The business men and women of the Ontario
Electrical League (OEL) have made a fine contribution to growth in the province of Ontario
over the past few years. And, we all know that these years have been extremely tough.
While large firms were letting people go, I think they were using the term "right
sizing, down sizing," the OEL membership was making employment, productivity, and
profitability gains. No doubt based on hard work and a dedication to the industry.
My father used to tell me that there are three kinds of people in this world, there are
those that ‘make things happen’, those that ‘watch things happen’ and
those that ‘wonder what happened’. Based on my association with OEL, I believe
that there is a higher number of those that ‘make things happen’, and yet there
is opportunity to grow at a much faster pace, make a strong contribution to our industry,
build better business relationships, make more profit and service the Customer better than
ever before.
The key is, are you ready to make a difference? Well, I can tell you that the executive
and board of directors take their responsibilities and the mission of the OEL very
seriously. In order to achieve the mission, "To promote and strengthen the electrical
industry in Ontario", new and innovative services have to be offered to the
membership and new business relationships must be created to do so, economically. Like all
good business enterprises and well run associations, there is an expectation that more
will be delivered for less.
Effective this month, the OEL, The Laurier Institute and Simul Corporation, Custom
Learning Systems have created a training partnership that will address the strategic
skills needs of the OEL membership. What are strategic skills and why are we entering into
this bold arrangement?
Strategic skills represent key learning areas such as: leadership, supervisory skills,
communications (interpersonal & public), negotiation, sales, telemarketing,
advertising, marketing, networking, financial planning, Customer service, and much much
more. To offer the breadth of skills required takes tremendous resources, yet the need to
improve our strategic skills is crucial for our longer term survival. To be able to serve
the needs of the membership, the OEL has entered into a unique strategic skills training
alliance that brings with it the best of a highly respected university (The Laurier
Institute) and the customer focus of a training company (Simul Corporation, Custom
Learning Systems). This formula will produce meaningful training in a variety of formats.
The title of this article is: "If You Could Change the World, Would you Do It?"
well you can and here is what we need you to do:
- Decide, right now, to improve your business skills (we take
time to improve our technical skills don’t we?)
- Request that your local chapter executive contact OEL to
host a training assessment clinic.
- Use the reader service card to request a copy of the
training survey.
- Complete the training survey, it will only take a few
minutes, and it will provide us with your view(s) about what courses should be offered.
- Make a contribution of your knowledge and experience to
ensure that OEL’s training programs are the right programs, at the right time, and
are great value.
It is our intent to make this Coach’s Corner an
interesting value-added service to Dialogue readers. We’ll do this by addressing some
of the information issues that often exist regarding training
programs/dates/facilities/costs, etc. Our mission for this column will be "To provide
OEL membership with information about how to deal with business and leadership issues that
affect their ability to serve the Customer, profitably." It is up to you, do order a
copy of the training survey (use the reader service card) and do let me know what types of
business issues you’d like addressed in future Coach’s Corner columns.
You can change the world, so, what type of person do you want to be?
Feel free to use this
article, just give credit where credit is due!
Copyright 1997 © Sid Ridgley
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