training

training is (still) stupid

“Training is a complete waste of time!” Not true, but that’s what I got out of an article in ASTD’s Buzznews published yesterday. A report by ILX Group “revealed that 63% of HR professionals and business managers conduct training to boost business capability.”

Pardon me while I go hyperventilate and scream in rage against my profession! So they are reporting that 37% conduct training for reasons unrelated to boosting business capability?! Anyone else see a potential problem? How about a real, right now, in your face problem? And some wonder why training is the first thing cut when money gets tight!

It gets worse: “30% said training had a positive impact on achieving profit.” SEVENTY PERCENT of those surveyed believe that training doesn’t have a positive impact on profit!!! Why are we bothering?

The actual focus of the article was that 40% of companies want tablet computers for training. Well, sure, if your training doesn’t do any good you might as well spend money on toys and at least entertain the participants. New technology doesn’t improve bad training. EVER.

For a more in-depth and less exclamation point filled response, I’m reposting a piece I originally published on June 04, 2011.

 

Training is Stupid

There is one and only one purpose for training: to increase performance. That’s it. Training provides new knowledge and skills that allow a person to perform better than they could without the information or practice provided by the training. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about training for leadership development, college classes, or even physical fitness. Any training that doesn’t increase performance is stupid.

I once observed a safety training where the trainer was showing the participants how to fill out a government form. Not the most exciting topic to begin with, the training was so slow, dull, and unengaging that the trainer made Mr. Rogers look like Tony Robbins. The more experienced participants were getting caught up on reading spy novels. The others looked like they were wishing for sweet, sweet death – his or theirs, it didn’t matter. It was total waste of time and money, but the company was able to check the box and say that their employees had attended the required training.

I’ve also known trainers so charismatic and entertaining that everyone has a great time and universally gives the trainer high marks on their evaluation. Yet, said and done, the participants can’t remember what the program was about or don’t understand how to apply it to their own lives. A good time was had by all, but it was still a horrific waste of time and resources.

Sometimes the training is a hodgepodge of great ideas and techniques, but there is no plan to bring it all together so that the person can consistently apply it and improve. Every been at the gym and seen someone “training” their friend by almost randomly showing them different exercises? Information is dumped on them, but they have no understanding of how to truly apply it. There’s no plan, no tracking of progress, and minimal (if any) improvement.

The biggest challenge is that increasing performance means change. Scary word. Our performance gets better only when our behavior changes (we’ll never get better if we keep doing the same things). Changing others – even simply helping them change themselves – is incredibly difficult. That’s why most training fails us. It’s much, much easier to provide information and call it “training.” It’s much, much easier to be entertaining, have fun, tell some great stories that kind of relate to the topic and call it “training.” It’s much, much easier to string together a bunch of ideas than organize them into a plan that will create ongoing improvement. It’s much, much easier to think of training as a one-time, check the box event than to approach it as an ongoing process. How different would training be if every aspect was scrutinized to determine if each bit of information was truly important and if it would create the changed behavior that leads to increased performance?

And here’s why we care. Company performance improves ONLY when individual performance improves. It’s painfully funny how many leaders insist on improving company performance without ever trying to create higher performance from each and every individual. Training is crucial to any company that wants sustained performance.

Except when it’s stupid…

 

how to ruin a business (and an athlete)

In business, learning and development is often viewed as a necessary evil or even an expensive distraction. In sports, on the other hand, athletes spend an enormous amount of time learning, practicing, and improving.

Imagine if you owned a sports team. It would be absolutely ridiculous to hire great talent and then not develop them further. Would you say, “I already spent millions on them, why should I spend more? They need to just get out there and play.”? Would you save money by not allowing them to practice? Would you worry that if you invested heavily in training them, they might someday leave for another team? Would you hire an athlete who wasn’t willing to spend most of their career getting better? Would you tell them that you can’t afford to develop them and they better just do their best?

Absolutely not! It would obviously be insanity. If you took that approach, your team might do well occasionally, but would be crushed in the long run. Luck and residual talent will only get an athlete so far. All great athletes know that the competition is always gaining and if they aren’t continuously improving their game, the competition will soon pass them by.

