Chris's L&D Blog

In 1846, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, a sad-eyed, mustachioed young medical graduate, became chief resident of obstetrics at the Vienna General Hospital. Over the next two decades of his brief career, he became the “savior of mothers” and an enemy of the medical establishment, driven mad by his quest for the truth about hospital-acquired infections. In […]

The uncertainty expressed at the beginning of 2017 has continued throughout the trading period with some retailers unable to whether the storm. Those that adapted to the new trading climate have seen growth. Despite the turbulent market Craig Summers, UK Managing Director at Manhattan Associates says that “customers still need to buy things” and the […]

Sometimes it’s easier (lazier?) to use an Excel query for simple reports.  One problem with this is that the query authentication properties are viewable to anyone who has access to the report.  While this is like teaching a dog algebra for the average user, an advanced user could, conceivably, use this connection data to create […]

I have recently finished listening to Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (a former derivatives trader, is Dean’s Professor in the Sciences Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences). The book is written about the extreme impact of certain kinds of rare and unpredictable events and our tendency to try and find simplistic explanations. I have pulled […]

If your website takes longer than three seconds to load, you could be losing nearly half of your visitors, according to data from Akamai. It’s pretty simple: the faster the speed of your website, the happier your visitors will be. Optimizing page load time leads to noticable improvements in customer experience, conversion rates, and ultimately, your sales […]

“If you keep making that face, it’ll get stuck that way.” “Don’t sit too close to the television or you’ll fall in.” “Eat your carrots and you’ll always have great eyesight.” Sound familiar? When you were just a kid, you were on the receiving end of plenty of fibs and tall tales just like those. […]

So hopefully many of you are familiar with the concept of Agile, if not it’s just a method of project management, used especially for software development and how our digital product teams currently work. Bruce Feiler has a radical idea: To deal with the stress of modern family life, go agile. Feiler introduces family practices which […]

You are more than you think you are, says former pro wrestler Mike Kinney — you just have to find what makes you unique and use it to your advantage. For years Kinney “turned up” the parts of himself that made him special as he invented and perfected his wrestling persona, Cowboy Gator Magraw. In […]

Psychologist Susan David shares how the way we deal with our emotions shapes everything that matters: our actions, careers, relationships, health and happiness. In this talk, she challenges a culture that prizes positivity over emotional truth and discusses the powerful strategies of emotional agility. A talk to share. What I found most interesting about this […]

So interestingly I only found this the other day but did you know The Academy has a whole online library of downloadable books? You can find the library here but there are some great books for example: Excel 2016 Introduction Excel 2016 Advanced Finding Yourself Personal Confidence & Motivation Dealing with Difficult People – especially helpful if you ever […]