New Skills Fast

Build your team's skills and you build a better business... but how?

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Building skills in your team builds greater success for your business

It’s time to build your team’s skills, to build a better business

Because new skills future-proof your business, it pays to know how to acquire them

To future-proof yourself and your business, it pays to know how to build new skills

New skills build success – how capable are you at acquiring them?

Your success depends on developing and enhancing skills – is your business ready?

Why risk the future of your business by not building the skills of your team?

When it comes to acquiring new skills in your business, don’t be frightened by change

Don’t let your business get left behind because you’ve not developed the skills of your team

Make the time to enhance the skills of your team and give your business a boost

What happens when you take 20 hours to help your team acquire new skills?

20 hours, new skills, business wins – what is stopping you?

Invest in your business, your team and your customers with rapid skill acquisition

Keep up with the ever-changing demands of your customers by learning and developing your skills

Your business wins when you and your team practice rapid skill acquisition…

Give your business a competitive edge in just 20 hours

What happens to the future of your business when you block off 20 hours to learn something new?

Make skill acquisition a regular diary entry for you and your team

Don’t get left behind by the fear of learning something new

If 20 hours is all it takes to build and enhance the skills of your team, then why is this not a business priority?

How to build and enhance the skills of you and your team in just 20 hours

Follow these 10 steps to build and enhance the skills of your team

Secure the future of your business with the 10 steps to skill acquisition

What happens when you follow the proven 10 steps to skill acquisition?

10 steps, 20 hours, skill acquisition, business success – sounds good…

Follow this well proven pathway to build the skills of your team in 10 steps

10 steps to success for your business – it’s time to take rapid skill acquisition seriously

Be wholehearted when it comes to learning or enhancing new skills for your business

Focus on one skill only for successful rapid skill acquisition in your business

What happens when you focus on learning too many skills in your business?

Why risk the future of your business by not taking seriously the learning of a new skill?

Focus on the right skill in a meaningful way to secure the long-term future of your business

Make the learning of a new skill the one thing that matters for you and your team

Stop trying to learn multiple skills in your business – success comes from focusing on just one at a time

How to build and enhance the skills of your team with the right business focus and commitment

Don’t allow the 4 barriers to rapid skill acquisition to hold back your business

What happens to your business when you allow barriers to derail the skill acquisition process?

Remove the barriers in your business and allow your team to acquire the right skills

Block out the distractions in your business that threaten to derail skill acquisition

Don’t allow emotions to derail your team from learning the skills required to secure the future of your business

Make sure you and your team have all the tools in place for your 20 hours of rapid skill acquisition

4 major steps for rapid skill acquisition in your business

4 steps to ensure you follow a proven process for rapid skill acquisition in your business

Set up your business for success when you follow the right steps to build the skills of your team

Stop making excuses when it comes to learning new skills in your business

How to build the skills of your team and follow the path to success in your business

Gain a competitive advantage when you build the skills of your team

LinkedIn Updates

1. How many times have you taken a look at your team’s skills – both those they brought to your business and those they have acquired since working with you? How many times have you thought about enhancing the skills they currently have or about the possibility of picking up new skills? And what about your own skills? Click here to learn why 20 hours is all you need…

2. What if you and your team could acquire new skills without it having a dramatic impact on the rest of the work done in your business? In other words, you can do all of the tasks necessary to run your business AND you and your team can learn new skills. Click here to learn more…

3. I am sure there are members of your team who prefer the status quo and who would like things to stay as they are, to do things the way they have always done them, as it makes them feel safe and secure. Maybe this describes you? But staying the same puts your business at risk as things move quickly and, if you don’t build new skills or enhance existing ones, your business will become less relevant and less attractive to your customers and to your team. Click here to discover the difference that rapid skill acquisition can make to your business.

4. In his book The First 20 Hours – How to learn anything fast, author Josh Kaufman learned 6 new complex skills in just 12 months – yoga, computer programming, touch typing, the complex game of Go, the ukulele and windsurfing – all to a competent level. Now I am not saying that you should have your team learn to play the ukulele, but click here to discover how the method of rapid skill acquisition can be applied to your business.

5. How often do you and your team learn new skills? The skills that you and your team have now are at the heart of the current success of your business. But very little stands still in business – change is a constant. Click here to learn why 20 hours is all you need for rapid skill acquisition – 20 hours to secure the future of your business.

