Fifteen Minutes. One Thing. Done Properly.

The IAM Practice Library

a growing library of Practice Library lessons of fifteen to twenty minutes — 60 at each of the five membership grades — each teaching a single thing and ending with you doing it in your own work.

Fifteen Minutes. One Thing. Done Properly.

The IAM Practice Library

A working day rarely contains a spare hour. It often contains a spare fifteen minutes. The Practice Library is a growing library of Practice Library lessons of fifteen to twenty minutes — 60 at each of the five membership grades. Each one teaches a single thing and ends with the learner doing that thing in their own work. Not reading about it. Doing it.

The four rules every lesson is held to

Rule One

One learning point

A lesson teaches one thing the learner can name at the end, in a sentence they could repeat to a colleague. Where a subject needs three things, it is three lessons.

Rule Two

It ends in an action, not a summary

The teaching exists to make the action possible. If the learner closes the lesson without having done something, the lesson failed. Every action names a substitute for organisations that lack what the action assumes.

Rule Three

The CPD award is the real length

Never rounded up. Four fifteen-minute lessons are one hour, and the Institute will not pretend otherwise.

Rule Four

It works anywhere

Written to work unchanged in a nine-person charity and a listed group — in the public, private, third, or education sectors.

How the lessons at each grade are organised

Part	Series	Lessons	What it covers
Part A — Professional Core	7	28	One series for each Competency Domain of the IAM Professional Standards — the domain coverage your grade is assessed against.
Part B — Role Practice	4	16	One series per Role Mastery family: Administration and Office; Executive and Private Office; Governance and Information; Projects, Operations and Change.
Part C — Professional Behaviours	4	16	Reliability, working with others, integrity (Ethics-classified throughout), and responsibility (Sustainability-classified throughout).

A series is four lessons and about an hour. Every lesson stands alone, so you may take a whole series in one sitting or a single lesson on its own — and every completion records the lesson code, Competency Domain, Career Stage, CPD classification, and your reflective line straight to your CPD record.

The five libraries, grade by grade

Grade	Written for	Lessons	CPD hours	Ethics hours
Affiliate	Anyone doing administrative work, however they arrived at it	60	16.42	3.25
AInstAM	Administrators and coordinators applying professional method	60	18.00	3.58
MInstAM	Managers accountable for how work is organised	60	19.75	4.00
FInstAM	Heads of function who lead other managers	60	20.00	4.00
SFInstAM	Leaders directing an estate across an organisation or group	60	20.00	4.00

The grade is a calibration, not a gate. A member may take a lesson from any library. Taking one from the grade above is an inexpensive way to discover whether the work of that grade is work you want; one from the grade below is a reasonable way to check a foundation you were never formally taught.

Built to meet your whole CPD requirement

What is asked for	The minimum	What the library holds
Total CPD	30 hours	16.42 to 20.00 hours at each grade
Structured CPD	15 hours	All of it — every lesson is Structured
Ethics-classified	3 hours	At least 3.25 hours at every grade
Sustainability-classified	2 hours (3 from 2028)	At least 3.08 hours at every grade
Reflective practice record	One a year	A reflective line closes every lesson

Delivery and accessibility

Online and self-paced: a lesson runs in a browser or on a phone, completed in one sitting, recorded to your CPD log on completion
Facilitated team sessions: a series of four fills a one-hour team slot, with the action carried out together
In-house delivery: series may be licensed for delivery inside an organisation using its own examples
Full captions and transcripts on every video; text alternatives for every image and interactive element
Everything operable by keyboard alone; no meaning carried by colour alone; nothing relies on hover
No forced waiting, no timed gates, no streak language — leave and resume where you reached

What it is not. The Practice Library is not a qualification, not an assessment, and not coverage of a domain — four lessons give a member four defensible entries in it. Admission to the assessed grades is governed by the IAM Membership Regulation. Where a member needs depth or an assessed outcome, the Professional Courses provide it — the two are designed to be used together.

How each grade library is built

Four parts, built for the way you work

Part	Series	Lessons	Coverage
Part A · Professional Core	Series in each of the seven Competency Domains: foundational practice at that grade, then extended or governing practice.
Part B · Role Practice	One series for each of the four role families: office and facilities administration; executive and private office support; governance, records and information; and project, programme and change delivery.
Part C · Professional Behaviours	Reliability and accountability; collaboration and professional relationships; integrity and ethical conduct; responsible and sustainable practice.
Part D · International and Regional Practice	Practice that arises from working across countries, cultures, calendars, languages, currencies, and administrative traditions.

The parts are constant across all five grades; what changes between grades is the scope of the case and the seniority of the judgement. Every lesson is Structured CPD, and each grade library exceeds the annual CPD minima from its own lessons. The catalogue grows through the year: new resources are added and existing ones updated.

What is in a lesson

Fifteen minutes, one learning point, one action

Part	What happens
1. The hook	Thirty to sixty seconds of video: the situation, and why it is worth fifteen minutes.
2. The learning point	The single point of the lesson, stated plainly.
3. The method	How it is done, the reason for it, and the exception.
4. A worked case	One short case in a realistic organisation, including the moment at which it nearly goes wrong.
5. Paired behaviours	Effective and ineffective behaviour set side by side, both concrete.
6. One interactive element	Built in full, with feedback on every option, not only the correct one.
7. A short check	Three questions, four in a twenty-minute lesson. For learning, not scoring; there is no pass mark.
8. The action	One thing you do in your own work before the week is out.

Included in your membership. The Library is provided to every member at every grade inside the IAM Portal, with no charge for any lesson, series, or grade library. Every grade library is open to you; your own grade is shown first, and lessons can be taken in any order.

Start with one lesson

Browse all a growing library of Practice Library lessons and enrol through the IAM Portal, or request the five grade catalogues (IAM-PRL-CAT-2026-001 to -005).

Browse All Lessons on the Portal Catalogues on the IAM Portal All Courses & Learning