At our guest speaking engagement during the recent Sysco food show we hit a hot spot when we talked about education. You can never stop learning and you only get better through education. The problem is most of us do not have the time to sit in a class room three nights a week so how do we go about educating ourselves.
First, create your own educational plan that fits into your lifestyle. You don’t need to write the plan down or make it formal, keep it in your head as it is only an outline to give you a path to follow. The basis of this educational plan is very simple: what do I want and need to learn about? Have a look at your strengths and weaknesses and decide where you need additional learning. Don’t just try to cover off your weaknesses, also develop your strengths. Here is the education plan that I followed years ago when I owned my first restaurant.
I recognized that I could negotiate very effectively with people in business but was terrible at negotiating on my own behalf. I therefore decided to educate myself to become a much better negotiator on behalf of myself (don’t worry, most of us are terrible at negotiating on our own behalf). For my education plan, I first bought a series of tapes on negotiating and listened to them every day while I drove to work. Then I went to the bookstore and bought a book called "Getting to Yes" which I later found out is the bible for negotiating but it was a tough read and I never finished the book. Luckily, because I was in education mode at the time, I read the top 10 books (non fiction) listed in the newspaper and discovered a book called "On Negotiating". This book took me over the top and was the final touch on my negotiating education that helped me with both my strengths and weaknesses.
Next on my agenda for education was marketing. I had a restaurant that needed a great deal of marketing to get the sales to where they needed to be so marketing was of great importance. It so happened that a seminar on marketing came to town so I paid the money and attended. After the seminar I went back and actually applied what I had learnt. The result was a 42% rate of return on a mailing we did (industry norm is 2 to 4 % redemption rate).
Staff is an area we all could use help with, but who has time to get a double degree in psychology and early childhood development. There are many one and two day seminars that you can go to educate yourself in many areas relating to staff. Over the years I have been to many seminars regarding management of staff but the best thing I did was buy a book on interviewing and hiring. I don’t remember the name of the book but try:
I thought I was a great interviewer, but the ability to hire and create a team increased dramatically after reading a book like this.
Years later, I thought about becoming a consultant so I went to a one day seminar on becoming a consultant, then, when I committed to becoming a consultant I purchased the book "Consulting for Dummies". Smartest thing I could ever have done and has helped me immeasurably in my consulting business.
Notice on my education plan it included a great deal of reading. Ask yourself how you learn the best. Is it reading, visual, structured in class or through conversation? Tailor your plan to suit the way that you learn best.
If reading is the way you plan to learn, use amazon.com. It is an easy way to search for books on all subjects and you can often buy used books for less.
The last book I read was "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Al Ries, Jack Trout. Nick at Micros suggested this book to me. It really helped put the obvious into a perspective that solidified my views on marketing.
Education is a life long pursuit so don’t stop educating yourself, it really does make a difference.