6. What do you do when things move or change in your sector? Stay the same and you travel the path of irrelevance towards being outdated and commercially extinct. Click here to discover why new skills are needed again and again and why it’s crucial to the future of your business that you make time for this.

7. If you want your business to grow and be successful, then making time for skill acquisition is required again and again. Josh Kaufman neatly shows us the 10 steps to rapid (20 hours) skill acquisition – something we are all capable of doing if we really want to. Click here to read more about the 10 steps to business success.

8. Why does learning a new skill or enhancing an existing one strike fear into the hearts of most people? Josh Kaufman outlines the 10 steps (20 hours) to skill acquisition. All 10 steps make perfect sense and provide a brilliant checklist to ensure you are on, and stay on, the right path to successful skill acquisition. Click here for more.

9. Your business success has come because you and your team have been wholehearted and committed in the work that you do. If this was not the case, your business would have failed. Click here to discover why this same principle and commitment must be applied when it comes to you or your team learning a new skill.

10. When learning a new skill, it is vital that you focus on this one skill only – focusing on more than one is a recipe for disaster. Focus on one skill (for 20 hours) and shelve the others for now, and when you have completed the first, you can move onto the next. Click here to learn why rapid skill acquisition is achieved to a much higher level when your entire team’s focus is on the same skill.

11. When it comes to planning and making time in your business for you or your team to learn a new skill or enhance an existing one, there are always barriers and pitfalls that threaten to derail the learning process. Click here to learn what these barriers are and how to avoid them.

12. You and your team are already busy – there is always something to do, always a deadline to meet, an email to send, a customer to call. These can act as barriers to rapid skill acquisition. Click here to discover how to eliminate the barriers that prevent skill acquisition from happening in your business.

13. You probably think that learning a new skill, whether for yourself or for your team, is a time-consuming, costly process. In his book, The First 20 Hours – How to learn anything fast, Josh Kaufman proves that it does not have to be like this. Rapid skill acquisition is a process with 4 major steps – click here to discover what they are.

14. Josh Kaufman proved that in just 20 hours you can go from not being able to do something to being able to do it at a competent level. 20 hours does not sound too time-consuming, does it? 20 x 1-hour slots? Rapid skill acquisition is a process with 4 major steps to success – click here to get started.

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Blog 1 – Build a successful business when you enhance and develop the skills of your team…

How many times have you taken a look at your team’s skills – both those they brought to your business and those they have acquired since working with you?

How many times have you thought about enhancing the skills they currently have or about the possibility of picking up new skills? And what about your own skills?

Imagine if there was a quick and smart way for you and your team to build new skills or to develop existing skills?

Of course, you’re busy in the normal day-to-day of your business, and dealing with customers, meetings, phone calls and emails feels enough…

But what if you and your team could acquire new skills without it having a dramatic impact on the rest of the work done in your business?

In other words, you can do all of the tasks necessary to run your business AND you and your team can learn new skills.

For your business to remain relevant in your market or sector and to stay ahead of the competition, you must build new skills and capabilities.

Failure to acquire new skills or to adapt to a rapidly changing environment can increase the risk of your business becoming outdated – not a good strategy for success.

And what if your competition is already on the ‘rapid skill acquisition’ path and you are not?

What if I told you that all it takes to learn a new skill is 20 hours – 20 x 1-hour slots to be diary-planned and organised around your business.

What if I told you that 20 hours is all it takes to learn a new skill from scratch and attain a degree of competence?

Imagine the boost to your business!

Click here to learn more about how to build and enhance the skills of your team, ensuring a successful future for your business.

Blog 2 – How to turn 20 hours of learning into real wins for your business…

People are capable of learning new skills, and everyone has at some point learned something from scratch, including you and members of your team.

One or more of you can drive, speak another language or play a musical instrument or has children or plays a sport – all skills learned from nothing.

Humans as a race are very good at learning new skills – our brains are not fixed, they are plastic, and all brains have the capability to learn and improve skills.

Some of your team may be reluctant to learn something new – it’s a step into the unknown and, although humans are good at learning, humans are not as good at embracing change.

I am sure there are members of your team who prefer the status quo and who would like things to stay as they are, to do things the way they have always done them, as it makes them feel safe and secure. Maybe this describes you?

