I learn therefore I am
Professional training for real people
About ‘I learn therefore I am’
My name is Mark Raven and I’m the chief executive of academy. I run the company with my two partners, Michael Wolf and Neil Bowman, and we are very hands-on. We’ve built from two part-time employees in 1999 to 25 full-time employees in 2010 and we train 2,200 people a year in everything from customer service through to executive leadership.
I feel lucky to do what I do for a living. Running a training company means I am indirectly helping hundreds of people a year; as they update or learn skills, they develop professionally and personally. For me, that’s exciting stuff and certainly what gets me to my desk at eight every morning. Well, that and the coffee.
Naturally enough I spend a reasonable amount of time thinking about learning. I believe in learning. I learn at work and I learn in my spare time too (as I head towards the end of what’s been dubbed by my family as ‘the world’s longest MBA’).
So the purpose of this blog is to pose questions about learning and development, management training, leadership training, call centre training, customer service training, sales training, talent management and so on… to put out the occasional opinion, share interesting ideas, to learn from my readers and to have fun – something we at academy think all learning has to include. While I will mostly cover management training issues and trends, there will be the occasional more general topic. Please feel free to suggest any topic you’d like to explore.
darren gersbach says:
what your doing sounds good would be keen to hear more about training for sales people.
even happier to hear you had a coffee at the desk at eight.
keep the dream alive!!
May 28th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Mark Raven says:
Cheers Darren – and to you also!
July 8th, 2010 at 8:35 am