Professional Development: Time to begin planning for 2009

I worked for 10 years in a corporation that believed that all employees should attend training each year.  In fact, management and professional employees were expected to attend two weeks of training each year.  Internal and external workshops as well as conferences counted towards that total.  If I remember correctly, there were other activities that could be counted too.  The whole idea was that you needed to keep learning new things about your area of expertise or new skills that would help you be more effective in your position.

With prices on everything increasing, we all know that heading off to a workshop or conference in 2009 will not be a given.  Your management will want you to justify the expenditure.  Instead of traveling to a workshop, your management may want you to take a similar workshop online, in order to avoid the travel costs.  If you are an independent information professional (like myself), those travel costs really will hit your bottom line, so planning will be important as well as know where you'll get the biggest bang for your buck.

As you look towards 2009:

1. Begin to think about what you want to learn during the year.  Make a list of your learning goals. 
2. Next write down the various ways you could learn those things.  Don't limit your thinking at this point. 
3. Finally, mark how you indeed reach each of your learning goals.  You may decide that some can be achieved through reading, while others may be done through a webinar.  Still others might be best achieved through attending an event live.

Now when your boss asks about your training or travel for 2009, you can show what you goals and how you are going to achieve those goals.  You can talk about the travel budget you won't be using OR the travel budget you'll be using more effectively.  And rather than saying "I want to go" or "I always go", you'll be able to communicate more effectively why traveling to a workshop or a conference is important.

By the way, if there is a way for you to travel more inexpensively than normal, you may want to present that option.  For example, can you stay with a friend rather than in a hotel? Or can you share a hotel room?  Offer those ideas to your management, if those cost-saving ideas are valued.  If, however, you're going to stay in a very inexpensive hotel at a conference, while others from your organization are staying in the expensive conference hotel, your cost-saving idea likely isn't valued. [This sadly scenario happened to me.  I went our of my way to save, while others did not.  My efforts to save money meant nothing.]

One more thought (tip).  After you attend an external event, be sure to communicate to your staff, coworkers, and boss what you learned.  You may not need to do in-depth, but provide a quick overview or a few useful tidbits.  In others, "I went to this and I came back knowing more (which I'll share with you)."  For some events, you may find it useful to write a trip report, even if your workplace does not require it, and circulate it to your coworkers.  That will help to demonstrate the value that you and the organization received.