all you need to know about training design

When training fails, it is generally because the learners haven’t understood the material on both an intellectual AND an emotional level. Intellectual level training focuses on the “what” and the “how”. What needs to be done and how do I need to do it?

We see this all the time. Where people say they don’t need training because they already know it, but they aren’t doing any of it. They haven’t truly connected with the “why”. Why is it important that I do it? What are the benefits of doing it or the consequences if I don’t?

There are only two reasons that humans do anything: 1) to seek pleasure; and 2) to avoid pain.  These are the same two reasons that humans learn anything. Why do we learn the newest version of Microsoft Office? To do our jobs better (pleasure) and to avoid failing at our jobs (pain). Why do we learn new exercises or diets? To get sexy and delay death.

So, no matter how much we read, research, discuss, and ponder, we never truly learn until we connect with the material at an emotional level. Everyone knows that smoking, drinking, or eating too much will shorten their lives. We know at the intellectual level, but often don’t get it at the emotional level (if we did, we’d stop). Until a person really, really connects with the consequences at an emotional level, intellectual warnings do zero good.

All great training – regardless of topic – teaches the what, how, and the why. And it does it in a way that each participant can individually understand and key into. Experience is the best teacher because it provides the emotional learning.

Will Rogers really understood this principle. He summed up everything important about training design in three sentences: “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”

Design and evaluate your training programs accordingly…

No Problem Too Big?

We all have more personal and professional resources at our fingertips than we can imagine. I am not naturally good at networking, but I suspect the advantage that great networkers have is that they are simply better able to see and tap into these resources.

I recently attended a training program that really underscored this idea for me. There were six table groups with about five people at each table. For one of the activities, each table was given a large, hypothetical, community issue to solve. As an example, one group was told that they were trying to offer low cost health screenings at a community health fair; another group was trying to create transportation solutions for a low income area. There were six different groups all trying to solve overwhelmingly huge problems.

Everyone then mingled throughout the room asking people from other groups what they could do to help. Amazingly, EVERY SINGLE PERSON had a skill, access to resources, or knew someone who could help. Although the situations were hypothetical, the resources and solutions weren’t.

The point of the exercise was to demonstrate the sheer volume of resources available in a community and I was blown away by it. Normally, if you went around and asked a bunch of relative strangers what they could do to help, you’d get little response and few ideas. So what made this activity different?

First, the focus was on gathering all ideas, big and small, and no ideas were dismissed. Also, we weren’t looking for a solution, only asking what the others could contribute (and a lot of times their contribution was to offer to connect them with someone else). Finally, no one said, “I can’t help.” The expectation was to think of some way, no matter how small or unorthodox, to help. This generated a ton of good ideas that would not have been otherwise considered.

If that magic can happen with a group of strangers, how powerful would it be with people you know? We’ve all done this to some extent, but I wonder what would happen if we really leveraged it? What if you took a problem you were working on and directly asked everyone you know what they could offer to help? (Posting it on Facebook or Twitter is not directly asking. Emailing is not directly asking. I mean to have a one-on-one in-person or over the phone conversation where they have to give you an answer right then.)

This is really leveraging the six degrees of separation. We don’t have to go too far out in our network to find someone who would be a great resource whether we are trying to find a job, buy a car, hire a personal trainer, find great day care, locate investment property, etc.

I’m becoming convinced that there are few problems bigger than the people we already know. The only thing we need to do is ask.

Great Leaders Use What They Have to Their Advantage

In a perfect world every one of our employees would be great employees. They’d be committed, motivated, super skilled, etc., blah, blah, blah. In the real world, they are not. Every person, even the best of employees, has their strengths and weaknesses that they bring to the job.

Poor managers gripe about the weaknesses; great managers figure out how to realistically utilize each person in a way that plays to their strengths and minimizes their weakness. Everyone wants to be successful and a few are fortunate enough to have a leader that enables them to be their best.

One leader I know was working as an electrician, doing contract work for the maintenance department of a small manufacturing plant. The maintenance manager had an employee – Brian – that appeared to be all weakness. He was kind of spacy, a bit of a burnout, and consistently did mediocre work. Brian was one of those employees who just barely good enough to keep on the team, but was an ongoing headache. The maintenance manager took the opportunity to get Brian out of his hair for a while by assigning him to help the contract electrician.

Most in the electrician’s position would have been very frustrated to be “gifted” a problem employee, but he wasn’t. He took the approach of “I have him, so how can I use him to my advantage?” He looked (hard) for the strengths and discovered that Brian used to do electrical work on airplanes was extremely detail oriented and very good at following directions. In fact, given very clear instructions he was able to do meticulous, high quality work. (You see the problem, right? He was extremely literal and did what he was told. His manager did a poor job of giving well thought out directions so he was unable to do a good job. Garbage in, garbage out.)

