Carla Carter & Associates, Inc.

Training

Philosophy
Training is often an important component of the change initiative, therefore, we stand ready to design and/or deliver high quality training courses to our clients, even though we are not what is traditionally known as a “training house”. We believe that learners learn in many different ways, but that adult learners like practical experience and we build that into all courses, whether offered in the traditional classroom setting or customized to be developed as Web-based training. We prefer to offer small segments of lecture followed by practical application of the skills/subject matter, so our classroom training is filled with experiential exercises or real-time applications.

We link our training efforts to the business strategy and our goal is to integrate the training delivery to the right people at the right time to meet both the short-term and long-term business needs of each client- and to optimize individual or team development while at it!

Training Courses
Again, Carter & Associates, Inc. is not a “training house”, but provides training to assist its customers in achieving their objectives. Therefore, we do not have course catalogs to offer. Our Dun & Bradstreet references all received training as well as consulting support from Carter & Associates and we outperformed our industry average. Some standard courses have been developed to fill client needs. They include:

Customer Service
Team Facilitator
Team Leader
Process Improvement
Change Management
Project Management
Strategic Planning
Meaningful Performance Measurement
Learning to be the Best (Best Practices)
Benchmarking
Baldrige Assessment Training
Coaching & Mentoring Skills
Developing High Performing Teams

Approach
We believe that training is an investment in the people of an organization. Like the best of investments, training must be linked with the business strategy, planned in advance, focused on specific learning objectives and quickly applied to ensure measurable increases in efficiency and productivity. Our training consultants work closely with our business clients, subject matter experts and instructional designers to determine the training needed and the most timely and cost effective method of delivering that training.

The following steps offer some detail of the early phases of our approach:

Step 1:	The project manager links the training need to the business strategy.
Step 2:	The training designer and/or deliverer work with the customer to plan the training--who, what, when, where, and how.
Step 3:	The designer, if needed, develops customized training programs in a structured and disciplined manner.
Step 4:	The designer/design team reviews customer materials and information being created to ensure they understand their strategy, policies, and deployment models.
Step 5:	The designer then meets or talks with designated members of our customer's staff to gain buy-in to the course design and to better understand their operating environment, mission and issues, if needed.

Delivery
Our approach to on-site delivery of courses fosters “just-in-time” training. A “just-in-time” approach proves very effective by closely coupling learning with actual application. This approach means that employees receive training consistent with their needs and expertise at the right time in their job/career. Training is often delivered in a "workshop" mode in which skills training is delivered and the participants are then facilitated in applying the subject matter taught to a real time issue. On-site delivery of courses allows training to be conducted at the location of the customer's choice to ensure an effective learning environment consistent with their needs. This on-site delivery can offer substantial savings in travel costs for the client.

Instructors
Another important consideration in this process is ensuring that we provide you with the best possible instructor. All Carter & Associates, Inc. instructors have extensive subject matter expertise, excellent presentation and facilitation skills, and considerable practical experience--most are seasoned consultants as well as trainers. They have “been there” and have the stories to go along with the content they are teaching.

	The process begins when the future instructor, selected by our customer and agreed to have potential by our expert, attends the course taught by a Carter & Associates, Inc. instructor.
	Our consultant/instructor provides tutoring on the course content and coaching on presentation skills.
	The final phase is co-teaching. Each instructor-trainee will be required to teach all modules of a course under supervision and receive feedback before he/she will be certified to teach alone.