultancy.  His clients include Royal Dutch Shell,
Motorola, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, HSBC, BT,  as well as
mid-market and start- up companies across the US, Europe,
Asia and Africa. He also regularly appears as a guest on
BBC radio, as a  sales and staff motivation
expert.Http://www.inquiremanagement.com

A large number of Veteran Maintenance Professionals are now
entering retirement, leaving the much younger and less
experienced worker to perform maintenance tasks that they
may or may not have  been properly trained on. Training at
this point becomes a vital necessity for each facility and
the overall industry. The risk of machines & or lines going
down becomes extremely costly, when downtime could have
been avoided with the proper training of a Preventive /
Predictive Maintenance schedules.

Chuck Mize, a Senior Maintenance Professional and
Maintenance Instructor, had this to say when  asked what he
felt the greatest weakness’s in todays maintenance
facilities was? “In many cases the skilled trades man is in
direct contrast to the title “Skilled”. In fact they are
skilled only at guess work. Most of which are gifted in
mechanical reasoning but very lacking in the skill that is
necessary to make a correct analysis of machinery
breakdown root cause. This is due almost entirely to the
low level of training that journey men have available to
them.” Mize continues on “For instance in the area of
Hydraulics’s. Nearly all industrial mechanics and
electrician feel that they understand with some clarity
hydraulic systems. However, in my experience most are
trying to troubleshoot with only a limited understanding of
the fundamentals concerning hydraulics. This leads to poor
troubleshooting and ultimately to costly downtime due to
ineffective repairs.”

Training, in any field always seems to be a sore spot.
However it’s those companies that make room in there
budgets and make a point to keep their maintenance staff
antiquity trained with the materials needed, that we here
and see the best results from. Do Facilities seem to be
providing enough training for their maintenance staff?  And
If not, how could they improve? “In some cases such as
PLC’s I think that a great deal of training is done. It is
easier to see the need for training on cutting edge
technology and therefore in most cases tradesmen are
trained in this area. Also, I find that in the electrical
fields the younger tradesmen are offered adequate training.
However in the fields of Mechanical Power, Drives,
Hydraulics, Rigging, and many more. I see a great need.
Said Mize.

—————————————————-
Materials supplied from interviews with Maintenance
Perfessionals & Maintenance  Instuctors.
For for information on this topic:
http://www.maintenanceresources.com/productsshowcase/index.htm