Once the maintenance manager saw the quality of work that this problem employee was capable of, given proper guidance, he suddenly needed the employee and couldn’t spare him any longer.

When was the last time you sat down with your employees and asked them what they thought their greatest skills were, which tasks they enjoy the most, what skills they would like to use more on the job, or what skills they would like to develop? Who was their best boss or mentor and what did that person do different from all their other bosses?

The World’s Shortest Lesson on Being a Great Manager

Being a manager is a tough, tough job and there are many things a manager needs to be able to do. But, if you want to put yourself above 90% of the managers out there, focus on developing your skills in four key areas:

  1. Selecting people who are a great match for the job and the company. You are responsible for their results and if all goes well they will be with the company for years to come. Plan your effort accordingly.
  2. Giving your people a clear vision for their role and clear understanding of your performance expectations.
  3. Investing time, energy, and resources into developing your people so that they can perform at the level expected. This includes coaching, training, advising, and giving feedback.
  4. Holding your people accountable for delivering results.

Enough said.

The Purpose of HR

I hate the term “Human Resources” because it misses the point. A better name is: “Individual and Organizational Performance.” The way I see it Human Resources has only two functions: 1) Enable employees to perform at their very best; and 2) Enable managers to bring out the best in their employees. That’s it. Everything HR does either supports employees and managers at being their absolute best or gets in their way.

Great HR is a collaborative consulting role for internal customers. Anything else is just noise and static.

The best HR departments get this and focus their efforts on providing phenomenal customer service. If you’re in HR, how good is HR’s customer service at your organization? Do employees and managers feel fully supported by you? Do they feel like you are policy enforcers or do they feel that you help them understand all the pros and cons of the available choices and make the best decisions possible? Are you continually asking how each program and policy will impact the end users? Are you constantly seeking ways to improve your customers’ experience and make things simple, quick, and reasonably pleasant? Do your employees and managers enjoy contacting HR? Is every person on your HR team pleasant, knowledgeable, and solutions focused? Imagine your company was shopping for the best HR service on the planet – would they choose you?

There’s a very simple test to determine whether you provide phenomenal support or not: on the whole, do your employees and managers contact you BEFORE THE FACT to explore options, solutions, legal ramifications, and get your perspective on the situation OR are you forced to contact them AFTER EVERYTHING HAS MELTED DOWN?

At its best, HR helps companies attract, find, hire, develop, and retain great performers. It helps people make better decisions, be better leaders, and excel daily, regardless of the department they’re in. The finance department is better when the HR department is better. The sales department is better when the HR department is better. The product development department… you get the idea. Every department can exist with counterproductive HR, but they become better when HR becomes better.

So… are the individuals and the organization better off because of the HR service you provide? It’s a simple yes or no question.

Leadership Advice From My Dad (Happy Father’s Day)

My dad mentioned something to me one day when we were talking about business. He said, “The best managers treat their people as though they need their people more than their people need them.” Of course, the flip side of that is the epitome of poor management: treating their employees as though they are unnecessary and unwanted.

Over time, managers get the team they deserve. Great managers nurture, develop, and create great teams. Poor managers end up with poor teams. Want to do a quick assessment of the quality of a manager? Look at the quality of their team.

I remember a manager who was very resistant to attending leadership training (remember, kids: those who need training the most want it the least and those who need it the least want it the most). He didn’t see why he should have treat his employees with respect, or provide clear instruction and follow up, or try to develop them, etc. He spent the class ranting about all the idiots and slackers he had working for him.

I don’t know his team and never observed his leadership in action, but I can imagine what happened. If he was as abusive, hypercritical, and condescending towards his team in person as he was in the class then any employee with talent, options, and self-esteem would have transferred out of his department or quit the organization. So who’s left? Those without options. Those without talent or work ethic. Those without enough belief in themselves to get another job. The more he abuses them the worse the team becomes and the worse the team becomes the more he feels he has to abuse them to get any work done. A vicious downward spiral. I’m confident that he was surrounded by idiots and slackers but only because he had driven everyone else away.

This doesn’t mean that every employee is a great employee. But the best managers are able to take what they have and bring out their best. They can take shortcomings into account and look for ways to develop and bring out the best that is there.

The easiest way to do that is to approach it from the mindset that you need your employees far more than your employees need you.

Quick thought on perfection

Imperfect action will beat perfect inaction any day of the week. It’s easy to get caught up in planning every detail perfectly and not moving forward until everything is meticulously thought through. And if you fall for that trap, you’ll get crushed by someone who was able to immediately execute a pretty good plan.

Most Training Efforts Fail

Here’s the painful truth: most training will fail. Very little training results in improved performance. There are lots of reasons, but basically learning is HARD.