But staying the same puts your business at risk as things move quickly and, if you don’t build new skills or enhance existing ones, your business will become less relevant and less attractive to your customers and to your team.

In his book The First 20 Hours – How to learn anything fast, author Josh Kaufman learned 6 new complex skills in just 12 months – yoga, computer programming, touch typing, the complex game of Go, the ukulele and windsurfing – all to a competent level.

He learned to play the ukulele in just 10 days and then performed a 20-minute solo to a paying audience. Impressive and very nerve wracking!

Now I am not saying that you teach your team to play the ukulele, but this method of rapid skill acquisition can be applied to your business.

What about implementing and learning a new piece of software, or learning to run team or sales meetings or a customer presentation?

Would you plan or just wing it?

You’d plan…

Click here to discover how to follow a proven path to rapid skill acquisition and achieve a level of competence in just 20 hours.

Blog 3 – Learn new skills and give your business a competitive edge…

How often do you and your team learn new skills?

The skills that you and your team have now are at the heart of the current success of your business.

But very little stands still in business – change is a constant.

Your customers’ expectations, demands and needs are constantly changing – customers now expect more than ever
You competition is not standing still – they are improving their skills and capabilities
New technology is constantly being developed, and new ways of working quicker, faster and smarter are always emerging
Social media means your business is more visible than ever – do something right or wrong and everyone will know about it

What do you do when things move or change in your sector?

Stay the same and you travel the path of irrelevance towards being outdated and commercially extinct.

New skills are needed again and again and it’s crucial to the future of your business that you make time for this.

You might spend weeks and months acquiring a new skill, but why make it hard when there is a shorter, easier path to new skill acquisition?

As Josh Kaufman said in his book The First 20 Hours – How to learn anything fast:

“…skill acquisition always feels bigger than it actually is”

20 hours is fast – but it still requires effort and commitment from you and your team.

20 hours looks and feels manageable, and your team will likely see this time as acceptable when it comes to learning a new skill.

20 hours is what Josh Kaufman proved is needed for rapid skill acquisition.

Remember – 20 hours takes you from not having the skill at all to having a good degree of competence.

You and your team CAN acquire new skills when you follow this proven path.

Click here to start seeing skill acquisition as a 20-hour pathway that you and your team can follow for success in your business.

Blog 4 – 10 steps to successful skill acquisition in your business

As a race, humans have proved they are adept at learning, adapting to change and catching up. After all, there was a time when no one had a mobile phone or used a computer!

A vast array of brain science clearly proves that our brains have the ability to learn and to improve capabilities and skills with practice.

So why does learning a new skill or enhancing an existing one strike fear into the hearts of most people?

If you want your business to grow and be successful, then making time for skill acquisition is required again and again.

Josh Kaufman neatly shows us the 10 steps to rapid (20 hours) skill acquisition – something we are all capable of doing if we really want to.

All 10 steps make perfect sense and provide a brilliant checklist to ensure you are on, and stay on, the right path to successful skill acquisition:

1. Real desire is the first step – this skill must be something you really want for yourself or for your team.

2. Focus the energy of you or your team on one skill at a time – one and only one – and leave the others until later. As Confucius said, “She/He who chases two rabbits catches neither.”.

3. Set SMART goals – define your target performance level and communicate this to all involved.

4. Deconstruct the skills into subskills – breaking the skill down into manageable subskills prevents your team from being overwhelmed.

5. Have your tools readily available – make sure your team have everything they need, and avoid distractions and interruptions during learning.

6. Remove the handbrakes – remove the barriers that could derail the learning process.

7. Commit diary time – put the 20-hour timeslots in your diary or in the team’s diary and dedicate time for practice. This commitment proves the skill acquisition is being taken seriously.

8. Fast feedback helps fast skill acquisition – Josh Kaufman states, “If feedback arrives immediately or with a very short delay, it’s much easier to connect that information to your actions and make the appropriate adjustments.”

9. Respect the clock – practice within the diarised time – this may feel like a long time at the beginning but will be less challenging as you become more accomplished.

10. Quantity trumps quality – getting things wrong is important in the skill acquisition process. Mistakes are part of learning.

Click here to discover more detail about each of the 10 steps for rapid skill acquisition and how to apply this proven process in your business.

Blog 5 – Why real desire and focusing on one skill only will ensure successful skill acquisition in your business

Your business success has come because you and your team have been wholehearted and committed in the work that you do. If this was not the case, your business would have failed.

