Executive Room was ceated specifically for senior managers seeking new opportunities new post, launching a consultancy, examining the pros and cons of self-employment or simply preparing for retirement.  Focus for Change has for many years been counselling executives so are familiar with the particular concerns that arise at a time of major change.

Enhancing and updating the functional cv and targeting job-search are mong the products available, along with polishing up interview technique.

And, thanks to video technology, face-to-face mock-interviews offer constructive feedback to help focus firmly on the favoured position.

Access to the Executive Room and its Forum is simple. To subscribe, complete the form on http://www.focus4change.co.uk/join-the-executive-room/

An email will be returned with an exclusive user name and password, valid for six months.  This opens the door to confidential on-line assistance which can also include sharing experiences with others in the Forum, each taking their next step.

Why not step into the Executive Forum and find your new opportunity?

Try enjoying in a pizza parlour a lunchtime conference with a business associate while on the next table two fellows rattle away at high decibel level in fluent Italian.

Or making sense of changing platforms when station announcements are unintelligible over the chaos of the concourse.

The noisy world turns on communication – and as a race we’re fast abandoning the practice!

Oh, there’s a great deal of it about. E-mail, Facebook, Twitter – everybody’s anxious to have their say. But how much is registered or even heard by the recipient?

Study the letters written by our grandparents whose education was sketchy by today’s standards.  Gracious phrases in usually beautiful handwriting, they must have been a joy to receive and a pleasure to write.

Today as we tweet our innermost thoughts in 140 characters we’ve lost not only the art of conversation but the value of clear and concise communication of information.  Yet success in business – not least in getting a job – relies on clear understanding.

Chatting through our fingertips, we’re so involved with mechanical means we’re losing confidence in face-to-face communication – worrying businesses looking to promote into management but finding a lack of leadership ability through poor communication skills.  Focus for Change is committed to maintaining standards of clear communication and improving the prospects of candidates seeking to further their careers.

And there’s no excuse for that public announcement that can’t be heard – often because the announcer has no grasp of the technique of clear speech or proper use of the microphone.  As the information is distorted into muffled sound you long to drag the announcer or their boss to stand beside you and defy them to make head or tail of what’s being said.

Every flight begins with the safety talk and although the cabin staff are generally articulate most passengers prefer to examine the price-list or their newspapers.

We came across a novel way of grabbing attention to this most necessary element of of air travel.  The hosties of a service out of London give way to a video in which charming kids act through the familiar mantra, finishing with a cheeky thumbs-up from a uniformed tot in the captain’s seat.

An extreme an irresistable means of putting across a message surely.  But it captures the attention – and does the job effectively.

Throughout all the years Focus for Change has been advising people facing change in the workplace – through redundancy, corporate restructuring or, at career’s end, retirement – a recurring feature has been the need for executives in particular to share views and experience with others in similar circumstances.

Confidentiality is, of course, paramount in all counselling.  But there are problems and questions that frequently arise on subjects common within the process. And while our workshops crafted for senior managers in companies and institutions discuss within their friendly framework solutions to frequently-asked questions the individual without that corporate support is left to seek guidance elsewhere.

Recognising support is needed by lone individuals and responding to their plight Focus for Change has developed on-line forums to encourage free discussion and exchange of views and experiences within its Executive Room.

Senior managers register for membership of the Executive Room which gives them six months’ freedom to contribute to a forum of their choice – or merely dip in to see what others in a similar position with similar concerns have posted.  Building on contributions each forum collects a valuable bank of rewarding knowledge.

Anonymity is assured, employing user names and passwords to ensure the feature remains a useful and nonthreatening facility.

If you are a senior manager facing uncertainty why not use our Executive Forum http//www.focus4change.co.uk/join-the-executive-room/ to help plan your next phase of life?

Whether it’s a new post, consultancy or preparation for a fulfilling retirement sharing concerns and ideas with other like-minded people can make smooth the path of transition .

Nor should you demonstrate the desperation of Yosser Hughes – that iconic Boy from the Black Stuff – no matter how many times you’ve exposed yourself in countless CVs despatched to unresponsive bosses.

The best employers, despite present financial burdens, value employees they are forced to let  go continue to support them by asking organisations like Focus for Change to offer outplacement advice with workshops and seminars, often transforming crises into opportunities.  Focus for Change is a trusted organisation of specialists which, over sixteen years has largely though refrerrals stretched a client-list to twenty-three universities, several local authorities, the NHS, the corporate sector, the Church and charities.

But we know not everyone has the benefit of corporate support.  So we have developed an on-line service to remedy that situation.  Help is just a couple of key-strokes away – with a visit to our shop.

