Towards Total Training
When e-learning first became a real option for training and development, it was heralded as the answer to everything. One of my then clients closed its management and customer service training department because everything could be covered via programmes in the organisation’s intranet. Of course this was at best an ambitious commitment to technology but in reality it was hopelessly misguided. After trying to convince them to reverse their decision, this organisation – along with many, many others, finally wiped the technological blindness from their eyes and agreed that e-learning couldn’t do everything and would need supplementing with other types of training.
Blended learning was born. Those wedded to the classroom and slightly scared of anything to do with computers immediately hailed it as the death of e-learning and the final vindication for their rubbishing of the medium up to that point. Some e-learning companies immediately re-branded themselves as blended learning companies – despite the fact that they had no experience of training outside computer programmes. In fact, they had no experience of learning and development before someone decided that e-learning would be ‘the killer app’ (as it was described in Wired magazine in 1999). It took some time for trainers and development professionals to fully get on board with the whole blended thing, but as e-learning became more business as usual, even the technophobe trainers put down their squeezy stress balls and embraced the new medium as one of the tools available.
And yet this picture of a new orthodoxy in the deployment of technology leaves me a little cold. Why am I not excited by the e-learning for initial knowledge learning – tracked so only those who have completed can go on the next stage – face to face classroom workshop for introducing skills and discussion piece and on the job projects or activities to reinforce and embed the learning in the real world?
Mostly, because it doesn’t happen. Organisations are loathe to exclude those booked on workshops because they haven’t completed the knowledge components, so have to recap that piece on the first hour of the workshop. By so doing, they waste the best brain time of most of the group and annoy the hell out of the people who did actually do the pre-work. Then the course itself is still delivered by trainers who feel most comfortable when they’re doing the talking. The ‘sage on the stage’ is an addictive role to play. What skills practice sessions that have been planned get moved into the afternoon – probably late afternoon. And when the discussion runs over or the presentation takes a wee bit longer, these practice opportunities are squeezed, reduced to a quick role play, rapidly reviewed with little time for proper feedback before everyone runs for the train.
Finally the work-based tasks. If the line manager discusses the outcome of the course with the person he or she sent on the programme you’re doing well. If they check what they need to do next, you have a new best friend. If they actually support the work based task and review it with the individual team member, marry them immediately. Don’t worry, your chances of polygamy are nil because you’ll never find another one!
So what do we do about this disappointing state of affairs?
I may be swimming against the tide here but rather than requiring learners and their managers to do less, I want them to do more. But in making these additional demands, I recognise that we need to make it easy for people to do this.
Total Training relies on four factors being in place.
Factor 1: Training needs analysis. Why is this person doing the training programme? Because they have to, rarely works. The rationale for them putting in the required effort needs to be clearly articulated in a manner which appeals directly to them. There should be pain removed and opportunity realised. Both the carrot of being able to do more, gain promotion or other reward or simply be more effective and the stick of dire consequences if they don’t. Of course, if we need the learner to be supported by their line manager (and we do) then we need to include carrots and sticks for the manager too.
If the Training Needs Analysis merely responds to a competence framework (i.e. plugs competence gaps) then its success as a carrot or a stick will depend wholly on whether the competence framework is owned by the team member and the team leader. Chances are it isn’t. Whether we like it or not, competence frameworks are viewed by those outside HR as being of marginal relevance to the real work of getting things done. Better to ensure that the review which identifies the need for new skills is based on a real business need and expressed in terms of being able to do things which are integral to the current role or desired future role.
For example, I was working recently with groups of sales people in the motor trade. To gain the necessary buy in to the programme I needed to express the outcomes in terms of unit sales, profitability per unit and increased cross selling of finance and insurance products. These are things which this group are measured on and gain rewards for.
Sales teams are relatively easy because of the close association between results and reward. Outside sales it’s more difficult but not impossible. The issue is looking for clear performance measures. If you have customer service teams, do you gather information from customer satisfaction surveys and set targets for that feedback? If you’re looking at marketing teams, do you evaluate response rates to each campaign? If you’re dealing with factory workers, do you gather information about production machine usage, productivity efficiency, waste levels, etc? For administrators do you set targets for the costs and time required to process invoices, customer records, or respond to information requests? The chances are you do and the importance of metrics which the organisation already uses cannot be under estimated. The job of L&D teams is to help the organisation do the things it does better. If you can’t link your programme to the measures of success already in place in the organisation, you need to think again.
Factor 2: Pre-work. Having defined why the programme is important, you need to activate the learner’s current knowledge and bring everyone to the same place so that they can contribute to equally to the debates, discussions and exercises in the face to face programme. Obviously, by using an e-learning programme for the pre-work, you can ensure that the material can be tracked.  Having recorded who’s done what online, you can ensure those that haven’t completed pre-work don’t progress to the next stage.