This same principle and commitment must be applied when it comes to you or your team learning a new skill.

You must choose a loveable project, something in which you really want to invest time and energy.

Josh Kaufman says “you naturally learn things that you care about faster than the things you don’t.”

Choosing a project you really care about is the first thing you do before you decide on the skill to pursue.

For example, if you know that a new software system will save you time, make your work more manageable, improve your team’s and your customers’ experience and result in the growth of your business, then this is going to be something you and your team really care about.

There is strong justification for this system to be implemented and the desire from all you will be there.

It is also vital that you then focus only on this one skill – focusing on more than one is a recipe for disaster.

Focus on one skill (for 20 hours) and shelve the others for now, and when you have completed the first, you can move onto the next. Rapid skill acquisition is achieved to a much higher level with your entire team’s focus on the same skill.

Click here to discover how real desire, energy, commitment and focus to learn a new skill in just 20 hours will guarantee success for your business.

Blog 6 – Remove the barriers to successful skill acquisition in your business

When it comes to planning and making time in your business for you or your team to learn a new skill or to enhance an existing one, there are always barriers and pitfalls that threaten to derail the learning process.

You and your team are already busy – there is always something to do, always a deadline to meet, an email to send, a customer to call…

Your job is to eliminate the barriers that prevent the 20 hours of skill acquisition from happening.

Remember – you want this skill to be learned – you need it to be learned to ensure the future of your business, to give you a competitive advantage and to ensure your business does not get left behind.

So, what are these barriers and how do you overcome them?

Too much pre-practice effort and energy – misplaced tools, resetting a room, organising the right team members to be in the room – all these things take time and energy and can stop learning before it has even started. Make sure the room and everything in it is ready and ensure that your team have non-negotiable time in their diary.

If your team, for example, are learning a new piece of software, make sure they all have computers with the appropriate software pre-loaded and the teacher is there ahead of time with the right resources.

Patchy resource availability – faulty equipment or a shortage of resources and equipment can derail your efforts – ensure that you and your team have exactly what is needed to be able to start learning promptly at the start of the session.

Environmental distractions – in a busy working environment, this is perhaps your greatest threat – interruptions (‘have you just got a minute?’), phone calls, emails, other members of the team who are not involved in the learning – these can all dilute the focus. Choose a location that is away from the direct working environment, perhaps a meeting room on another floor, offsite or even at the learning provider’s office.

Emotional blocks – fear, doubt, reluctance, uncertainty – all natural emotions when it comes to learning something new, but all emotions that can hold back the skill acquisition process. Take the time to talk to your team, acknowledge their feelings, reassure them, make them feel safe. Be positive about the new skill and how learning this will benefit them and the business.

Click here to learn more about the natural pitfalls that threaten to derail skill acquisition in your business and how to avoid them.

Blog 7 – 4 helping hands to help you and your business build the skills of your team

If you want your business to survive and thrive, you and your team must grow.

If you want to stay ahead of your competition and ensure your customers choose you, then you and your team must constantly learn new skills, adapt to changes – expected or unexpected – and react to customers’ ever-changing needs.

You probably think that learning a new skill, whether for yourself or for your team, is a time-consuming, costly process.

In his book, The First 20 Hours – How to learn anything fast, Josh Kaufman proves that it does not have to be like this. He demonstrated, when he learned to play the ukulele, windsurf and touch type, that rapid skill acquisition can be achieved in just 20 hours.

In 20 hours, you can go from not being able to do something to being able to do it at a competent level.

20 hours does not sound too time-consuming, does it? 20 x 1-hour slots?

Rapid skill acquisition is a process with 4 major steps to success – here they are to help you get started:

Deconstruct your skill into the smallest possible subskills – this stops you feeling overwhelmed by the process of learning the skill as a whole.
Learn enough about each subskill to be able to practice intelligently and to self-correct during practice; mistakes are useful as they increase learning.
Remove physical, environmental and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice – distractions eat into the time you have and dilute the level of concentration.
Practice the most important subskills throughout the 20 hours.

Click here to learn more about these major steps, and discover the 10-point checklist for rapid skill acquisition. When you follow this proven process deliberately, you will acquire the new skills to give you and your team a competitive advantage in this ever-changing world.

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