Posted by
Barry Siskind
UFI’s Community Manager

On March 6 and 7 UFI will be holding its Open Seminar in Asia. The seminar will be held in Bangalore, India. The theme this year is, “Exhibitions: A puzzle with Changing Pieces. The line up of speakers will be discussing many thought-provoking topics from trends to issues around health and safety.

Stanley Chu, founder and Chairman of Hong Kong based Asdale Exhibitions will be sharing with the audience the ins and outs of Asdale’s UFI Award Winning In-House Education Program. Asdale developed a program to help its team deal effectively with change. With that in mind I reached Stanley in his office and asked him a few questions to give our followers a taste of what he will be presenting.

Barry:

Will you outline some of the highlights of Adsales’s in-house education program?

Stanley:

We divided our program into three steps: before, during and after the In-house Education Program:-
Before the Program:-
Here we invited Professor Lau Pui King, of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to speak about the macro-economic environment to our team. Then we hired a consultant to help our team understand the challenges they face and finally I recommended that each member read Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson.
During the Program:-
We energized our team with games, group discussions, case studies and leisure time activities to facilitate their interactions.
After the Program:-
Each team developed their own “Change program,” and shared it with other teams.

Barry:

What success have you had with this program?

Stanley:

Responses from the participants were very positive and from the post-program evaluation, they all agree that the objectives of the program were met. The cross department group discussion was particularly helpful because many creative ideas could be brainstormed from different perspectives. I believe that our company as a whole is now more confident in dealing with changes. More creative ideas were generated to react to market changes and the skills learned were seen to be applied in the working teams.

Barry:

What were some of the challenges you overcame when you implemented it?
Stanley:

The main challenge for organizing the program was the time constraint. The content is rich and topic coverage is wide. Appropriate time allocation is a big challenge in order to keep a good balance and make the program both fruitful and enjoyable. Thanks to the efforts of all the participants and the excellent speaker and trainer it all worked out.

To see the entire agenda for this UFI Open Seminar in Asia click here: www.ufi.org/bangalore2014

If your firm has developed an education initiative you should consider entering this year’s competition. You can find the detail by going to www.ufi.org and opening the activities menu. The deadline is Jan.31.