A while back Tracy approached me with an idea to create a new course for Avo and gave me the heads-up on what to expect.  Now that the seed was sown she started working on the content, one module at a time.  The Call-Centre Management course has been finalized up to this date, with a brand new look.  The manual has been face-lifted and the cover reinvented with a new energy (as per usual Avo style of constant improvement)

Yesterday Trace invited me through to SAB Isando to come check out the session, I wanted to see the product in action and WOW what a product it is!

This was module 4 out of the 6 in total, named Generations.  Tracy took us through a time-line of the 5 different generations from the 1900’s to 2008 and beyond.  Giving Tracy’s background in teaching History, her insights were nothing short of riveting and her energy in the training room grabbed our immediate attention from the start right through to the end.

She struck so many notes within me that resonated with my personal experiences and added clarity to things I hadn’t noticed before.  Every single one of us should attend this generational talk, it’s an amazing product and all I can say is “watch this space, wild-fire is spreading!”

We had our first Footprint strat session yesterday.  It felt like breaking new ground to build a building or plant a tree.  We started to articulate the vision of what this new company can become!  My job is to start telling people what we’re busy with: so here is my first deliverable, Bilaal!  (Bilaal is helping to keep us honest and stick to deiverables and timelines)

Footprint is going to be a company that offers training at grassroots level: LSM1-5.  Our difference is that we will be able to offer it at the unbelievable price of R450 per day (or thereabouts)!  Ummm, that’s not per person, thats for the facilitator!  Period. So if you had 10 people in the room, it would cost you R45 per head!!!!!

At last, companies who couldn’t afford to train their blue-collar workers in basic life skills like managing their money and managing their health, because that kind of training has been too expensive to deliver nationwide, can now tap into our national training footprint and make it work!

Our offering: Only 2 courses to begin with - “Manage your Health”, and “Manage your Money”.  The course will be run with LSM 1-5 needs in mind.  Learning materials are picture-based, so there will be no language or literacy barriers.  Trainers will be sourced and enabled in local communities so the training will take place with local flavour and languages. We envisage building a team of over 1000 trainers nationwide to cover the nooks and crannies of South African enterprise.

We need: Some customers to start with!  Our programes will be very appropriate to support banks and financial institutions with their consumer education needs. Mines are also very involved in helping miners live healthy lives, and overcome the scourge of AIDS, TB, Heart disease and others.  Municipalities may be interested in talking to us about skills development and employment opportunities within their local areas.  There are many more spaces where companies have workers spread out across South Africa, and we would love to chat to them about how we can train their staff, or their consumers. (Getting a new customer is also on my list of deliverables with Bilaal - please help me or I’ll be in trouble again!)

We are in the process of planning our resourcing going forward: very soon, I’ll publish the roles we will be needing to recruit to.  So for those of you wanting to be part of this magical new company - dust off your CV!  It’s going to be a fantastic ride!  We’ll be building South Africa, one person at a time!

It’s hard to believe that we’re finally at the Human Resources Developement Africa Exhibition!

A lot of planning went into it and it seemed to be one of those things that are ‘on the horizon’… . But today was our first day and there are still two to go.

We just happen to be handing out some very, very tasty gaucamole and rice crackers (although that’s definitely not the main reason you’d want to visit us, right?…) and are dressed in gorgeous aprons and boa’s (just have a look at these two lovely Avos!).

I have to say, you’ll be missing out if you don’t pop in to say Hi.

Hope we’ll see you there!

Three times a year, aspiring SAB Sales Managers gather at the SAB Training Institue to embark on a two week leadership journey - The Sales Leadership Programme. This is one of the exciting leadership programmes run by Ashley Lovell, SAB Learning and Development consultant from Marketing Sales & Distribution. Avocado Vision project manage this exciting programme, amongst others.

The programme in February saw Ashley and his Sales Leadership Programme delegates, together with Avo and Chris Vind from Corporate Adventures, getting together at the Mother of Peace Orphange in Northriding to take on an Extreme Makeover Teambuild.

The orphanage in desperate need of repairs was the lucky recipient of an extreme make over organised and executed by Chris (Corporate Adventures), Avo, Ashley and his delegates.

Gutters were put up, a water storage tank erected, paving laid, grass laid, shade cloth shelter erected, jungle gyms repaired and painted (even the rocking horse got a creative new look!!)….

