Independent learning is an excellent complement to other training approaches, allowing trainees to deepen their knowledge and to develop their autonomy. The following products can be accessed through laptop and smartphone-friendly eLearning systems:

Video series: A complete training course in thirty 12-minute sessions. This is the main resource used in Flash Training.
Audio series: Short reminder and exercise sessions, for use as a backup to classroom and video work, with all the flexibility of audio
ICON9 collateral: exercises, quick references, posters, icon9 website, etc. and the text book Client Encounters of the Technical Kind.
Online resources are described here.

Video series

The ICONDA eLearning Video library currently has 30 videos of about 12 minutes each, covering the whole of the ICON9 system, and more. The video below is a sample from close to the start of the Client Encounters Using ICON9 series.

We can supply these videos under license, for incorporation into your company eLearning system. In this case, they would be accompanied by other ICON9 eLearning collateral, such as scripts, slides copies and questions.

Alternatively, trainees can use the ICONDA eLearning infrastructure, which is based on Adapt software (the first release of this system is expected in Q4 2017 – please contact us if you could be interested in participating in the beta trial).

Either way, the video material is an excellent complement to Training Encounters, allowing trainees to ‘consume’ information at their own rate, and to go back to certain parts of the course as they need to.

Audio series

The principal underlying these audio, Learn As You Go sessions is that regular learning is effective learning. Hence, each session gives you a tiny, daily dose of ICON9 training, allowing you to not just understand it but also to integrate it into your work habits. And to do so without overloading your schedule.

Tracks are grouped into modules, where each module corresponds to one of the ICON9 tools. There are 4 to 6 audio tracks, plus a a motivational video, for each module.

The first release of Learn As You Go, scheduled for Q4 2017, will contain the modules MAP, PAGE, DISCOVER-Y and TMM. It will contain 24 tracks and about three hours of listening. Please contact us if you could be interested in participating in an earlier beta release.

ICON9 collateral

There are four types of ICON9 collateral, listed here with examples:

Documents to consult
- The book, Client Encounters of the Technical Kind; the PDF ICON9kit; the ICON9 online elements; course handbooks (copies of slides).
Stuff to keep to carry around
- Quick references guides; ICON9kit templates (Excel, PPT, OneNote)
Things to display
- We have some terrific posters!
Material for work and practice
- Multi-choice questions; template email guidelines (to customise); role plays and other exercises

Some of this collateral, such as the ICON9 kit, is available on request (see below), while other items are supplied in the context of a Learning and Development contract.

Training Experiences and Testimony

Many of our training experiences are captured in articles, together with testimony from our customers. Here is the latest post …

Half and half

Anita Roddick* once said:

If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room

The corona virus seems to have taken the place of the mosquito 😉

So, making a virtue out of different necessities, my colleagues and I delivered two half-remote training courses last week...

And here are some other recent posts …

Half and half

Anita Roddick* once said: If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room The corona virus seems to have taken the place of the mosquito 😉 So, making a virtue out of different necessities, my colleagues and I delivered two half-remote training courses last week. One to EDA Solutions FAEs where, for (political) reasons that had nothing to do with the famous virus, one of the FAEs could not leave his country of origin to attend. Proud to be the...

NewsletterQ1-20

Three easy-to-read items to keep in sync with you ...

Bees and FAEs

At the start of a recent training course, each person introduced themselves by citing an animal that could do their job, then explaining why. One of the Field Application Engineers (FAEs) in the audience put forward a bee, saying that they buzzed around busily, collecting opportunities (pollen), working hard, doing great things for other people and generally being pretty amazing. Another FAE reminded us of the legendary observation that, at first glance, a bee’s job is almost impossible –...

A Goal Setting Tail

Don't worry, this isn’t the old story about the insecure dyslexic, insomniac atheist who lays awake at night wondering if there really is a Dog. It's about the strange but ultimately effective path that my dog takes when I call him and why this could be a valuable reminder about goal setting. Toby, you see, does eventually come back, fulfilling his contractual obligations to his master and ensuring that he gets fed. At the same time, he thoroughly enjoys himself. The route he takes is always...

The Hurry Monster, RIP

Apparently, I suffer from an affliction which most people manage to avoid. A weird mixture of intellectual laziness and hyperactivity, it once led me to attempt the reduction of German grammar to a handful of equations. Preferably to one equation. Einstein had managed it for physics, I reasoned … 😉 Self-deprecation notwithstanding, I'm still trying to simplify the world into something that I can understand/remember, and the above diagram is one result. I call the inner loop a Short-Circuit –...

A Problem-Solving Experience

Cycling quite fast down a narrow mountain road, I met a lorry coming up it. The result was eight broken ribs on one side, a broken shoulder on the other and a huge problem with getting out of bed. Problem-solving methodologies can be usefully classified as either Systemic or Analytical and this was a great occasion to try them both out. The first morning, desperate to get out of my hospital bed and service my needs, I wriggled, waved my legs in the air and groaned for over half an hour before...

Anna Karenina and Client Encounters

Anna Karenina and Client Encounters All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. This, the first phrase of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, is remarkable for how it sticks in the memory. In complex relationships such as with families or clients, Tolstoy teaches us, there is one way to get it right and an almost infinite number of ways to go wrong. To be happy, a family needs security , physical comfort, time together, rituals, mutual consideration, and so on. All happy...

