In this training we’re going to cover the GAIN Framework. You will learn our simple method which will refine your problem solving ability (in less than 10 minutes!) 

The world is ever-evolving and it’s important as individuals to adapt, learn and grow to benefit not only our own productivity and skill set but to allow us to support others to grow along the way. 

As a Local Council Clerk you can sometimes find that you need to be ‘Jack of All Trades’.

One minute you could be dealing with a ‘dog poo disaster’ within your community…

The next you are refereeing a tricky Council meeting…

Followed by being a tech guru and updating the meeting minutes on your WCAG2.1AA compliant website...

…lets not even mention COVID risk assessments!! 

Implementing this Framework will overhaul your cognitive thinking and help you become ‘master of all’. 

Once you know exactly where to look to solve a problem, the answer is easy to find.

Get ready to unlock a whole new world of learning and thinking, once you have the foundations in place you can skyrocket to success!

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During this session Tim reveals his ultimate problem solving tool, the GAIN framework:

Google

Ask

Invest 

Never Stop Learning

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Key Take-aways

Promise: The ability to quickly pinpoint the solution to ANY problem

G Google, become the guru of Google...by using Google...to learn how to use Google..

A Ask, Google knows alot, but not everything! However, the internet community will be able to help!

I Invest In yourself, you are your most valuable asset

N Never Stop Learning, whoever said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks was wrong! 

Additional resources

Join our Facebook group for Clerks (please note, the group is now known as Council Clerks’ Mastermind)
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Video Transcript

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Hi everybody, it’s Tim O’Shea from Scribe accounts and today we are looking at using the GAIN Framework for problem solving. There is no reason why anyone cannot get better at problem solving using this GAIN Framework. It’s really simple, this video is going to last 7 or 8 minutes but by the end of it you will understand how to problem solve quicker by doing stuff yourself!

So, this is the GAIN Framework, so we have a problem, something isn’t right and the first part of it is G which is Google, this drives the guys in the Scribe Team mad when the first join because someone asks me “How do you do this Tim” I turn round straight away and say “Have you Googled it?” and over time they stop asking as they will find the answer on Google and Google has so many things in it and so many ways of helping but, there is a way of using Google really effectively and a way of using Google less effectively, so, a few simple tricks means you can use Google much much better! Let’s go onto Google…

So, I am trying to get better at Google, so how do i do that? I am going to Google “How to get better at Google” and straight away it’s giving me tips, using quotes, using hyphens, colon, different search terms so actually straight away when you have a problem first thing, type it in Google! The more you do it you will learn different phrases ”How to get better at” or “How do I do” such and such” or “What’s the best way of doing my problem” and then you will find the solution. 

Another way to use Google is to search other peoples websites using it, so for example if we go on the NALC website and I am looking for a risk assessment and I know I need to get my risk assessments done and I know the information is on here, so I search within NALC and the results I am going to get here are not that helpful because, the internal searches are nowhere near as good as Google. However, if I copy this search term, I am going to use search operator called site:nalc.gov.uk and then I put my search term in. The site operator is telling Google only to look within the NALC website and use risk assessments and straight away you can see here the results are correct as Google is the best! So, if you know something is on a certain website but you can’t find it then use site operator.  The format is site:nalc.gov.uk and then space and you put your search term. Other things you can do with the search term is you can add it in quotes, it then searches for that string together so it will find “search term” not “search something else term.” I will show you an example on that one. If I head back to Google and put in some quotes, COVID, we can see it’s now searching with the quotes it’s looking for risk assessment covid as one quote so we get a different result. So, with the site operator it’s really interesting for example here, say you come to year end and you are looking at year end problems, here is an example of our own website, site:scribeaccounts.com year end and straight away you can see all this great information here for year end. So, getting good at Google is the first part and you can get much better at Google, the more you use it the better you get at it. So when you think of a problem, straight away, get into Google, straight away. And if you keep doing that you will get better and better.

The next part of it is ask, and you will think I can’t keep asking the same people, however, we have these things called groups on Facebook and this is one that we have run as Scribe for the Community called the Local Council Clerks Community you can join our Facebook group and you can see there is all this conversation going on, so if I actually do the same and search within the group I can search risk assessments again and then I can find all the posts that have been talking about it and here we go. There are comments and things have already been asked so you can actually search within the group and get the answers you are looking for straight away without having to ask questions. But, if you are in the community you can put a post on if you can’t find the information, add a new post and the rest of the Clerks will come in and help and here at Scribe we will help too, so ask! This is one community but you will find other communities on Facebook similar and you will find communities for Clerks also on Linkedin so you can reach out to that. Ask in the right place, Facebook groups and Linkedin groups, join those and get involved.

So, the next part. I. This is to invest in yourself, what does that mean? That means that you say to yourself right, I am going to get better at problem solving, I am going to go to this GAIN Framework and every time you have a problem you will get better and better at it and there is no reason why you wouldn't get better.

The last part is never stop learning. These two together the I and the N how does that work, well… let's do a small model here. You may think your problem solving skill is here, someone else might be here, this is your skill level, and this is time. So, you’ve got a decision, you can stay the same or you can get better and you can get better and better and better etc if you decide you are going to keep getting better, the incremental change over time will be fantastic. Whilst someone else here who might be better at problem solving today, they don’t improve so they stay where they are at and it’s not long before it crosses over and you are better! The way you do that is you invest in yourself and never stop learning and you keep getting back into Google and asking and getting better at it! Your problem solving skills will go up and up!

So, don't forget next time you have a problem use the GAIN Framework, Google, use the search operators, search places you know will have the answer, search the site on NALC and other government websites and organisations. Search on scribeaccounts.com using the site operator and find things like year end and anything else. Get better at searching, if not, ask! Ask for help and join the Facebook groups and the Linkedin groups that are around. Then invest in yourself, take time to learn and if you never stop learning then guess what, you will end up here and your problem solving skills will be the best and, you are getting better!

I hope that was helpful! Any questions please let me know!