Chapter 17
Avoiding the Training Trap
Problems with Relevance and Respect
Company training departments can take on many appearances. Some look strangely like personnel departments while others look more like marketing departments. Still other training departments appear so far removed from the rest of their organizations, they almost are separate entities. This would all be well and good, if it were not for the fact that the more removed a training department is from the rest of the company, the less credible it is in the eyes of those who depend on it.
How to Build Credibility and Gain Respect for Training
One of the biggest problems any training department must take on is the notion from those who are out doing their jobs as opposed to learning about it, that the training department is out of touch with what is really happening within the company. Therefore, we must confront problem one: relevance within a training department.
This lack of relevance issue is one of the first and often cheapest shots that a training department must contend with. At first glance, it appears to be a pretty good argument. How can this individual teach me something he or she is not currently doing? A particularly poignant example would be that of sales training. Products change, as do customers and their demands. How does an individual who has not been actively selling in the field effectively teach someone who is? There is an answer, albeit a somewhat disappointing one.
Build a Qualified Training Staff
The training department must develop a staff where the majority of individuals have experience within the subject to be taught. This is a rather basic principle, but often it is not adhered to. Experience will begin to establish the elusive credibility that is a “must have” in a good training department. You will notice I said a majority. I disagree that the department must consist entirely of successful field personnel. I firmly believe that a realistic combination of talents often can keep a department from tunnel-visioning ideas and techniques. With all due respect to the Smith family, who wants to live in a world where everybody's name is John Smith? Diversity breeds change and creativity, which are imperative within any department, especially a training department.
A formula that I have grown comfortable with is more like 75 percent out in the field teaching exactly what they have done previously and 25 percent who have had related experiences. Perhaps they have sold, but not that particular product, or they worked with systems, but not that particular system. The percentage would obviously change depending on the subject to be taught. The numbers I am speaking to reflect a “field, nonfield” environment.
Make Sure Trainers Are Knowledgeable and Up-to-Date in Their Fields
Next, to build this precious credibility, training departments should undertake a plan to keep the department relevant. Departments often try to do this by providing presenters with copies of all the literature, magazines, memos, and other correspondence involving their topics of expertise. Nice idea, and I would recommend it highly, except, unfortunately, that alone is not nearly enough. Presenters are faced with more pressures in a day than most people face in a month. Coping with the pressures of good delivery and eating and sleeping the subject matter on a daily basis make a lot of the correspondence placed in the presenter's mailbox meaningless, if that's the only source of information to keep the trainer up to speed. Even the most disciplined presenter has a poor chance of being able to absorb the information that is building on that poor, piled up paper holder once referred to as a desk. I am not for an instant saying this information is not important and need not be read. I just think if it is that critical, go over it in a team meeting or rotate individuals to summarize and redistribute the information. What I am also saying is to stick with the most successful approach to retaining relevance. Get that presenter out of the office on a regular basis and into the field where he or she belongs. One day of field observation or coaching will go a lot further than the out-of-control documentation disaster waiting for that presenter in his or her mailbox. Such fieldwork makes a strong statement to those who question the credibility and relevance of your department. It also does wonderful things for a presenter's confidence. A steady diet of fieldwork serves the entire company.
Training Can't Solve All Business Problems
Probably one of the most frustrating misconceptions that most training departments must contend with is the notion that practically anything that cannot be explained away must be a training issue. This brings us to problem two, hereby referred to as the “Dumpster Effect.”
The ironies of training are astounding. First, this poor department, searching desperately for an identity, must work day and night to establish its own credibility. Then, almost as quickly as the department accomplishes this, it must begin to contend with the idea that everything can now be fixed with good training. Performance problem? Send them for training. Losing good personnel? Must be a training issue. Customers unhappy? Training. Apathy within another department? You guessed it, training. I could go on and on. The important point here is that, contrary to popular belief, not everything is a training issue. If the training department is not careful, though, it will find itself taking on issues it cannot and should not solve.
