Every year my department (Internal Audit) at work (HCA) has what is called September Seminar. Since this is my first year with the company, this is my first time to experience seminar. September Seminar is not like any seminar you would expect to attend for departmental training at a Fortune 500 corporation. The days are pretty normal. You get up and go to hear some various speakers on various topics. The nights have planned events, which is where things start to get a little weird. Having events really isn’t strange, but the events they selected seemed a bit strange to me…most were cool, but strange.

The theme of our Seminar was Internal Audit goes prime time (as in TV). Our notebook with meeting notes and agendas was cleverly named IA Guide. During daytime viewing there were game shows and interview segments between the serious speakers. For example, the Match Game and the Price is Right. The nightly activities included a cookout, outdoor laser tag, a local (as in the middle of nowhere, even for me who is from small-town TN) restaurant/club hangout (with a hypnotist special event after supper diner), and a boat ride with dinner by the pool afterwards. As you can see, some of these events aren’t what you would expect an Internal Audit group to have scheduled for a department wide seminar.

On a more serious note, the seminar did provide plenty of hours of continuing profession education. Some of the topics included: Eastern Group Operations, From Internal Audit to Operations, Quality Update, E&Y (the company’s external auditors) Update, creativity…How to use it and why it matters, dealing with ethical challenges in your career, accounting for the largest leveraged buy-out ever, the challenge of change, professional business savvy, and Internal Audit update.

What lessons can we as entrepreneurs learn from these seemingly strange events offered by one of the best Internal Audit departments in the world? A little fun goes a long way in making serious professional training more interesting. The segment breaks between speakers offered a nice refresher that allowed the employees to be prepared to hear the next speaker. So, in the future when you make it big as an entrepreneur remember to offer your employees a chance to have fun while providing continuing education.

I plan on uploading some more pictures as soon as I determine how I’m going to manage all my images (I recently reached my 200 limit with my non-pro Flickr account. I can continue uploading new pictures, but the oldest ones will be replaced to maintain the 200 max rule. Right now, I’m not sure I want to lose my old pics because I’ve linked to many of them.)