A Day In The Life Of...
LOUISE PASTERFIELD, md
Tell Us More About Your Background?
Beofre moving to Dubai, I worked in sales for an advertising agency in London. My background is predominantly in Telesales.
Tell Us More About Biz-Group
Biz Group started two decades ago when I first came to Dubai. We are a training and development company, predominantly like your magazine. We also have a team building division and a strategy division that helps small businesses.
Everything we do is about improving performance. For example, how do we improve the performance of teams, the performance of people and the performance of businesses?
What Made You Originally Set Up A Training Business In Dubai?
I originally came here two decades ago to launch a product for a client from the training industry and just fell in love with Dubai in early 1992. Dubai was entrepreneurial, optimistic and sunny. Every time I landed back in the UK it wasn't sunny and the 90's was quite a depressing time for UK business.
So, I looked at an opportunity to start a new business. I didn’t have enough funds to start an advertising agency, so I started a training company which grew from an initial idea and a passion, to what you see today, with 46 people in the company and a very passionate team helping companies improve performance.
How Do You Help Companies?
From a training and development perspective, traditionally we work with an organizationt o find out what their business objectives are, what strategic issues they want to improve and how we can provide training and development solutions tailor made for them, or alternatively implement some of the international programs we have that help get companies from A to B. We also help individuals, whether it’s leaders, front line customer service employees or the general population through professional development. We help companies improve their business results.
Take Us Through A Typical Day As CEO?
Having just read Arianna Huffington’s new book 'Thrive', what I shouldn’t be doing first thing in the morning is checking my iphone to find out what emails have come in overnight from our overseas partners, but I’m still doing that.
Then my day is pretty much mapped out intensively, sometimes I think I’m like a doctor, my PA manages to fill in appointments back to back. If im not in the office, I am in a training room first thing in the morning .
So, a typical day of mine may start with introducing a new concept, like multipliers for senior leaders, followed by running an 8 hour workshop.
But. I don’t think there really is a typical day in my diary, I could either be in the office supporting the team, I could be delivering business keynotes internationally or even delivering a training
SPONGE UK
Tell Us More About Your Background?
I am of Greek-American origin and originally came to the UK to study fine art. After completing my studies, I was in charge of several Design and Marketing companies.
I have a love of art and believe there is a strong link between good design and E-Learning – good design takes complex messages and makes them simple which works well in E-Learning.
I have now been in the UK for 30 years . I have three daughters and live with my husband and Dalmatian dog in Cornwall.
What Made You Get Into Learning & Development?
I was running our Design and Marketing Company when we won a large contract from the Learning and Skills Council which was E-Learning based. As a result of this I had to recruit some E-Learning specialists and instructional designers.
I became fascinated with the opportunity of E-Learning and I could see how training was developing and shifting towards E-Learning. So, in 2004, after completing the project we set up Sponge UK as a side line company to our Design and Marketing business.
By 2008 E-Learning was really taking off and we were getting a huge number of enquiries. At this point we had to make a decision – do we carry on with design and marketing or focus on E-Learning?
We decided to focus on Sponge UK and we made the right decision, as it was a very exciting time for E-Learning, I found working in E-Learning much more interesting and challenging.
Even today I am still excited to work on E-Learning projects and make training really engaging for people.
What Interesting Training Projects Have You Implemented at Sponge UK?
An interesting project that we recently completed was a compliance project for Tesco.
Compliance E-Learning has a bad reputation so our challenge was to take a different approach to make the training an enjoyable experience for the learners.
We came up with a campaign approach, which included a leader board and a series of 20-minute modules, which we called ‘Learning Leap’.
The real time leader board had a really cool visual idea – each participant is a parachutist and as they progress through the modules they advance from a leaper to a learner and finally a lander.
4,000 people globally took part in the campaign over a 6-week period in a number of languages.
The feedback surveys from the campaign resulted in Sponge UK receiving an E-Learning Age Award in compliance for the project.
36 | TRAINING MAGAZINE EUROPE MARCH 2015