There was even time at the end of the day to relax around the braai and have a couple of well deserved beers.

The kids were absolutely thrilled with the attention that their home received.

Well done everyone!!

Avo and SAB have partnered to add a bit of creative sparkle to kids from the Mother of Peace Community and a great group of 9 year olds from the local squatter camp. Once a month, we spend a morning playing together.

In the first workshop, they painted huge trees on paper with their hands. This was done in the chapel and the volunteers spent more time cleaning the floor than supervising the children who were having a fabulous time blending, smooshing and generally �experiencing� the wonder of paint.

The next workshop saw them designing the art work on their own personalised t-shirts to wear whilst being little Picasso�s. This became a sudden necessity when we sent the children home after the first workshop looking a little worse for wear (did I say they were painting trees or themselves? It�s amazing how quickly a clear brief can transmogrify itself into complete chaos!)

The third workshop was a plasticine sculpture workshop. After talking about how animals defend themselves, the children were challenged to invent their own beast with the most protective bits they could imagine. Once again, great fun was had as plasticine strips were twisted together and kebab sticks were used to hold the creations together.

The fourth workshop, held yesterday, was a beading workshop. Everyone became completely absorbed in designing their own key ring, bracelets and necklaces. Bling was in and the finished products were quite dazzling. Even the little two year olds, Princess and Dido, stunned us by carefully feeding one precious bead at a time onto tiger tail wire, with only a little help from the facilitators.�

Special thanks to all the facilitators:�Andile Bhengu and Dale September from SAB: your involvement and enthusiasm is deeply appreciated. Renee Koekemoer from Standard Bank, thank you for also helping to design the innovative programme.�Jeanette Dace, thanks for also being our logistics boff.�Jeanne-Mare Africa, we are so glad that you initiated this art programme.�Jean Claude from Mother of Peace, thanks for doing all the liaising, fetching and carrying of the children from the local school.

Riding through the Johannesburg CBD on a double-decker open-topped bus is one of the most exciting ways to experience the CBD. One gets to see the magnificent architectural detail on many of the old buildings, the extent to which the city has become home to people from all over Africa, the Urban Renewal which has taken place and an opportunity to view, close up, the massive paintings on the buildings which takes art out of the galleries and onto the streets.

Climbing off the bus, one gets to experience the fascinating segments of this city. Interested in Culture? We’ll take you down. The shops in this historic street are stocked with the most incredible things, mainly aimed at migrant workers who head home to Zimbabwe or rural areas in South Africa. Here you can buy anything from a coal iron, to castrating tools to a lobola jas (a long coat worn when marriage negotiations are taking place)!

One can also meet the extraordinary Peter Naidoo and have him explain the role of African Muthi whilst standing in his shop full of animal skins, herbs and bark. Peter’s Museum of Man and Science is one of the most significant tourist attractions in Jo’burg.

Interested in Urban Renewal? One can walk through the funky mosaic laden pavements of the garment district. This is a great way to meet and talk to the local seamstresses who produce the beautiful choir gowns and uniforms for the various burial societies. Interested in Struggle History? We’ll take you to and to the Hamidia mosque where Gandhi and various businessmen burned their registration papers in protest of racist legislation in 1907.

End your experience by watching the sun set over the city from the top of the Carlton centre, one of the tallest buildings in Africa. Avo Vision has taken Standard Bank and SAB on this unique hop. Each hop is tailor made to meet the specific requirements of the group.

Without doubt Jo’burg is one of the most under-rated spaces in South Africa. The flight to the North saw the near collapse of the city that was the economic heart-beat of South Africa. It soon developed a reputation of being dirty and dangerous.

But whilst a lot of that has started to change our attitudes and perceptions have not. So, if you want to get your team to begin to understand what makes our CBD tick, or you want to open their eyes to diversity, give us a call, we would love to facilitate that experience.

What a special 2 days Tracy and I just had!� We’ve been working with a fabulous team of senior bankers (Hi there Standard Bank!) who are embarking on a journey of change that is never easy for those involved.

But we spent time looking at their own strengths profile, to see what personal resources each person will be able to use to help them to take their people through the process, and what resources can be pooled to make the best use of everybody’s strengths in the team.