A series of four steps should accompany any request for training:
- Consult.
- Analyze.
- Investigate.
- Pilot.
Consult to Find Out Whether Training Is Really Needed
The idea of utilizing an outside consultant takes on a slight different connotation when you're reviewing a request for training. Here I simply mean that before you waste a tremendous amount of time and energy, you should ask some questions regarding the request for training. It is time to start questioning all those who are even remotely involved with the situation.
Let's look at a typical example. Let's say you are managing a telephone hotline and the director notifies you that there has been an increase in customer complaints about operator rudeness. This director immediately has the situation pegged as another training problem. Before wasting a lot of money on a problem that may not be, it's time to ask some questions of a lot of people. I would be most interested to hear from the customers—the dissatisfied ones and the satisfied ones. I would like to hear from the operators—those with a record of some complaints and those without, also tenured operators, and new hires. I want to hear from supervisors as well as management. Basically, I want to hear from just about anyone who has a relationship with this department and its duties. It is important to have a plan for this questioning. There are several questions I want answered:
How long has this been going on?- How often has this occurred?
- How severe is this problem?
- What are the repercussions of this problem?
- What other actions, if any, have been taken in the past?
With this sampling of questions, I want to make sure, first, that the problem really exists and, second, that I am not reinventing the wheel. Often similar problems may have existed a generation ago (that's about two years in a typical training department), and those problems were dealt with in any number of successful or unsuccessful ways. I want to know about them.
Analyze the Potential Audience for the Training Program
It's not that I'm a skeptic…exactly. It's just that to be totally sure a problem exists and to add some real-world experiences to the potential training, it would be a good idea to observe and analyze the expected audience. Doing this should settle any last-minute doubts and begin to direct you to selecting the appropriate training package.
Investigate the Training Curriculum
Now that all involved have been consulted and the situation has been analyzed, it is time to research and select the curriculum. If time is an issue, benchmarking may help. Selecting the training format is almost as important as the curriculum itself. How long will your program be? How interactive and participative would you like to make it? Often you can answer questions like these by looking at the background of the audience and the size of your intended seminar.
Pilot a Test Training Program
Once the curriculum has been chosen, it is finally time to conduct the seminar. If the course is going to be taught more than once or twice, it is vital to take a look at its effectiveness. It is rare for restaurant chains to introduce new selections nationwide without setting up a few test sites first. Better to make a little mistake than a large one. Studying and reading a curriculum is one thing; teaching it is another. A pilot will allow you to test the curriculum and its effectiveness. Be warned: Pilots are not a whole lot of fun. There are a few rules that must be followed.
First, to make a fair observation, the curriculum must be delivered as written with little to no deviation by the instructor. No war stories, no analogies, and no embellishments. The idea is to see if the curriculum is strong enough as written. This is especially critical if more than one instructor is going to be teaching the seminar. The curriculum must be able to be handed off and still taught effectively. An addition that will complicate the evaluation is a presenter's style, which may not be duplicated by other presenters. In such scenarios, students are evaluating style and not curriculum. The fact of the matter is, a good presenter can make the art of paint drying an interesting topic, if allowed to embellish. The problem is, such presenters do not grow on trees, and it does not help with the evaluation of new training curriculum. Piloting means that curriculum is delivered word for word as written. That allows for a true test of the curriculum's potential success or failure. Not a lot of presenters will volunteer for this hazardous duty (this author included), but it is what is necessary to truly test the material.
Finally, when preparing to launch this new training campaign, it is important to set up some sort of measurement system to evaluate its effectiveness. Thinking positively, what are you going to use as evidence that the course is a success and the original problem has been fixed? Taking these measurements before the actual training takes place allows for a fair and unbiased appraisal once the program kicks off. For obvious reasons, whatever measurements are established before training must be taken after training. Nothing can be proven objectively without an apples-to-apples comparison.
