Instructional design, learning & development, and workforce training insights from Jon Edwards — an ISD professional with 15+ years of experience.
39 articles
Learn how to create and sell online courses in 2026. A complete step-by-step guide covering topic selection, platform choice, pricing, and marketing.
Business process automation can save 25–50 hours per month—but only if you automate the right processes. This guide covers what to automate, the four automation tiers, and how to start without overcomplicating it.
Remote teams fail for one reason more than any other: nobody agreed on how to communicate. Person A thinks Slack is for emergencies. Person B uses it for everything. Person C is offline 18 hours a day. Person D expects same-day replies. Everyone i
Delegation skills for managers aren’t optional—they’re how you scale. This guide breaks down why managers avoid delegating, the five levels of delegation, and how to build trust through clarity and iteration.
When delegation goes wrong, it's rarely because the person can't do the work. It's because they didn't know what done looked like, what decisions they could make, or who to ask when they got stuck.
A good onboarding checklist isn't just a to-do list. It's a communication tool that tells a new hire what's expected, what the first week looks like, and what success means in their first 90 days.
Most managers delegate tasks. Almost none do it well.
Most business documentation never gets read.
Most remote meetings fail in the first two minutes. Either there's no agenda, or the agenda exists but no one's following it, or half the participants join five minutes late while the other half waits. What happens next is familiar: 45 minutes pas
Every manager eventually hits the same wall.
Feedback is one of the highest-leverage tools a manager has. Yet most of it fails to change behavior or improve performance. Employees hear it as criticism. Managers deliver it as frustration. Nothing changes. The person stays stuck, the manager fe
Remote onboarding is fundamentally different from bringing someone into a physical office. There's no hallway conversation, no pointing to a desk, no informal lunch-and-learn. When your new hire logs in for day one from 500 miles away, their first...
The average knowledge worker spends 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings, according to research by Atlassian. For managers, the number is higher. The cost isn't just time — it's the trust of your team. People know when a meeting could have
Learn how to write an SOP that actually gets used. This step-by-step guide covers the six-field structure, writing rules, and examples for every business process.
Most small business owners understand they need documented processes. Very few have them. The reason isn't complexity — it's a lack of a practical starting framework.
Most meetings run over. Decisions don't get made. People zone out. Everyone leaves unclear on who's doing what.
New employee turnover peaks in the first 90 days. Most organizations know this. Most still don't have a structured onboarding program that addresses it.
Most managers wait until a new hire shows up on Monday to figure out what happens next. That's a mistake. The onboarding experience happens before Day 1—and the decisions you make in those first few weeks determine whether the new hire becomes a...
Remote onboarding has three failure modes. Most companies hit all of them.
Most performance reviews fail before they start. You wait until the annual review to tell someone they're underperforming. You use vague language ("communication skills need work") that means nothing to the employee. You have no written record, so...
Managing remote employee performance is harder than most managers expect — not because remote workers perform worse, but because the feedback mechanisms that work in an office don't translate.
Most small business owners confuse activity with progress. You're busy—answering emails, fixing problems, explaining how things work to new hires, jumping between tasks. By Friday, nothing structural has changed. By next Friday, you're doing the...
Managing a team is hard. Managing a remote team feels impossible. The difference between struggling managers and good ones isn't that they try harder—it's that they get the fundamentals right.
A client relationship management system isn’t optional anymore. It’s the difference between a VA who gets rehired and one who gets replaced. Here’s the reality: US business owners are drowning in scattered client data. Emails live in Gmail. Notes hid
What We Believe The VA industry can be better. Better for clients who need reliable support. Better for VAs who deserve fair pay and professional development. Better for the businesses that connect them. That belief drives every decision we make at T
Not Everyone Starts from the Same Place Some VA candidates have years of office experience. Others are career changers. Some have strong English skills. Others are still building confidence. Some have fast internet and a quiet office. Others are work
Not All Training Is Created Equal If you are building a VA team - whether through an agency or on your own - the quality of training determines the quality of output. But how do you evaluate a training provider when every one of them claims to be "in
Trust Is the Product When a US business owner hires a VA in the Philippines, they are not just outsourcing tasks. They are trusting someone they have never met, in a different country, with access to their business systems. That trust is fragile at t
Most VAs Learn the Wrong Things There is no shortage of free courses, YouTube tutorials, and blog posts about VA skills. The problem is not access to learning. It is knowing what to learn next. Most VAs default to comfortable learning - another Canva
The Problem We Saw The VA industry has a trust problem. Business owners want to hire help. VAs want to find work. But the marketplace model keeps failing both sides. Clients hire from a profile, hope for the best, and end up cycling through VAs who l
Three Formats, One Goal When you are choosing how to train as a virtual assistant, you have three options: fully online, in-person, or a hybrid of both. Each has trade-offs. The right choice depends on your situation and your goals. Online Training F
The Bar Has Changed In 2024, a VA certification meant you completed a course about email and calendar management. In 2026, that is table stakes. What Should Be In Every VA Certification AI tool proficiency. ChatGPT for drafting, Canva AI for design,
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Most VA Courses Are Not Worth the Money There are hundreds of "become a VA" courses online. Most are glorified video playlists with a PDF certificate at the end. 1. Does It Assess or Just Teach? A certificate of completion means you showed up. A cert
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The Irony of In-Person VA Training If you are training someone to work remotely, why would you train them in person? Online VA training is not a compromise. It is the right delivery method. A virtual assistant who completes their training online has
You Cannot Build Good Training Alone The best training programs are built through structured collaboration between instructional designers and subject matter experts. At Tanta Global Academy, every course module involves SMEs who have actually done t