Thanks for participating with such courage: our time together felt very rich.� For the ‘Learners and Inputs’ amongst you, (and anyone else interested in taking your thinking deeper on the topics we covered, do read the books ‘The One thing you need to Know’ Marcus Buckingham; and ‘Mind the Gap’ Graeme Codrington.

Please also feel free to click on the comments section for this post: let us know what you’re thinking, how you found the programme, what you learned… You will all be able to see one another’s posts, which will be useful for you all.� (Of course, it lets our other clients know how clever we are, and we’re always grateful for that!)

Good luck on your journey! We hope to be able to support you all some more on that!

On Saturday 3rd June my Avo Team and i had the pleasure of briefing the SAB Management Development Programme delegates on their Apprentice Challenge.The MDP is one of the most exciting leadership programmes on the SAB training calendar. The programme sees approximately 40 local and international delegates gather at the SAB Training Institute to embark on a 3 week leadership journey. Avo project manages this exciting programme.��

The Apprentice Challenge is a collaborative effort between SAB, UCT Graduate School of Business and Avocado Vision. The aim of the challenge is to see if delegates can translate their learned, theoretical knowledge into real-world entrepreneurial and original thinking.

We came up with the novel idea last year, for the 2005 MDP Programme. Syndicates raised R71 000 for the Mother of Peace Community, an AIDS orphanage in Northriding, Johannesburg. Due to its great success SAB decided to include it again in the programme and see how the 2006 delegates fair against their predesessors.

The Avo Beading Instructors showed the syndicates beading methods, through making bracelets, keyrings and necklaces. Once the syndicates techniques were sound they were left with a box full of beads, tiger tail wire, crimps, beading tools and other interesting material and an entrepreneur brief.

The entrepreneur brief was short and simple:

1. Design a creation/s.

2. Design and execute a marketing plan and strategy that will ensure that your syndicate makes the most money possible from the creation/s you have made. The syndicates will be marked on design, finance, engagement and follow through.

All proceeds made from this challenge will got to the SAB Corporate, Social Responsibilty Initiative and funds will be distributed from there. This means that every single cent goes to a worthy cause. http://www.sabreweries.co.za/sabltd/home/default

When Avo clients challenged the team to come up with something really creative and fun for teams to do together, we certainly rose to the challenge. The result of our collective thinking is this mad-cap adventure: a truly diverse, REAL South African, Jozi-joll, with lots of that special corporate responsibility �Zing� thrown in!
What Avo set out to create was a fun, meaningful, innovative way to facilitate team cohesion, encourage participation and expose team members to experiences that they will find magical, amusing, enriching and rewarding!!
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The reason why we are so excited about this race, is that it speaks to what Avocado Vision is all about. We are all about creating conversations, helping people understand and communicate with each other a little better so that teams will be better equipped to listen to each other, care for each other and have good, clean fun together.
At Avo, we encourage creativity, innovation and discovery because we know how valuable it is for people to be open to new experiences.
We hope you find the idea of the �Ama Zing-Zing� race just as inspiring as we found it to be when we created it. We look forward to seeing your team in the starting blocks!
The half-day challenge is loosely based on the popular television programme called �The Amazing Race�; however, this race is a race of an altogether different nature!

You and your team will be� taking place in activities such as:
Taxi-code� training, an orphanage visit, word-collecting and you will be �zinging� around places like the Oriental Plaza, Secret Garden, Mandela Bridge, Diagonal Street, The Rand Club and a vibey Shebeen!�

And guess what�we can do it in Cape Town too!!� Glen and Hanli are off to Cape Town on the weekend, to facilitate the race for one of our banking clients……..sooo, watch this space to read all about it and see all the pics, when they get back!!

Call centres are big business, and in South African today, one of the main objectives for outsourced call centres is to obtain offshore business.

This business is currently being outsourced to India, which has become the world�s call centre Mecca. Mandy Todd, an independent call centre consultant for Avocado Vision says that currently South Africa does not enjoy a fair share of the international call centre market due to a number of reasons, the primary one being labour issues. Added to that is the fact that South Africa�s telecommunication costs are the highest in the world, and previously our VOIP facilities were not up to scratch, which has since improved.

