I have successfully completed the Accidental Managers course

The course is now over. Having finished the 6 month course on Accidental Managers I now feel I am more of a Manager than an accidental one. The final day and presentations went well and it was interesting to see what everyone else had taken from the course as well as report back about ways in which I have used it to improve the team.

As with many people in creative industries designers/developers find themselves slowly moving into management as an additional role as roles progress and people become more involved in the running of a business - as the title states... Accidental Managers.

I have learnt a whole wealth of information and now believe combined with the knowledge from the PRINCE2 course I am now equipped with several skills and techniques that aid me in the day to day running of a team - I now have a sound foundation to manage a team, the people, the important part of the managers tool kit as well as being able to manage projects and time within the team.

I feel I am now a more approachable, efficient and productive manager and I have helped improve myself as well as the team and believe that by spending time focussing on the Process - the how and why a team works a certain way and if that can be improved - rather than simply working on the WHAT - the day to day getting jobs done - it is possible to improve performance, happiness and overall quality of work. It is the age old saying "SPEND TIME ON THE BUSINESS NOT IN IT".

Basically most teams get a job and aim for an end result. The way they do that is by simply tackling the problem at hand, often using techniques and processes they have used before simply because the last time it came out OK so we know that method works. This is restrictive as by spending time on how you achieve that end result and forcing some time out to evaluate and get the teams input on how the team functions and how that can be improved it is possible to improve several areas and achieve better results and often faster.

I may be posting some useful tips from time to time here on experiences I have had and the results of putting some of these techniques into practice so sign up to the RSS feed if you want to be the first in the know :) For more information on some of the techniques I learnt see my Smashing Magazine article here: Professional-Team-Management-Tips-For-Creative-Folks

For those of you interested in the course please visit: http://www.kirkbright.com/

Wigan AWP is Live!

Another one of our very successful 14-19 (AWP) Area Wide Prospectus sites has gone live. For more information on the product in general see the previous post about the Tameside AWP launch. This one is for Wigan and you will notice that the new crisp, clean style of the Tameside one resonates through this one with the addition of some nice banner graphics using the new Wigan Life logo. The clean, easy to use search functionality takes pride of place and all the fancy ajax and javascript fanciness is here on this one as well along with the Careerstube content relevant video case studies and the advanced search and refining slider techniques.

Take a look and see what you think - all comments welcome.

Wigan AWP
http://www.wiganprospectus.net/

Careerstube
www.careerstube.com