For the cost of a meal in a decent restaurant here is friendly, jargon-free advice on how best to present yourself as the outstanding candidate, emphasising your skills, personality and confidence.

It works like this:

Select from the list of Classic or Executive modules the one you need – it could be interview technique, brushing up your CV or simply tackling the job-search.  Sorry about the cost element, minimal as it is – but you’ll know that worthwhile advice has a value!

We then respond to your email with a module carefully prepared by our expert advisers, each of whom has spent many years successfully helping people from academics to porters, surgeons to dock workers, to take that next step. With our personal, confidential service we can help craft your CV into a format that best suits the requirements of jobs you target.

Thanks to technology we can offer a face-to-face a mock interview, should you feel this is a feature you need to refine, at your convenience  review and discussion.  This provides that extra bit of confidence at the real thing.

The Focus for Change on-line shop is open all hours!  Step inside – with the module you need you’ll enhance your next step in the job market!

Then you look for a title.

It has to be a name that will chime with prospective clients in their search for a service.  It will need to encapsulate the benefits the course has been designed to offer and emphasise it relevancy.  A name that’s original.

How about Next Steps?

Fast-forward a few years and Next Steps has struck, as a pretty good title, any number of companies providing any number of services.  Government departments feel free to wallow in the phrase as a multi-purpose badge!

As they say, there’s nothing new under the sun.  When back in the ’90s we launched our first Next Steps programme for people facing redundancy or considering voluntary service it was a title that served us well.  And as a title it proved so good it’s hard to open a business publication or a training organisation’s e-shots without those inevitable Next Steps swinging down the page.

No, you can’t copyright phrases.  If you could where would be our favourite cliches?

But it’s difficult not to suspect a spy checks our website.

Paranoia?  Probably!

We’ve seen Outside the Box which we adopted shiny and new a decade ago for one of our change programmes now common as household words.  It happened also to Pathways, title of our motivational series of seminars.

Innovation is very satisfying. But you have to be prepared to find the idea you pulled so confidently out of the ether has become common currency.

A form of flattery perhaps? But it sends you back to the drawing-board, once more seeking inspiration!

Watch this space for the next big thing in businesspeak!

The economy might be squeezed desperately tight but statistics show there are jobs to be had out there.  And despite the gloomiest forecasts great Britain plc is already showing signs within its manufacturing base of emerging from the recession smarter and stronger to supply the world’s markets.

Serving customers overseas is making money for a nation that’s been largely, unproductively,  serving only itself.

While jobs are being lost in the public sector, the private sector has vacancies in need of filling to help fuel that recovery. But there’s no doubting the fierce competition for the most attractive positions.

Nor can it be denied that the candidates best prepared will be the most successful.  Preparation in the key.

To offer a helping hand back to work, Focus for Change with an attractive new-look website,has opened an easy-to use on-line shop, offering advice and guidance on achieving a new and fulfilling lifestyle.  The company’s experts, drawing on their wealth of experience of helping people to position themselves to find work, advise on how best to get your cv singled out above the dozens of others.  They also help put together your job-search plan, craft a personal statement and show the best way to apply for jobs.  They’ll advise on the practical and legal ins and outs of becoming  your own boss.

They conduct mock-interviews with constructive feedback – valuable in successfully achieving that next step which will also assist senior managers through our Executive Room.  This space is devoted to practical advice on all these important aspects, tailored – like all our modules – to their particular needs.  Consultancy, self-marketing, the speculative approach, networking and job applications are given the  weight warranted by experience and expertise.

Stress management and other emotional problems are explored.  So are the advantages of retirement planning.

Alarmed at the cost of some on-line services, Focus for Change have put together a package of easily affordable, individual, confidential tools to arm those anxious to get back into work. Visit the shop, click on your needs and we’ll email you the information module you’re looking for.

Give it a go – The on-line, our shop is open all hours!

Watching Stuart “The Brand” Baggs sink deeper into the lavish coat of varnish applied to what was a demonstrably modest achievement brought joy to millions in the closing phase of BBC TV’s The Apprentice.

For some, perhaps who have encountered a particularly searching job interview, it must have been a heart-warming example of schadenfreude.

While modesty is not a feature one would apply or expect to find in the average resume, to stray far from the truth when it comes to putting yourself on the line in the expectation of persuading a potential boss you’re best prospect since bread was sliced, verges on recklessness.