Todd says that South Africa�s labour problems in the call centre arena stem from our education and skills challenges. In comparison, even though unemployment is high in India, the workers all have a certain level of education and skill. An international delegation visited South Africa a few years back to undertake an analysis of how South Africa could compete as a global player in the call centre market. Coupled with statistics from a survey undertaken by the Department of Labour, figures indicate that 20% of the South African workforce is skilled, with the other 80% semi �skilled or unskilled. In the USA, these statistics are reversed. Seventy percent of the US labour market is skilled, with only 30% falling into the semi-skilled and unskilled category.

The international delegation also found that the South African middle management sector has a big skills gap when it comes to the� management required for call centres. In international markets, call centres form the hub of a business, so it goes without saying that international companies will not outsource this vital component of their business to unskilled people.

Furthermore, South Africans often battle to understand the culture of the international business market. �Because English is not a first language for many South African employees, they may also experience problems in correctly interpreting written communications,� comments Todd.

Call centres are a highly controlled environment from a labour point of view. Everything is closely measured - from how many calls an operator takes, to how many calls they drop and how long they spend on each call. �It is a highly stressful environment because the operators have to deal with clients who are rude and dissatisfied and outright angry on a regular basis. This is coupled with the pressure they feel from having their performance measured so closely all the time. They also have to be up-to-date and able to operate the latest communication technology,� says Todd.

Due to all these dynamics, a very different set of management skills are required in a call centre environment. These skills revolve around motivating teams, understanding team dynamics and cultural diversity. Call centre managers also need to be equipped to deal with the stress of the employees and assist in diffusing and alleviating this stress.

In addition, call centre managers need to coach people for excellence, they need to understand call centre metrics, how to use these systems and procedures to the advantage of the call centre, as well as cost management and how to get more for less. Correct staffing is also paramount for a successful call centre operation, and managers, aside from staffing correctly, will also need to understand and implement cost saving areas with regards to staff and creating better working mechanisms.

Todd suggests that call centres should look at a different staff payment model. �They should pay staff based on performance instead of a flat rate, and in that way motivate a better level of performance and incentivise the staff,� she says. Call centre management is a people oriented role. In South Africa, managers are traditionally 80% task oriented and 20% people oriented. Internationally managers operate the other way around with 80% of their focus on the people that they manage. This indicates that the people component is definitely missing from the South African call centre management arena, which often results in unhappy labour and therefore high staff turnovers.

From all this, it is evident that training for middle management of the call centre industry is a vital component that is sadly lacking in South Africa. Todd recommends a dynamic middle management curriculum, a course that will result in a recognised qualification. To address this clear gap in the market, Avocado Vision, which was established in 1996 by interpersonal communications specialist, Juliet Newton, to specifically address the need for businesses to manage the ‘people connections’ interface, has developed a call centre management and discipline curriculum that provides a comprehensive training intervention for the middle management of call centre industry.

Among other things, this course includes a people component, possibly the most important skill for call centre managers. This section provides managers with the tools for effectively measuring staff performance and developing a compensation and recognition model. Motivating teams, being a good, inspirational leader, coaching and mentoring as well as handling of conflict and conflict resolution also forms part of this curriculum.

Call centre managers need a thorough understanding of the processes of the business. In a call centre environment, processes need to be well defined and followed to the letter in order to achieve success. This section of the course teaches managers how to establish and implement effective processes, the process workflow, supporting documentation and on-desk material for staff. It also provides managers with the skills to control, audit and improve on existing processes and teach them how to undertake a root cause analysis to find out where processes are failing.

Performance is key in any business, and call centres managers need to have an intimate understanding of the drivers of staff satisfaction, proper resource utilisation, the cost of poor quality work and the design and implementation of a quality staff programme. Lastly, the course looks at workforce management and equips call centre managers with the correct tools for staffing and scheduling on which each and every call centre is heavily reliant.

There are many training institutions that deal with bits and pieces of what is required for call centre training. “Leadership courses abound, as do those on people skills, but there is no comprehensive curriculum directed at the call centre market specifically,” says Todd, who goes on to say that the problem with most leadership and coaching courses is that delegates walk away unable to apply what they have learnt in the workplace. “That is because the knowledge is gained in isolation,” says Todd.

If South Africa wants to be a true global player in the international call centre market, it has never been more crucial for local call centres to reassess their operating mechanisms and staff training. “South Africa as a country needs to be able to operate in that international space, which will result in wealth and job creation,” Todd concludes.