Trying to solve all of life's problems through a Dumpster called “training” is a hazard that most training departments face. Be careful. Doing so will weaken the credibility of a training department as well as damage the morale of the presenters who represent it.
Validating Your Training Programs
One of many obstacles that a training department faces is proving its own validity. It seems that U.S. corporations either believe in the idea of training or they do not. Likewise, most individuals have a strong opinion supporting one side or the other. The unfortunate truth is that those who oppose training can make a fairly strong argument for their case as long as they are not pressed too hard. Their argument often involves a somewhat harmless, even insignificant little word. It is really all training foes have to do battle with, but for those who oppose training as a solution, this word is a battle cry. That word is “results.” It's not that I am opposed to results. However, I often think individuals are looking in the wrong area for results. Let me provide you with a story that may help clear this up.
In high school and college, I had a passion for basketball. I loved to play the sport, and the sport liked me. I say liked, not loved, because although I had the desire to play with some of the best, my 5′10″, 150-pound body took an enormous beating. After years of breaks, sprains, twists, and pains, I decided to hang up my high-tops and participate in a far less violent sport—running. After being dared into my first race, a half marathon no less, I realized I needed someone to help teach me the ropes. A friend of mine put me on a rather strict running program of about five miles a day. Same course, five miles a day. He preached to me that if I stuck with this course and this mileage, I would notice appreciable results after one week. That sure sounded good to me, so off we went on my first training run. When we finished, I was tired and panting as I checked my watch. About 35 minutes, and was I ever out of breath.
We drove home, and as I stood under the shower, still panting, I realized I had a long way to go. Night after night, I ran alone. The same course, the same five miles. What really frustrated me was that my time was not improving that dramatically, and I knew in my heart I was giving it my all. My panting at the finish line told me that! Finally, frustrated as I neared the end of my second week, I called my friend to voice my displeasure with his techniques (and my physical prowess). He seemed confused and promised a run together the next night. Together, again we ran the same course, the same five miles. Almost gloating with an “I told you so” sarcastic attitude, I pointed to my watch and showed him the time. It had not improved much at all. He was somewhat bewildered as he looked at me and said he never told me my time would improve dramatically in one or two weeks. He told me I would see results. He then suggested I look at my rate of breathing. We had finished the run one minute before, and I was breathing as if we had not even started. It was a classic case of looking in the wrong place for the wrong results.
The problem that most training departments must cope with is similar to that story. Those who fund and support training must show results. Those who are seeking this information often look in the wrong place.
Sometimes we look to see just how much more an employee is selling after training, and we do not see an appreciable difference. Certainly not enough to warrant the enormous expense of training! What we may fail to look at, however, is the immediate and major improvement in customer service with a salesperson who is perceived as polished and confident. Those are results that pay dividends for many years. Long term, that represents big bucks.
We may be automating an office environment and conducting technical training. Short term, it costs money to send a presenter out, and it costs even more in lost production. The argument is made that these employees could learn from each other, or on their own time. After training, the speed of those who participated has not gone up. Maybe the error rate has dropped, however. Certainly, if nothing else, morale has improved with good, effective training. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the cost to hire and fire an employee is astronomical. If you were looking for short term, there it is. Long term, it is no contest.
Remember, long term means you are going to have to wait for those results. This could potentially take years. Unfortunately, for those who do not enjoy a good mystery, tracking and measuring these results can cost more than the training itself. Regardless, let's at least make sure we are looking in the right place and taking the correct measurements.
Convincing those in your organization of the importance of training can be a challenge, to say the least. For the most part, we must be reminded over and over again that, as with a good stock, results are more accurately and more fairly measured long term than short term.
Summary
Understanding the true value of training and avoiding the training traps that can present themselves have never been more important than now. When budgets tighten it seems that training departments find themselves front and center to receive the first cuts. That means those of us in the training industry must fight even harder. You are as good as our last training program delivered, and that's why you must beware of what can and cannot be fixed through training, who to hire, and how to make sure that every program and delivery is your very best.