Effective communication is crucial to the success of any business. Listening is often the forgotten communication skill. It’s assumed that if we can hear – we can listen. But listening is a choice. If not exercised properly you severely hamper your ability to communicate effectively with coworkers and others.

Look at the business section in today’s newspaper and you’re likely to read about a few of the ways companies are “positioning themselves in their competitive market:” Down-sizing, mergers, restructuring, making incredible leaps with technology – whatever the motive or means what it all boils down to is change. The dynamics of change deals with the human reaction to change. The mechanics of change focus on designing processes that ensure changes occur effectively within an organization.

Without a doubt, the most damaging, counterproductive dynamic in the workplace is conflict. Not just any conflict, but personal conflict. Largely because it’s so common. You just can’t put groups of people together and expect them to always play nice. A little conflict can be a productive catalyst for some groups to take action or to reexamine decisions and their work environment. But if left unattended it will likely spread like a weed. The impact conflict can have on productivity, morale and turnover is staggering.

As a manager or supervisor you are going to run into countless scenarios where you have to pull some magic out of your hat (or at least be good with smoke and mirrors). You’ve got to deal with individual problems, mass mutinies, as well as your own problems. When those challenging situations arise, you can’t react haphazardly. You need to approach the situation with a logical way of diagnosing the problem and coming up with a plan to change an individual or group’s behavior. Not an easy task.

In this course, you will learn how to conduct market research to identify qualified (or qualifiable) suppliers or contractors that can meet your organization’s requirements. The course includes an overview of market research, methods of conducting market research, sources of information and documentation. It contains a number of brief review questions and the submission of a case study analysis for review and feedback by one of our instructors.

This course reviews financial concepts important to everyone including managing dept and savings, choosing loans and cards, purchasing cars and homes, and repairing credit.

Are you ready to take your career to the next level? Then, understanding an organization’s culture, mission, vision, and values should be important to you. This class is designed to increase your understanding of these topics and discuss how to use them in order to move your career forward.

For decades organizational scholars have debated the qualities of a “leader.” What are they? Is a person born a leader or can they be trained as a leader? Can anyone learn to be a leader? Can an employee be a leader or do you need to have people reporting to you to lead? The list goes on and on. In our leadership training class we routinely ask the audience to define the qualities of a leader. Many participants suggest traits like “charismatic,” “confident,” “visionary,” etc. Occasionally, someone will offer what we think is a truly distinguishing observation. “You don’t often notice or think about the qualities of a leader. What’s noticeable is how they make you feel.” That’s it in a nutshell.

The Requirements Solutions Group’s Knowledge Nugget, “Removing Ambiguity and Subjectivity from Requirements” is designed to give business analysts, subject matter experts, and testers a set of rules for improving the quality of their business requirements. It is the second nugget of a series of knowledge nuggets on writing better business requirements for information technology projects. Like all of our knowledge nuggets, it is designed to be as interactive as we can possibly make it given the constraints of current technology. You will have an exercise to test your understanding of each presented technique. At the end a “final exam” will test your understanding of how all of the presented ideas work together to make your business requirements more easily understood by the target audiences.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) created new responsibilities on organizations and at the same time encourages employees to report possible illegal accounting and financial reporting activity through the use of anonymous hotlines and anti-retaliation measures. This course examines the provisions of SOX that are relevant to employees.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone at work and they’re trying to explain a problem to you but they’re all over the board and you can’t tell what they’re saying? Are they telling you something? Asking you something? We’ve all been in these conversations. They’re frustrating, confusing and often lead to unnecessary work or missed opportunities. And, let’s admit it, we’ve also been the one that couldn’t get the message straight to begin with. This type of communication goes on in every business everyday. If you’re effective at communicating and making your point you’ll get far more accomplished and people will be more likely to listen to you.