Apart from possibly the best value of this year’s crop of pushy TV candidates and comparing Baron Sugar’s careful one-liners with those blundering gags Bruce Forsyth has made his own on Strictly, young Mr Baggs was the reason many of us watched fascinated, waiting for his inevitable come-uppance.  His welcome appearances among the losers’ last threes in Sugar Towers’ boardroom amounted to a lesson in how not to go into interview. Inappropriate familiarity with the interviewer merited its icy response; a dodgy achievement in his application set in motion the slow-motion car-crash for his prospects – to the quiet satisfaction of all but the ambitious lad’s nearest and dearest.

TV is an entertainment medium, not a manual on how-to-do-it – that’s best left to experts like those of Focus for Change www.focus4change.co.uk. Entertainment-value was without doubt the reason young Stuart’s sojourn was extended beyond most expectations, encouraging countless followers to indulge weekly in a searching love-hate relationship.  We enjoyed his outrageous claims, watching the basilisk reaction of the pitiless peer as the would-be serial entrepreneur dug himself, Inspector Clouseau-like into a series of yawning lion-traps. Few candidates offer gold-plated deals in return for the £100k salary up for grabs with such panache. His script might have been filched stright from M Hulot or Mr Bean

So Stuart packed his bags for that last lonely taxi-ride into showbiz oblivion.  And we’ll miss him.  But he will not have perished from our screens in vain  Recorded for posterity is a case-study in how-not-to-do-an-interview.  He may not have been able to add winning The Apprentice to his cv – but he does undeniably have the starring role in this training exercise.

Allow me to use my Yule Blog to wish the compliments of the season to all my readers.

But of the thousand items of gossip, overheard or hacked into between diplomats, there have been many that accord with what most of the people I know have always instinctively believed.  The attitude of our American cousins to the rest of the world; the opinions of our political masters of each other’s weaknesses and the passing thoughts of royalty comes as a breath of fresh air to a climate of secrecy and deference.

Anyone who has knocked about the world to any degree would not have been amazed to discover some of the regimes with whom Great Britain plc trades require incentives to broker a deal; that what national leaders say on their twin lecterns about each other is nor necessarily what they share among advisers afterwards.

Free speech, with the important provisos to safeguard security and those whose personal safety in the national service requires secrecy, is not only the cornerstone of our liberty but a healthy escape valve against frustration and anger at inept leadership and pettifogging regulation.

There is much to be said for plain speaking so long as it is responsible.  And what applies to diplomacy applies equally to our day-to-day dealings.

WickiLeaks provides a timely warning about email communication.  Confidentiality just one  watchword of the one-day interactive communication workshops we at Focus for Change conduct in the battle to preserve clarity in the workplace where the laid-back familiarity of texting can all too easily lead to misunderstandings.

Clear speaking is important throughout the recruiting stage and beyond. An ill-spelt, ungrammatical communication of any kind is a turn-off for a prospective employer – when did you last really look at your cv? Emails are becoming dangerously infected with text-speak not much short of insulting.

Say what you mean and mean what you say is clearly the basis of all relationships.

As my old aunt used to say, if you can’t speak well of somebody, don’t speak at all!

Institute of Directors, Pall Mall: 17th March; 15th June

Westwood Park, Colchester, Essex: 19th May, 1st December

Other dates can be arranged.

Which makes all the more mysterious the silence of couples as they face each other at a restaurant table or, as I was recently, sitting together on a tourist coach.

There we were, my wife and I swapping opinions – yes, she has some and is never slow to voice them – but above all sharing the visual wonders of snow-capped mountain and azure-blue lake, remarking on this; comparing that in what we regard as companionable exchanges. Yet around us, as we passed through stunning scenery, many of our fellow-travellers – the majority, if not all, senior citizens – sat two-by-two staring straight ahead, mute as trappist monks.
Face-to-face each was perfectly friendly, often forthcoming – the way strangers can be and conscious that what they might be reluctant to reveal about themselves nearer home falls on unjudgmental and impartial ears.

Surely we agree an experience shared can more than double the pleasure.

An important aspect of the retirement planning programmes Focus for Change www.focus4change.co.uk  is the interactive exploration of relationships that can produce some surprising results. The end of a career is the beginning of a new and rewarding phase of life as we shall be discussing on December 2nd in our Open Executive pre-retirement seminar at Westwood Park.

It’s a fact that many couples discover the person they married all those years before has changed. Having been separated throughout each day, retirement means time spent together.  They may share the home, but not always the same interests.

One of the factors that makes retirement planning essential is the realisation that serious consideration must be given to readjusting lifestyles.  The knowledge that things are going to be different reduces the shock of discovering he or she is a different person.  The prospect of years of shared harmony is much more likely if there is a recognition of each other’s needs.

It was the Duchess of Windsor, who clearly enjoyed her space, who is famously quoted as declaring: I married for love – but not for lunch!

Now there was a woman with opinions!