13
Getting Started on the Courageous Training Path

Afew years ago one of us was touring the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza in Mexico. The largest pyramid there— Kukulkan—seems to grow out of the ground and soars above the jungle a remarkable 25 meters high (80 feet), about the height of an eight-story building. It is a common practice for tourists to climb to the top of the pyramid. There are 365 steps (one for each day of the year), each step very narrow in depth, but considerably higher in rise than the typical staircase. In addition to the architectural and engineering phenomena, one observes another more human phenomenon that occurs daily at the pyramids. People tend to climb the pyramids—all 25 meters of them—facing the rock, using all fours, as a child might go up a set of stairs for security. For many people, once they get to the top above the treetops and turn around and gaze out over the jungle, their fear of heights—perhaps even if they did not214 previously know it—kicks in with a jolt and they realize getting back down safely is a serious problem.

With your back pressed firmly against the rear wall at the top of the monument you look down what seem no longer to be steps but something more like a staggeringly steep and stepless slide. Crazy thoughts race through your mind: Are you stuck up here for the rest of your life? Is there a helicopter service that brings you back? Why did you ever climb up here in the first place? You are frozen in place. Finally you calm your irrational thoughts and get focused on the reality that you must indeed climb down. You figure out a workable strategy and with the encouragement of friends or strangers, you begin a descent. The method is embarrassing, but works. You sit twisted on one side of your bum, you twist your body and neck as best you can so you are looking at the reassuring rock wall behind you and not the vast open space underneath you, and you lift and lower your body one step at a time. After a while—there are many, many steps—your confidence grows and you are even able to look outward and “enjoy” the view.

We disclose this tale of personal frailty because it resonates with the advice we give to a question that is always tossed our way. Having delivered hundreds of presentations on the concepts and methods we write about in this book, we can always count on one question being asked: “So, how do you get started?” Our advice is similar to the travails on the pyramid. You don’t implement the Courageous Training process in the same fashion in which most people scramble up the pyramid: quickly, without a plan and a devil-may-care-attitude. Instead you start the journey more like the trip down the pyramid. The trip begins with the recognition that staying where you are is no longer an acceptable option and that you want to get to a better place.

The Courageous Training leaders with whom we have worked have begun their journey with this emotional commitment first. They have recognized that they are truly not satisfied with the current state of affairs in their professional training and development world and that they want to work differently and accomplish something better than what they have known in the past. At some point they admit to themselves that “good enough” is not good enough; that the way training is being done now is not working well enough. This dissatisfaction and their desire to make more of a difference are strong enough that they make the decision to get started in a new direction. They summon up their courage and commit to getting started even though the first few steps bring anxiety and unknown but certain risk.

After this act of will, they are ready to consider the rational steps they should take to get started. While everyone’s road map will differ in detail, we can distill some useful guidelines and suggestions that are garnered from our experience with the dozens of bold leaders in our user group.

START SMALL—DON’T TRY TO CHANGE EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE

Rome was not built in a day and the hole into which training has descended has been dug deep over several decades. You cannot leap out of the hole all at once. We have seen two major variations on the “start small” theme, one of which has worked and one of which has not.

Some professionals with whom we have shared our approach at professional conferences and workshops have latched onto one or two of the methods or tools, such as mandating Impact216 Maps for every single training program offered by their organization. Despite their good intentions of trying to use one or two of the tools or concepts across the board to lift business impact, they mostly find that their efforts were too diluted. They ended up with little or no improved results to show for their trouble. Starting small by trying to do just a few pieces of the overall process everywhere, we have found, usually gets you nowhere. The second approach is to do all of the process in only one place. This approach is far more likely to get results. It is far better to systematically implement the process and tools for a single project and make it work than to nibble around the edges on many projects or initiatives. So, for example, the most progress has been made by those who have worked carefully to select a single initiative, such as these illustrations below:

• A sales training effort that will be deployed with just one sales force as a part of a larger new product launch
• A performance management training program intended to boost safety metrics in a single production plant
• A new leadership development program being tried out in one division of the company
• A training initiative sponsored by a vice president in a business division who has specific goals he or she wants to accomplish

All of these examples are alike in that they are more contained efforts within a smaller organizational unit. They are alike also in that each has a single or more limited sponsor or “champion” (discussed in more detail below). The tools and methods that support all of the Four Pillars are knitted together into a systematic whole. It is the whole process together that brings results, not the single application of any of its pieces.

