Sushi-bar courses provide short, sharp learning

Citation

(2003), "Sushi-bar courses provide short, sharp learning", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 35 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2003.03735gab.002

Sushi-bar courses provide short, sharp learning

Sushi-bar courses provide short, sharp learning

Short, sharp training sessions are being held in London sushi bars to change the way executives work and to boost their potential.

Sushi-bar learning, from John Matchett Ltd, targets people who do not have time to attend traditional training events, yet have to develop in order to achieve their goals. The courses typically last for two hours.

The first series of public sushi-bar courses took place between March and June this year at Canary Wharf in London. The courses will be staged quarterly in future.

Harry Howard, who has managed the project at John Matchett, said: “Sushi-bar learning started about five years ago, when we did a number of short training sessions for groups of British Telecom personnel, often as part of their off-site company days. The sessions were often used to break up the day, and proved extremely popular. Subjects included communication skills, empowerment, influencing and other soft skills. They were mainly two-hour sessions, but the shortest one was 60 minutes.

“From then on, more and more people started enthusing about the sessions and we got a number of inquiries. A large investment bank started using our two-hour sessions for topics including motivation and collaboration. For the motivation sessions we helped people who were generally left to work on their own to stay positive in the face of adversity. In the collaboration workshops we worked on giving people the desire to work together, rather than as individuals.

“We see sushi-bar learning as a way of driving forward the learning community. Sushi could well turn out to be the missing personal ingredient in many e-learning programmes where the interactive aspect is missing.

“All our training is about changing the way people work and boosting people’s potential. Sushi-bar learning is the quickest way to do this.”

The sessions are seen a way of delivering training to people who would not normally receive training. Harry Howard said: “As a rule, 50 per cent of people in an organization will never go on a personal-development training course. These short sessions are targeted at such people – not those already open to learning.”

Training and learning-management solutions company John Matchett Limited merged with Adkins, Matchett & Toy (AMT), specialist in financial-services training, to form the Matchett Group last year.

AMT had been using short training sessions for most of its customers in Britain and overseas. It works mainly with investment banks that typically train their people in set ways. When junior brokers, for example, first join a bank, they have intensive training for their first six weeks. Thereafter, the brokers receive training periodically, first as a combination of refresher and new training and eventually going on to new topics as they gain more experience.

Typically, brokers learn basic financial modelling and then acquire a more detailed knowledge of modelling, finally moving on to advanced modelling techniques. Eventually, they might specialize in a particular area, such as financial modelling for insurance companies.

Short learning sessions are ideal at this stage of the training process, where courses often have to cater for quite small groups. Often the sessions are run in the evening, so the busy pattern of the day is not interrupted. Sometimes they are held at weekends.John Matchett Ltd and AMT decided to build on this experience with sushi-bar learning.

Harry Howard said: “We surveyed 200 companies – 150 of our own customers and 50 companies we would like to do business with – and from that research chose the top 12 topics that they said they would want to be covered.”

Because of the mix of JML and AMT customers, the programme is a combination of personal development, business learning and financial training. The topics covered include power modelling, understanding valuation, planning tips for project success, creative accounting, pension and tax accounting, delivering difficult messages, getting feedback right, negotiating skills, collaboration, making effective presentations, time and priority management, and influencing others positively.

Harry Howard concluded: “The benefit of using this type of short session training in-house is that for example, half the department can go on the morning session, and the other half can learn in the afternoon, thus maintaining office cover.”