  1. Knowledge without action is meaningless. The best ideas in the world are absolutely worthless UNTIL the moment they are put into action. A little bit of knowledge, applied consistently has a huge advantage over a lot of knowledge, never applied.
  2. It is almost impossible to learn if you don’t want to learn.
  3. Skill level always lags behind knowledge.
  4. We are never able to do more than we know.
  5. Knowledge precedes skill. We must learn before we can do. However, until we can do, we don’t really know.
  6. It is easier to gain knowledge than skill. Reading a book is easy. Practicing until a skill becomes second nature is hard.
  7. It takes less time to gain knowledge than skill. Reading is quick, practice is slow.
  8. It is more interesting to gain knowledge than skill. New facts and ideas are fun, practicing the same old skill over and over is tedious. At the extreme are the “seminar junkies” who invest amazing time and money into seminars, workshops, etc. Seminar junkies live for the rush of learning, but never get around to putting it into action.
  9. Those who think they know can rarely do. They confuse knowledge with skill or think that their performance is sufficient and don’t bother to try to improve.
  10. Improving skill means changing behavior and creating new habits. This means overcoming a lifetime of inertia and is far, far easier to do if there is support from others.
  11. Developing skill and changing behavior also means operating outside of the comfort zone. This is, well, uncomfortable. It creates an unpleasant, uncertain feeling. Not fun.

As unpleasant as skill development can be, it is paradise compared to the alternative. If we aren’t continually developing our skills by acquiring knowledge and putting it into action, we are doomed to wondering why the world passes us by.

Innovative HR?

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles and blog postings lately on innovation. There’s lots of interest and everyone wants to be known as an innovator. Innovation is a nice buzzword and I suspect it will be a moneymaker for consultants over the next few years. But like all buzzwords, it misses the point.

Why do we want to innovate? No, really – why? Other than it’s fun to be different, the only business reason that comes to mind is to gain a competitive advantage; to offer customers something they can’t get elsewhere. When talking about innovative companies, the focus is almost always on the product.The problem is that novel ideas are easily copied and improved upon. What makes the innovative companies innovative is rarely the product itself.

What really seems to set innovative companies apart is the execution of their products and services and their focus on the customer. They have high attention to detail and design their products and services around how the customer wants to use them. Apple is a great example (no, you can’t write about innovation without mentioning Apple).  What set the iPod apart from all the other MP3 players on the market? It was really, really easy to use, distinctive looking (who knew refrigerator white could be a cool color?), and had plenty of accessories available both from Apple and the aftermarket. But what blew everyone away was iTunes. We take iTunes for granted now, but it showed that Apple really understood how the customer would want to use an MP3 player from start to finish. They understood that customers didn’t want an MP3 player – they wanted a simple and easy way to find, purchase, and listen to music.

And then there is the ubiquitous iPhone. Sure the iPhone is neat, but here’s an example of the level of thought Apple put into the details and understanding the customer’s experience from start to finish. What’s the very first thing the customer experiences when they purchase an iPhone? The packaging. It is elegant, intricate, minimal, and shows amazing attention to detail. It contains everything needed to get started yet is tiny and easy to store. It also benefits Apple. Less packaging means lower materials costs, lower shipping costs, lower storage costs, and higher profits. Everyone benefits. That’s innovation! Apple didn’t invent boxes, they just did a far better job of executing. And, no, the box isn’t the most innovative thing about the product and no one is going to buy a phone because it has great packaging (we don’t even see the box until we’re handing over our money). It is just an example of the attention to detail given to every aspect of the product. Too many companies focus solely on the product and overlook all the ways that the customer uses and interacts with the product, from the very beginning to the very end.

All of which has me wondering how can HR give the employees they serve a better overall experience like Apple does? There’s an old adage that engineers should be forced to use the products that they design. Unless they do, they never truly understand how the customer uses the product. Too often we only focus on how we interact with the customer and completely ignore how the customer interacts with us. You want innovative HR? Try using your services like a customer from start to finish:

  • What’s it like to apply to your company?
  • How easy is it to find the careers section?
  • How clear and attractive are the job postings?
  • How simple is it to complete an application or submit a resume?
  • How understandable is the process? How well is it explained in advance?
  • HOW WELL DO YOU FOLLOW UP WITH CANDIDATES?!?
  • In what ways does the process and your interaction make them feel like you’re interested in them vs being another name in the database?
  • How much of your company’s personality comes through in the hiring process?
  • How much of a realistic job preview do you give?

Obviously, this is just one aspect of HR. This same process can be applied to all HR services and processes.

Innovation isn’t for the creatively blessed. Innovation can be had by anyone willing to pay attention to details and understand things from the customer’s perspective. How innovative are you? How well do you understand your customer’s experience? Don’t just ask the questions, try out your own processes from the user’s perspective.