However, as I’ve already said, this move seems somewhat draconian and so organisations are reluctant to take this step. For external training providers, it becomes even more difficult to exclude people. Furthermore, the benefits of involvement that we have outlined in Factor one, become a little meaningless when we introduce an element of compulsion which seems contrary to the idea of selling the programme’s importance.
So I advocate thinking a little more laterally about pre-work. First of all, think about the medium used. With content management systems available, posting information on to an online resource, and being able to set up some form of monitoring of who is accessing what, is relatively simple. OK, not tracking and not necessarily fully functioning e-learning – but does that matter. Surely, if we’ve done our homework on proving the relevance of the course, helping people accessing information which is ‘fit for purpose’ may be enough.
These resources, therefore, may be a traditional online course (but keep these short if you want people to use them) but it may also be a You Tube style video, a podcast to be downloaded and listened to on the move. It may also be a document – perhaps a pdf or word document. Don’t think that this rules out any kind of personalisation or drill down which you may have usually associated with an online programme. By encouraging users to read on screen (iPads and similar make this much more practical and portable) and by embedding links into the document, you are able to enable your learners to click on a simple link and explore any of the other materials you may want to make available – from hints and tips delivered using mini e-learning modules, to websites, videos, podcasts or further documents.
The mini-e-learning idea is an interesting one. By mini, I mean 3, 4 or 5 minutes maximum – just two or three screens. Wherever you’re introducing a new concept or some unfamiliar vocabulary, perhaps include a little help icon which, when clicked, launches a short module. These can be as simple as you like – perhaps created using an authoring tool and capable of being re-used in many different settings. Think of each of these resources – whatever the medium – as a store cupboard of communications, training and information.  By creating them as simply as possible, you will be able to tailor them to the requirements from your TNA without needing to take ages to create the programme (so it’s out of date before it goes live) nor spend a massive budget.
Factor 3: The workshop. (Or more properly, workshops) Why do you bring people together? Or give them more information? Is that really the best use of everyone’s time, not to mention travel expenses, accommodation, meals, tea and coffee? The purpose of the workshop within the total training model is to do things which can only been done when there is a group of people with a common aim, gathered in one location.
You can think of workshop activity as a continuum. At one end of the spectrum you have the discussion. A facilitator or workshop leader throwing out questions, checking understanding and exploring the implications of the information introduced in the pre-work. These discussions may be Q&A sessions where the questioners are the learners and the effective facilitator activates the knowledge of the group to respond before reinforcing their answers or extending/correcting the perceptions of the participants.
Notice the word participant. By referring to learners as delegates I think you create a mindset which is they are there to be informed on behalf of their teams. As participants they need something to participate in. The session is instantly based on a two way process.
Beyond the discussion you have activities and exercises. These may be groups working together to work out responses to questions and present back their findings, maybe undertaking research within the session and debating the issues between them in small syndicates and again in plenary sessions.
The other end of the spectrum is the simulation activity. These may be case studies or replications of processes and activities which mirror those back in the workplace. The benefit of course is the opportunity to work collectively – apply more brains to a situation – as well as the chance to fail in a supportive environment or to take risks in a safe space. I’ve worked with groups on designing new products, developing customer communications and planning new organisational structures.
One form of much derided simulation is the role play. Of course, playing out a customer service scenario with Fiona from accounts will always be a little stilted, success determined by the amateur dramatic skills, or lack thereof, of those taking part. If realism is important, then take the opportunity to work with professional role players. With a good character brief and genuine understanding of the required behaviours, actors can transform the dreaded role play into a truly life changing experience. When I trained health professionals about how to explain mistakes to patients and patients’ relatives, the use of exceptional actors who were sensitive to the needs of the learners in potentially very traumatic experiences but were strong enough to really put people on the spot in these interactions was incredible. Of course, when dealing with how we behave – how we speak, interact, deal with difficult situations – the facilitator needs to ensure time to debrief properly. This is potentially pretty personal stuff and needs handling with extreme sensitivity. What is needs is time and opportunity to debrief individually where necessary. It needs a clear set of ground rules, agreed in advance. What it doesn’t need is squeezing into the last half hour of the day.
So we’ve created a series of experiences which have taken people from one level of understanding to an advanced level of understanding and have helped them to think differently about what they read, watched and listened to in the pre-work.
