Last week was Learning at Work Week, and a small group of us worked together to plan, test and deliver our offers. We were a mixture of employed and self-employed people, all taking very different approaches, and it was enlightening to hear what everyone else was doing. It very much helped to hone our thinking and expose us to new ideas.

Today, we met to review how things had gone and reflect on our own learning from the experience: what worked well, what didn’t work so well, what was the most useful lesson and how could we improve in the future.

Here are just 10 lessons learned…

1. Get a review – from people who will be honest. Is it useful, is it relevant, is it pitched right, are you giving too much or not enough?
   
2. Test and test again – check all the tech from multiple machines and devices!
   
3. Don’t sweat what’s out of your control – accept that some people won’t be able to access things in the way you’d like them to. Just do what you can to minimize this.
   
4. Start earlier – begin publicizing your events/opportunities as soon as you start thinking about them NOT when you’ve got them all set up. People like lots of notice and they need to hear about things more than once.
   
5. Manage stakeholders – actively engage them and make sure they see their needs being reflected in any offerings – this in turn increases take-up.
   
6. Follow the interests of people – if people value IT short-cuts, give them IT short-cuts! Resistance will be nil and it’s a great way to build your reputation and relationships.
   
7. Make it easy – downloads and resources get greater response than challenges and live sessions.
   
8. Make sure your offers and freebies are GOOD – high quality freebies (or genuine special offers) will encourage people to buy and/or keep the things you offer, even if they aren’t relevant right now. They act as ‘sleeper’ agents as they may be picked up in 6 months time and stimulate a request.
   
9. Monitor responses – measure who’s engaged with what and what resources/sessions have been most useful. This allows you to evaluate success, refine your offerings and continuously improve.
   
10. Follow-up! – People have had their appetite whetted, so what now? Show them how they can continue on their learning journey and keep the momentum going.