One of our favourite clients is a business training centre at a local college. For the past few months, we’ve been working with their team to find out what small business owners want most from training, and how they want to receive it.

We began by doing a telephone survey. It was illuminating to see how extremely satisfied the training centre’s clients are with the great customer service they get from the staff, and a bit daunting to think that we could help grow such a well-established business even more.

We could have asked a standard question like, “Is (subject) of interest to you?” or “Do you or your employees need training in anything?” …but our work with entrepreneurs has shown us that the answer to this question is usually “No. I don’t have time.”

We ended up asking “What topics would be worth taking time off from your business to learn about?”

Small business owners told us they would indeed take time off work if they could learn: a better way to find new customers; stay ahead of their competition; and spend marketing money more effectively.

This was a great start. But these topics cover a lot of territory and the training centre wisely wanted to do further research to hone the new offerings. To do that, they decided to offer a series of free seminars to businesses in three separate regions, teaming up with partners in each area.

The seminars will be samplings of the broader courses they are considering offering at the centre. They will gauge interest in the topics via the number who enroll for the seminars, and circulate a questionnaire to gather even more information. They will also ask for permission to continue sending information to participants.

The results should provide guidance on what courses to offer and what kind of businesses will be interested in each. Further, the seminars will kindle interest in training in those companies that participate.

Sampling is a standard strategy in package goods marketing. This project by a training centre shows how the same technique can be used to develop or improve a product and build new business.

Rules are there to keep us safe, to prevent harm to other people, because society demands them and for a host of other reasons, but if you never question the rules you could be missing out.

Two recent examples come to mind. Well, actually I guess I’ve been sitting on this topic for too long. My first example has to do with income tax, so it’s not too recent! If you do your own tax using a program to do the heavy lifting for you, you’ll be familiar with the function where the program offers to optimize some entry for you, to minimize the overall family tax. If I remember rightly, it was medical expenses that I was dealing with.

The program was saying that together, the good lady and I owed $X. It offered to optimize Medical Expenses, and after doing so, we owed more than $X. Optimal? My big toe, it was optimal! For whom, the government? I suppose the rule applied by the tax program was: “the party with the lowest income should take the medical expenses”. For whatever reason, that did not apply in our case. The point of this long overly-complicated example is not that one should never trust a computer ever again, but that occasionally, doing a quick test is a good idea. The cost of doing a test was small, and the benefit was tangible. Testing, and then breaking the “rule” made sense, so I did.

The other example was building a desk. “Everybody” knows that a business person should spend their time doing the things which make money for the business, and hire someone who knows what they are doing for the other necessary things. Well, I decided to make a built-in desk in one corner of my office. By myself, with wood and such. Just about everything that could possibly go wrong (and a couple of things that I thought could not possibly go wrong) - did. The oak veneer splintered, the wheeled computer cart did not fit under the desk until I raised the whole thing by half an inch, and of course, the walls were not straight, so the desk didn’t fit into the corner properly. If I had billed for my time, I could retire (again!) on that job alone. On the other hand, it is exactly what I wanted. It fits the space in a way that only a custom build could achieve, and every day I look at it and smile. It may be a mess, but it’s a mess that I built. And probably, only I can see the faults. Well, apparently my wife can as well. Best of all, it seems that it impressed the heck out of my 18 year old son. That’s worth a lot, and I’m glad I realized that not all benefits are financial.

My advice is, find out what the rules are for your business, because they’re probably the result of a lot of experience. They make sense. Then dig until you understand what they mean. Test the rules where you can do so. (You know I’m not suggesting that you test the rule that says don’t put your fingers in the machinery, don’t you!) The better you understand the rules, the better you’ll understand your business, and you’ll know when it’s OK to break a couple, here and there.

From my desk to yours…

Recently, I had the interesting opportunity to attend the Ontario Universities Fair in Toronto, representing the University at which I am a professor. The fair is something relatively new. It certainly wasn't around when I was a high school student. It's an opportunity for senior high school students to hear the pitches of various Universities and colleges in their vicinity and thus, in theory, make a more informed choice about their career paths.

In Ontario's somewhat socialized system of publicly funded education, I'm not completely comfortable with the idea of being called upon to "sell" my institution to potential "clients". I don't view education as a product, but more as an opportunity of which every citizen should avail himself. But that's a topic for another day. Suffice it to say that I was more than willing to discuss career options with young people, and to offer the unique qualities of our institution where appropriate.

What was interesting, and not particularly surprising, was the extent to which mass media had overly influenced students' expectations of their careers.

When I was their age, the big TV shows were things like "L.A. Law", and the big movies were the various John Grisham adaptations. This continued for some years. Indeed, I recall having several despondent discussions with my fellow science grad student’s years later about how our society had become "law obsessed". The rush to law schools was fairly evident, as was the resultant glut of underemployed law grads.

In more recent years, TV has brought us the return of the sexy medical drama. Shows like "E.R.", "Gray's Anatomy" and "House" top the ratings. So most of my current students --and pretty much all of the high school students I met at the fair-- are convinced that they are destined for medical school. My interviews with the latter suggest, however, that few have any idea what life as a doctor really involves. It's informed in large part by what they see on television.

Moreover, their inability to separate medical life in the USA --which is what is portrayed on their favourite TV shows-- and the realities of life in Canada's socialized system is quite telling. It suggests a dramatic overwhelming of Canadian identity, at least with respect to expectations of lifestyles pertaining