<<Paying for courses. Instead, perhaps someone could take on doing the leg work to work out which courses in some important arena is best, and then secure funding for EAs to do those. >>
I guess we (AAC) did try this with our Management and Leadership training for EAA organisations this year, although potentially we didn’t do deep research into the available courses. We did spend some time prioritising based partially on academic research which ones we thought could be the most beneficial.
I think for us a major failure point was more due to what you pointed out here:
“A problem that’s even worse for mission driven organisations than others is that object-level work always seems more urgent and important than self-development.” Some feedback we had from the management and leadership training we provided this year was that even though initially participants were bought in and excited to participate some failed to complete the course due to a lack of prioritization on their part (i think its great that our participants were so transparent about this) not due to the suggested course content not being valuable. It’s possible however this was also due to our implementation, if we do this again we will try to approach the training differently by working with a smaller number of organisations and try to get more buy-in from leadership for example get them to allocate a certain number of hours to this training for the individual.
I think a challenge is that the value of taking the course might not be quantifiable to the individual or the organisation. So even if you find a course that could be helpful to develop a key skill, how can you measure the benefit to both the individual and the organisation of the person taking the training vs. them spending time on an object-level project. Would be grateful if you had any insight on this.
<<I’m therefore keen for EAs to do more brief write ups of specific things they’ve learned and how—say, what they found most useful in learning how to write well. Of course, sharing them publicly (like on this forum!) is especially useful. But even writing suggestions up quickly and sharing them with colleagues can be really helpful—my colleague Brenton is particularly great at noticing things he’s learned and quickly writing them up for others to benefit from>>
Would also be really keen on this, it could be a great way for people to self-improve on certain topics.
<<Systematising mentorship>>
I think Kathryn from WANBAM has done an excellent job in facilitating this and matching individuals well but i imagine to do it well it’s also very time-consuming for the person facilitating.
Anyway, loved reading this post so thanks for writing it up.
Great post and thanks for sharing,
<<Paying for courses. Instead, perhaps someone could take on doing the leg work to work out which courses in some important arena is best, and then secure funding for EAs to do those. >>
I guess we (AAC) did try this with our Management and Leadership training for EAA organisations this year, although potentially we didn’t do deep research into the available courses. We did spend some time prioritising based partially on academic research which ones we thought could be the most beneficial.
I think for us a major failure point was more due to what you pointed out here:
“A problem that’s even worse for mission driven organisations than others is that object-level work always seems more urgent and important than self-development.” Some feedback we had from the management and leadership training we provided this year was that even though initially participants were bought in and excited to participate some failed to complete the course due to a lack of prioritization on their part (i think its great that our participants were so transparent about this) not due to the suggested course content not being valuable. It’s possible however this was also due to our implementation, if we do this again we will try to approach the training differently by working with a smaller number of organisations and try to get more buy-in from leadership for example get them to allocate a certain number of hours to this training for the individual.
I think a challenge is that the value of taking the course might not be quantifiable to the individual or the organisation. So even if you find a course that could be helpful to develop a key skill, how can you measure the benefit to both the individual and the organisation of the person taking the training vs. them spending time on an object-level project. Would be grateful if you had any insight on this.
<<I’m therefore keen for EAs to do more brief write ups of specific things they’ve learned and how—say, what they found most useful in learning how to write well. Of course, sharing them publicly (like on this forum!) is especially useful. But even writing suggestions up quickly and sharing them with colleagues can be really helpful—my colleague Brenton is particularly great at noticing things he’s learned and quickly writing them up for others to benefit from>>
Would also be really keen on this, it could be a great way for people to self-improve on certain topics.
<<Systematising mentorship>>
I think Kathryn from WANBAM has done an excellent job in facilitating this and matching individuals well but i imagine to do it well it’s also very time-consuming for the person facilitating.
Anyway, loved reading this post so thanks for writing it up.
Lauren