The only multi-disciplinary coaching programme for all technologists

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Focus on the skills that employers look for

Advance your career and focus on those competencies that employers look for when interviewing - Relationships, Value, Strategy, Portfolio and Organisational Change.

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Transition to a new role

Practice the techniques that make you an indispensable contributor in roles such as Customer Success Manager, Service Manager, Product Manager, Account Manager, Business Partner, Business Analyst and Project Manager

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Gain recognition with our SDBP® Foundation certificate

Discuss previous and current work challenges live with the coach. Take the online exams to demonstrate your expertise in carefully crafted real-life scenarios. Share your experience in online forums. 

Brought to you by Baxter Thompson Associates

"My objective is to help you be successful in your career. I can do this best by sharing my corporate enterprise experience and the lessons I have learnt in working across teams and planning for the future. These courses and exams represent what I needed to know at the start of my career. You don't have to wait 20 years to find out. You can change now and start with our SDBP® Foundation Coaching Programme. I wish you every success with your future!"

Jon Baxter, Founder and Director Digital Products - Strategic Partnering.

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Courses needed to gain the SDBP® Foundation certificate

  • Earn respect
  • Deal with politics
  • Get your voice heard
  • Understand the real agenda
  •  Plan your influence and persuasion activity

  • Focus on customers
  • Identify value (outcome vs output)
  • Measure Value
  • Troubleshoot poor performance
  • Deliver improvement

  • Define a strategy
  • Communicate a strategy
  •  Populate ideas on your roadmap with innovation tools
  • Build a roadmap
  • Discuss the impact of change with capability maps

Why be a passenger when you can be the driver?

These three courses are your personal development plan for the year. If you demonstrate the skills that the SDBP® Foundation certificate represents, then you can:

  • Gain agreement on challenges, projects, and roles with colleagues and peers so you can make the biggest impact possible in your organisation.

  • Become a credible authority who makes things happen in your organisation.

  • Identify the most valuable activities in your organisation and start achieving your goals easier and quicker.

  • Help executives understand what technology can do for their organisations in a meaningful and insightful way.

These three courses that make up the SDBP® Foundation certificate lay the foundation for your career advancement. This is your opportunity to acquire new skills, boost your chances of promotion and salary increase, and have more options on the job market.

And the best part is, all it takes is 1-2 hours a week to complete each course over four months. 

              How to Navigate Office Politics and Develop Relationships That Allow YOU to Make the Biggest Impact!

              Your ability to be respected by your colleagues and stakeholders, influence and get them to take onboard your ideas, and manage them so you can work together effectively is the defining factor in achieving your goals. An inability to do this will result in your work being undervalued, a hostile working environment, and an unfulfilling career.
              The course will ensure you can cultivate and manage relationships so you can make the biggest impact possible and grow your organisation and career. Here’s what you will discover in the course:

              • How to define your value proposition in the organisation so you can position yourself as a key player.

              • 4 questions you must ask yourself to uncover your value proposition.

              • The tools and techniques, approaches, behaviours, and traits you need to influence people.

              • How to find out if people in your company support or resist your message.

              • How to be and come across authentic and credible to your co-workers.

              • How to lead the political discussion instead of being subject to it.

              • How to avoid making the typical mistakes which instantly break rapport.

              • A template to help you elicit information like facts, emotions, opinions, values, how they feel.

              • How to engage your colleagues in ways which make them respond positively and give you key information.

              • How to demonstrate empathy and create more engagement in your relationships with colleagues and people in senior positions.

              • How to identify people’s pain points so you can offer the right solutions.

              • The 3 pillars of influence you need to communicate with people to make them take action.

              • How to get people excited about your ideas so then want to implement them.

              • How to persuade by understanding the needs of your audience and matching your communications approach.

              • How to adapt the words you use to influence different personality types.

              • How to get people to commit to your ideas and make faster progress.

              • A 7-step formula about how to deal with difficult people and difficult conversations.

              • How to stop hidden assumptions derailing your ability to influence.

              • How to motivate people who are disinterested.

              • How to instill trust in people so they reveal their thinking and become receptive to our ideas.

              • How to go from not being listened to to being sought out for your expertise and advice.

              • 4 areas you must get alignment in for your value proposition to be a success.

              • 2 proven ways to manage relationships most effectively.

              • How to manage customer expectations so you can avoid misunderstandings and nurture long term relationships.

              • How to develop a long-term strategy to achieve the outcome of your value proposition.

              Relationships are the key to your career success!

              Did you know?....

              A study showed that those Linkedin candidates job profile’s who were getting hired at the fastest rate had the soft skill persuasion as the second highest sought after skill listed on their profile.

              https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/trends-and-research/2020/most-in-demand-hard-and-soft-skills

              Demonstrate Credibility by Not Just Measuring Progress but MAKING Progress to Gain a Seat at the Decision Maker's Table!

              Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in Groundhog day where you face the same problems over and over? Do you try your best yet still get criticised for late delivery or for a failing service?
              Unless you are contributing to the activities that create the most value you’re going to be distracted by bureaucracy and quite often become part of the problem rather than part of the solution. This  causes friction between different departments as flow of information, delivery of projects and services become constrained, stuck in a queue or waiting approval.
              Sometimes the ONLY way to get something done is to bypass the process or system that actually implemented to make the organisation more effective! This is where Value Management comes into play.

              Value Management is the process that you and your colleagues take to make sure you understand what the goal is, identify where the obstacles are that prevent your team from reaching it, figuring out a plan and making it happen. - Not just measuring progress, but MAKING progress!

              This way you you can start to unblock the choke-points, straighten the kinks in the process, remove unnecessary steps and start to see improvements in the way services, products and projects are delivered. This also means departments can cooperate better and be more likely to deliver projects on time and with more regular consistent ‘flow’. 
              Having set expectations in Relationship Management, Value Management effectively closes the gap in expectations between provider and customer. This is why Value Management builds you a reputation of excellence as it shows stakeholders you can get them results. They see you as someone who gets things done and makes an impact which makes them take notice of the value you add to the organisation.
              Here’s what you will discover in the Value Management course:

              • How to gain clarity on what your goals are and how they relate to the customer.

              • How to identify and focus on activities which add the most value to the the customer and organisation.

              • How to define value and measure your progress towards your goals

              • How to avoid wasting time treating the symptoms that cause you to work overtime and get to the root cause of the issue.

              • How to improve the way you and your team work in ANY activity.

              • The simple secrets that can free up the time for you to focus on more strategic activities.

              • How to find the rationale to say no to low value activities.

              • How to overcome bureaucracy and make your team and organisation more effective.

              Lay the foundations and plan for the future. Inspire Change Through Understanding Trends and Applying Them to your Organisation!

              How would you like to help decision-makers understand what technology can do for them in the next three to five years? How would you do that?
              This is why you first need to understand what the company is about, the service it provides its customers, its values, how it operates, and what its principles are to help focus on what technology applications add value or not.Then you can come up with ideas and give decision-makers options on what will give them a competitive advantage.
              Seeking alignment and direction with your business peers on the opportunity that Technology can bring means a fundamental shift in mindset and approach. This is why in my strategy management course you will discover:

              • How to research what new kinds of competition is on the horizon.

              • How to consider the technology opportunities available to your organisation

              • How to understand the application of that technology to your company context.

              • How to inspire colleagues with new ideas so you can prepare for change and be one step ahead of your competitors.

              • How to clearly show what your colleagues are trying to achieve and how through their teams.

              • How to work out whether there is duplication of effort, gaps in key strategic areas and opportunities to leverage existing assets.

              • How to check whether different teams are aligned and working towards the same big strategic themes.

              • How to provide a timeline for the major assets that plug the gap in skills, processes and technology.

              • How to communicate your ideas to everyone in the organisation so they can understand how their role fits in with the overall strategy.

                Did you know?...

                “Only 23% of executive level stakeholders believe their CIO has developed an IT strategy that is effectively aligned with their corporate strategy and desired capabilities”

                Source: Info-Tech’s CIO-CXO Alignment Program survey results 2015

              What course delegates say....

              Company team

              Osman Ismail, Director, Business Partnership and Digital Transformation

              "Jon's expertise, experience and passion is distilled into this course. It really is well structured offering important insights into the often neglected domain of strategic business partnering. I learnt new thinking, took away templates and enjoyed the delivery of the course as well as the practice exercises with my fellow attendees."

              Company team

              Thierry Ackermann, Interim CTO, CIO and Transformation Leader

              I've participated in all of Jon's 5 courses. They are fantastically accessible and immediately applicable. You'll walk away encouraged that these tried and tested techniques can give you the confidence to make the difference in your day to day work. Thoroughly recommended!

              Company team

              Diksha Vyas, IT Business Partner 

              "Jon shares his experience throughout this intensive course and gave fantastic insight into how we work in organisations - it has inspired an exciting to-do list! I can't recommend the course enough - it gets 10 out of 10!"

              Company team

              Sarah Fogg, Head of IT BRM, Royal Hollaway University

              "Our stakeholders have started to trust us more based on better expectation management and small incremental improvements through the application of principles and approaches taught on the workshops by Baxter Thompson Associates. Fantastic insight!"

              6 Nationwide Forums @ 95 Delegates
              20 Public Workshops
              60 European Corporate Clients
              300 Course Attendees
              10 Partners

              Become part of our growing network!

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