AIM FOR EARLY WINS

Starting small does not mean picking a safe little training project hidden away in the shadows that no one cares about—one that no one will notice if it succeeds or fails. Starting small means picking a project that can become a showcase and making it work. Courageous leaders have learned that another best practice is to find an initiative—one that fits the parameters of the previous recommendation—that is still relatively high profile, that really needs to work, and that someone in senior management does not want to see fail. Selecting this type of project puts training leaders in a high-leverage position where they can still exert practical control but at the same time they cannot turn back—going part way down the pyramid steps gets you nowhere. They have to make this initiative work, for themselves, for their internal customer, and for the organization. Then they implement the Courageous Training process in a comprehensive way, ensuring that the right resources are in place throughout all parts of the implementation. Courageous Training leaders play for the important, “the showcase,” win without spreading themselves too thin across multiple efforts all at once. They know an early win will give them a compelling story about the business results that training was able to help produce for the organization when they need to enlist the support of the next senior manager about a High Impact Learning (HIL) project.

WORK WITH A CHAMPION

This recommendation is really a corollary of the first two. Courageous Training leaders know the importance of executive “air cover” (described in Chapter Five), so they look for senior leader champions who meet the following selection criteria:

• They are in charge of an initiative about which they care— one that they wish to succeed, that is important in the larger strategic scheme of things, and that has a reasonable chance for success (i.e., is not a doomed effort to begin with).
• They know that training is a key component in the possible success of the initiative.
• They are concerned that “training as usual” will not be good enough to ensure their success and are willing to try out a new approach.
• They are people with whom the training leader can work compatibly.

The training leader works with the senior executive champion to help implement the initiative and makes a commitment to the success of the effort. In short, the training leader volunteers his or her services to do whatever it takes to make sure that the training achieves the results needed by the executive sponsor. In return for this all-out commitment, the training leader asks the executive sponsor to commit to holding direct reports accountable (as the training process prescribes) for the support actions that are necessary to achieve the business goals that the two of them—the training leader and the champion sponsor— have mutually agreed to.

Many colleagues in our user group have followed this approach with success. They have looked for and found a senior champion sponsor who appreciates people development, with whom they have worked successfully in the past, whom they anticipate would be receptive to the concepts of the Courageous Training approach, and with whom there is a track record and a degree of trust. In short, the first project needs to be around an important issue and in the camp of a senior executive with219 whom the Courageous Training leader can work to manage the project so that it can be successful.

BUILD A CADRE OF ALLIES AND SUPPORTERS, USE A TEAM APPROACH, DON’T TRY TO DO THIS ALONE

Courageous Training leaders recognize early on that they can’t be the Lone Ranger in making the first project successful or when beginning to implement new approaches to any training. They build a cadre of allies and supporters that will help them work their way along their journey. (After all, even the Lone Ranger had Tonto to help him out of some tight spots.) These allies sometimes are colleagues in their own department, they may be in line management, or they may be trusted advisors from outside the organization. The most successful Courageous Training leaders are skillful at developing all varieties of allies because they recognize that sometimes they need a guide in the process who has been there before; sometimes they need advice on the politics and hot buttons of the internal client; and sometimes they just need a like-minded training colleague who can be a sounding board for them. Readers will find allusions to this principle in all of the four case example chapters. All of the members in our user group have expressed a similar notion, noting that they needed the support of allies, and to some extent they have all looked to other members of the user group to provide some of this external resource.