Best practices Exchange for Engineering Team Leaders

I recently setup a Best Practices Exchange (BPXchange) as an experiment in learning through sharing for busy Engineering Team Leaders working in different companies. The challenge was to find a format that would allow added-value exchanges in a reasonable time, taking into account the logistics of scheduling and hosting the virtual meeting, the selection of topics and the facilitation of the exchange. And we did it! The first BPXchanges worked like magic! So, if you’re interested in...

Best Practice Exchange outcomes

The rubber duck image is inspired by a software development "best practice" of sharing difficult problems with a rubber duck. The act of explaining brings clarity and so this technique accelerates software debug. It also follows that a rubber duck learns many best practices over the course of its career … I recently setup a Best Practices Exchange (BPXchange) as an experiment in learning through sharing for busy Engineering Team Leaders working in different companies. The I recently setup a...

Engineering Support Beyond Do, Doc, Done

Do, Doc, Done captures a way of working that is popular among support engineers and which often works well. For example : a case comes my way in the issue tracking system. I fix it (Do), send an email or write a comment when I close the case (Doc) and move on to something else (Done). There’s nothing wrong with this reactive process, but it can be even more powerful when a touch of proactivity is added, in the form of a Double-check. A recent...

Engineers Add More Value with a Balanced Problem Solving Approach

A multi-million dollar chip production line is halted, but it's not clear where the problem is coming from. An independent consulting engineer is called in. She walks all around the production floor looking at the screens, the indicators, the dials, the cables, the mousetraps. She examines some log files and makes a Google search. Then she edits two lines in a particular configuration file, and all is well again. The plant manager is extremely happy until he receives her invoice: €10,000. He...

Helping Engineers Maximise the Positive Impact of their Expertise

It's well known that many professionals have difficulty communicating with people outside their speciality and it's not unusual for start-ups to be frustrated by an indifferent world – "why does nobody appreciate our great idea??"! Ironically, this problem exists because we're intelligent. If we weren’t preoccupied by the complexity of our subject, then we'd get to the point more easily, our explanations would resonate with others and we'd grow in confidence and skill. As it is, we tie...

Circuit Archaeology with the Help of Amiq

What do you do when you have to perform risk analysis on a 20 year old circuit design and the information available consists of 30 vintage, undocumented VHDL files? (VHDL is a Hardware Description Language – an HDL).In my case, a quick email not only provided the solution, it also restored my faith in human nature and the power of generosity and trust in business.A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to visit Amiq’s offices in Bucarest to stage a communication methodology...

The Customer-Facing Few

Consider what it takes to build an aircraft carrier and put it out to sea. Tens of thousands of contractors crossing multiple disciplines, organisations, states and countries are involved. Another ten thousand or so do the actual construction. About five thousand sailors then sail it out of port. Finally, a handful of pilots take to the sky. And so the ultimate success of seventy to eighty thousand people depends on these few pilots – the only ones to actually make contact with the...

Team Building and Training as One Activity

Nowadays, classroom-based professional training is all about learning activities – labs, simulations, role plays, serious games, and so on. Over the past ten years, I would say, there has been a major shift away from subject matter lectures towards experimentation and coaching (the business of acquiring information and theory tends to be done online wherever possible). As well as a place for experimentation, classroom training also provides great opportunities for team building. Of...

Teledyne Dalsa Warding Off the Hurry Monster

The Hurry Monster (not to be confused with the Worry Monster – a cuddly toy – and the Panic Monster – a superb invention of Tim Urban’s) frightens us into rushing tasks that we would otherwise perform brilliantly. And he can have a disastrous effect on Customer Communication. He’s looming in the background of the above group photo, taken after a training on Excellence in Customer Communication at Teledyne Dalsa in Krailling, Germany, last month. Martin Grzymek’s, Teledyne Dalsa’s Director of...

Energy Control & Pre-Match Planning – the Axcelis example

Axcelis knows how to manage high energy with precision – its core business is the supply of ion implanters to the semiconductor industry. The company provides vital machines for the manufacturing process behind modern electronics. Axcelis certainly contributed to building the device with which you are reading these words! The training program that we’ve launched together aims to harness a different kind of energy – the human kind – and apply it with precision to the challenging task of...

Preparing for Customer Intimacy with Communication Training

KORTIQ knows that its Product Development Team – now busy creating advanced Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) solutions – is critical to winning customers and building long-term commercial relationships. It’s strong technical culture is an asset that it can be proud of and must exploit. Exposing this culture and the people who embody it is key to a business stratagem known as Customer Intimacy. To enable it, we launched a training program – Excellence in Customer Communication - at KORTIQ’s...

Metacommunication: the importance of talking about talking

Just as metadata means data about data, metacommunication is communication about communication[1]. When I complain about the media’s tendency to awfulize and terribilize, I am metacommunicating. Instead of explaining what I mean with long sentences and examples, I use a couple of simple, expressive words[2]. Metacommunication is important because communication is important. And just as you can’t get better at football if you don’t understand the abstract concepts of attack and defense, it’s...

Leadership and Resisting Other People’s Problems (3 of 3)

In a couple of recent posts, I suggested a magic spell to help you avoid taking on other people's problems: "And what would you like to have happen?". Assume that you've mastered this formula and have used it on a colleague who is now standing (spellbound) in front of you; how do you move them from their frozen state into one of action? In other words, now that they realise that you're not going to solve their problem for them, how do you help them decide what to do next? It's simple: you...

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Video series

Audio series

ICON9 collateral

Training Experiences and Testimony

And here are some other recent posts …

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