Hang on. Haven’t we missed something? What about the presentations? Well except that they help with the discussions and debates at the early end of our continuum, then don’t do it. If it requires someone to stand up and talk for an hour, it should have gone in the pre-work. Of course, facilitators with experience can and should share these experiences. Stories from the front line are powerful learning opportunities and should be preserved, but these should occur naturally from the discussions and from the Q&A sessions. The story telling is actually more powerful with less reliance on PowerPoint. Let’s be honest most people use PowerPoint really badly. If I have to sit through another so-called expert reading out a series of screens – each with lots of text and diagrams you can’t really see, I won’t be responsible for my actions.
In fact why not ban PowerPoint altogether? If you do need to use it, keep slides to a minimum and reduce the text to a sentence at most. A picture is worth a thousand words as the old song has it. Use the pictures. Recently, I was training a group of subject matter experts as part of the roll out of a global training programme. I had prepared a few PowerPoint slides to support their discussions for a session planned to last 2 hours. You should have seen their faces when I gave them 12 slides! You could see the panic as the prop for the inexperienced was removed. This worsened when they realised that the majority of those slides were simple templates for them to populate with locally specific information.
Factor 4: Follow Up. This is the bit which is most difficult and most often not done to any terrific standard. The follow up can take many forms. The work-based task is one – important to get participants who have worked on their skills and required behaviours during the workshop to make that transition to applying what they have learned in the workplace. This can’t be underestimated. Without a chance to use the skills and behaviours required and the new knowledge uncovered and explored quickly, the learning fade will be dramatic and the chance of really delivering on the benefits identified will be slim.
The problem with work-based tasks is the support required. If you want or need local line managers or coaches to provide this support, you may need to think about the exact same process outlined above for them as well. If the manager hasn’t been trained what to do, they won’t feel inclined to try a new approach.
You may also want to use work-based tasks as part of the programme, so set up a mechanism to share what people have done. This has two benefits – the first is that others learn from the examples shared by their colleagues – colleagues who they know and have shared experiences with during the workshop. The second is the process of reflection which learners need to engage in to produce something which can be shared. Analysing what they did, with what effect and how they would do it differently next time is a very significant learning activity.
Of course, as the project or assignment happens, the learners may need more input to make sense of their experiences. This is when a series of remote learning opportunities come to the fore. This may be follow up e-learning – not the mini-3 screen materials I outlined earlier but fully functioning, multi-media programmes targeted at learners who now have a bedrock of practice to base their new learning on. This is when the fully functioning e-learning is potentially most beneficial.
The second might be so-called synchronous learning. Webinars and other online group activities are now increasingly common and the software to enable it to happen becomes more and more effective. But still, these have traditionally been disappointing. Why? Because we have substituted poor presentation skills in the classroom for even worse presentations skills in cyber space. The key to using web conferencing is to focus on the conference bit. This is a collaborative process at its best. I recently was a participant in a 75 minute webinar where the facilitator used just four information slides and presented to those involved for about 6 minutes of the hour and a quarter. The rest of the time, my colleague and I (who were 160 miles apart) shared ideas in a virtual breakout room and presented back to the whole group our thinking after a ten minute activity. The discussion was facilitated by being able to vote, raise a hand, send an instant message and post questions – verbally or via the chat facility.
Because I was likely to be asked a question at any moment and be expected to respond, I daren’t open an email or review any other documents on my computer. I was transfixed and the experience was intense and worthwhile. I can genuinely tell you that I have been involved in a significant number of video conferences that have bored me rigid – including the ones I was running! I now use a piece of kit which has a function which allows me to monitor how long people spend with the webinar interface open as the main piece of software. When some individuals fell below 25% of the total, I realised we had a problem. The key to the remote conferencing is interaction and – crucially I think – small groups to allow that interaction to be meaningful.
The other side of the follow up coin is coaching. Now I am a big fan of coaching but again it seems to be something which is frequently not done well. The answer may be resource intensive but genuinely one of the only ways of ensuring quality conversations on development issues take place.
Firstly, require a statement of commitment from every line manager who wants one of their team members to attend your programme. Second, send them a briefing of what you expect them to do as part of that commitment. Third, follow up and act as ‘coach to the coach’ – supporting the coach in discussing the outcomes from the workshop and the assignment which is expected as follow up. By modelling the behaviour you expect the coach to exhibit, you’ll start to build the required skills, prove the benefits and build your own credibility and that of your programme.
Part of those quality discussions should be about the next training required, and so a virtuous cycle is created. For total training to mean anything it needs to be a continuous cycle. Develop one skill and it creates demand for another. Fulfil aspirations for promotion or increased responsibility and identify the next development stage. Once into that ongoing development cycle, the total training approach recognises the importance of on the job experience and learning. This may involve secondments, shadowing or teaching others. The great thing about the total trained is that they never stop learning.