One cannot make the Courageous Training transition strictly as a solo effort—and the corollary to this guideline is that there must be some level of senior leadership readiness for and interest in a new direction. One could not make this approach succeed in a totally negative culture or leadership environment. 220Notice that in each of the case examples there was at least a faction within the senior leadership ranks that needed results and looked to training to make an effective contribution. This senior leadership faction does not need to know exactly what it needs or precisely how a new approach will work, in fact they probably never will. But they do need to have a belief in the value of Human Resources (HR) and a notion that training can make a worthwhile contribution.

TELL THE STORY, TOUT YOUR RESULTS FAR AND WIDE

We have mentioned several times in this book that Courageous Training leaders do not seek self-serving credit for themselves or their department for the successes that are achieved. By the same token, it is counterproductive to keep the results hidden. Just as their job is to show the organization when and why training doesn’t work, it is also their job to inform and educate the organization when and why training has worked. They need to help all current and future stakeholders of training see the connection between the process, their behaviors, and the results. The message must be truthful and it should focus on the positive results and learnings. The options for ways to share this information are many: publish the story in company newsletters, conduct end-of-project meetings with senior stakeholders, and produce formal reports and present them at executive meetings. Courageous Training leaders recognize that changing how their organizations do the business of training is a change process and, as with any change process, the organization needs continuous reminders of successes to keep it energized and interested in continuing.

BE PREPARED TO MANAGE THE TRANSITION AS A CHANGE PROCESS

Courageous Training leaders know that starting off with the correct mind-set is essential if they are going to achieve long-lasting results. They recognize that implementing the Courageous Training approach is not a quick fix proposition, but rather a change initiative designed to alter how their organizations fundamentally approach the business of training. Like all journeys, this one starts with the first step—beginning with that first project that produces the win for the organization and the Courageous Training leader—and continues with many more down the road.

Courageous Training leaders set a long horizon and are prepared to see the change through. They are realistic about what they can achieve and how long it will take. They can promise increased business impact in a relatively short time frame—a matter of months—on a project-by-project basis, but they also make it clear that the concept and practices of the whole-organization process for training success is a multiyear effort. Recognizing that the road is long does not cause them to satisfice and nibble around the edges; they still look for the high-profile project that can get them an early and big win. But they recognize that after the first tactical challenges of making it work once, there is the larger strategic challenge of driving the approach into the “DNA” of the organization so that it becomes standard operating procedure for how training gets done.

Courageous Training leaders know that, as with any change process, they can expect some resistance along the way and are prepared to handle it. As one member of the user group has said, “If you’re not getting any push back when you try to implement the process, that means one of two things. Either you have died

and gone to heaven or you’re not working on the right things.” When working on the important projects and trying to get managers to make some fundamental changes in how they do things, there will always be some conflict or resistance. Savvy training leaders are prepared for these potholes in the road.

LEARN AS YOU GO

As Larry Mohl pointed out in his case example (Chapter Nine), a “learn your way forward” strategy is the hallmark of a successful change management effort. Training leaders cannot suggest that they have all the answers and proceed as if the process were a cookbook with rigidly prescribed steps for the entire journey Instead they set the expectation that the best way forward cannot be fully known beforehand and will emerge over time through an iterative cycle of planning, doing, checking, and planning again. They approach the leadership task humbly but with confidence that the way forward is possible and vitally important, and that feedback and reflection will sustain them all.

STICK TO THE CODE!

Our last bit of advice: heed and stick with the Courageous Training Code presented in Chapter Seven. It springs from experiences, observations, and reflections we have discussed together over the past five years. We have yet to meet a training professional among the thousands we have encountered in our many workshops, seminars, discussion groups, and presentations who does not agree with the principles in this book. Everyone believes it makes sense and is the right direction. What has differentiated the truly successful colleagues 223we know from the many thousands who simply agree with the principles is that they found the courage and personal conviction—the belief that there was no turning back and only one outcome was good enough—to take the action to bring the Four Pillars to life. Although they didn’t have the code written in their personal handbook when they started their journey, they were unknowingly living these principles to bring about important results and changes for their organizations and for themselves personally The code we proffer comes from them through reflection and revisiting with them about their experiences. Our best advice in closing is to follow this code and stick with it. It works.