Are you letting the competition pass you by? How much of a learning (read as: performance improving) environment do you foster with your team? How much do you hold people accountable for continuously developing and improving their results? What about for yourself? Are you a business athlete on autopilot, hoping that what you learned years ago will carry you through? Or are you forever looking for ways to step up your game?

when training doesn’t make sense

I am passionate about personal and professional improvement, firmly believe in investing in employees, yet recognize that training doesn’t always make sense. Here are a few of those situations:

  • Your company is hyper-focused on quarterly results. Training is a long term proposition. If you only look at immediate performance, investing in tomorrow is counterproductive. Unless you think you’re going to want the business to get better a couple of quarters from now, training is pointless.
  • Your company is more focused on saving money than making money. Training is expensive and an easy way to save costs. You can also save a few more bucks if you fire your maintenance staff and never upgrade your equipment. After all, the corresponding decline in individual and organizational performance will take time to show up. Two years from now, when you are in steady decline and your competition blows past you, you can blame the economy. If you try hard enough, you can save yourself broke.
  • You like mediocrity. Not everyone wants to improve their results. I get that.
  • You cannot handle the idea that some of your best performers will leave. Yep, if you really invest in your people, some of them will be lured away. If you want to keep the completion from eyeing your employees, be sure to hire underperformers and keep ‘em stupid.
  • You are so behind because of perpetual fire drills that you can’t keep up with today, let alone think about tomorrow. Don’t worry, once the company goes under, you’ll have plenty of free time.
  • Your employees hate training and complain loudly. Don’t bother wasting training dollars on them. They won’t learn anyway. Good job on selecting people who will save you money by refusing to improve. Maybe you can hire some more just like them – then you’ll really be profitable.
  • You can’t afford high performers. High performers cost more to hire and cost more to keep. They tend to want to get better and be attracted to organizations that will invest in them.

So you see, training and development really only makes sense if you want individuals, teams, and an organization that performs well and improves over time. If you don’t want that, you needn’t bother with training.

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…

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.

Training is Stupid

There is one and only one purpose for training: to increase performance. That’s it. Training provides new knowledge and skills that allow a person to perform better than they could without the information or practice provided by the training. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about training for leadership development, college classes, or even physical fitness.  Any training that doesn’t increase performance is stupid.

I once observed a safety training where the trainer was showing the participants how to fill out a government form. Not the most exciting topic to begin with, the training was so slow, dull, and unengaging that the trainer made Mr. Rogers look like Tony Robbins. The more experienced participants were getting caught up on reading spy novels. The others looked like they were wishing for sweet, sweet death – his or theirs, it didn’t matter. It was total waste of time and money, but the company was able to check the box and say that their employees had attended the required training.

I’ve also known trainers so charismatic and entertaining that everyone has a great time and universally gives the trainer high marks on their evaluation. Yet, said and done, the participants can’t remember what the program was about or don’t understand how to apply it to their own lives. A good time was had by all, but it was still a horrific waste of time and resources.

Sometimes the training is a hodgepodge of great ideas and techniques, but there is no plan to bring it all together so that the person can consistently apply it and improve. Every been at the gym and seen someone “training” their friend by almost randomly showing them different exercises? Information is dumped on them, but they have no understanding of how to truly apply it. There’s no plan, no tracking of progress, and minimal (if any) improvement.

The biggest challenge is that increasing performance means change. Scary word. Our performance gets better only when our behavior changes (we’ll never get better if we keep doing the same things). Changing others – even simply helping them change themselves – is incredibly difficult. That’s why most training fails us. It’s much, much easier to provide information and call it “training.” It’s much, much easier to be entertaining, have fun, tell some great stories that kind of relate to the topic and call it “training.” It’s much, much easier to string together a bunch of ideas than organize them into a plan that will create ongoing improvement. It’s much, much easier to think of training as a one-time, check the box event than to approach it as an ongoing process. How different would training be if every aspect was scrutinized to determine if each bit of information was truly important and if it would create the changed behavior that leads to increased performance?

And here’s why we care. Company performance improves ONLY when individual performance improves. It’s painfully funny how many leaders insist on improving company performance without ever trying to create higher performance from each and every individual. Training is crucial to any company that wants sustained performance.

Except when it’s stupid…