“We want to improve their presentation skills, their salesmanship, their inter-personal communication competencies and communication in general in the department and we also want to make them more creative and more analytical in the way they think. Of course we cannot devote more than a day to this course.”

“Doing a management workshop on a weekend will be highly demotivating. People have families and personal obligations.”

“Management will never allow time off during the week for training.”

How might we make training most effective?

Many factors are at play here.

We believe that:

OL = f { T, M, O, C, S, F, A }

In other words Organizational Learning (OL) is a function of the Trainees (T), the Management (M), the Organization (O), the Content (C), the Style (S), the Facilitator (F) and the Atmosphere (A). Each of these leads us to a series of relevant questions.

T - Trainees. Do they really want to learn? Do they believe the training will in some way help them in their work today? In their future career? In their life? Do they take active responsibility for their learning? Or do they expect to learn by just being there and listening passively? Or are they looking for a day off work?

M – Managers and managers’ managers. Are they actively engaged? Are they enthusiastic about the learning and the personal growth of their people? Do they expect the outcome to be add value to their own department directly, indirectly or even remotely? Will they listen to learning outcomes? Will they implement new ideas that may result?

O – Organization, the company itself. Is the training really linked to the organization’s strategy? Are HR experts actively involved? How open are they to really new solutions from outside? Are they really balancing individual needs with team and organizational needs? Are they really familiar with the courses on offer out there? Do they seriously monitor outcomes? Will the organization be ready to implement new ideas from training courses?

C – Content, what is being taught and learnt. Does it fit with the strategy? Is it relevant to people’s needs, management requirements, organizational expectations? Are the tools on offer adapted to needs? Is there too much detail? Is it too theoretical? Is there sufficient time to learn the more difficult aspects of the topic? Can we really expect people to become great communicators/time managers/managers/motivators/leaders in a few hours?

S – Style and Method. We have all been to courses and conferences with too much lecturing and powerpoint overkill. Yet most presenters know that retention of information in a lecture is low, improving slightly if accompanied by skillfully designed visual aids.

Training by doing, which builds in substantial interactivity, fares better.

Training by being, which is experiential in nature and might incorporate simulations, games and story-telling followed by high-quality discussion and debriefing generally leads to superior learning outcomes. This taps into the ability of participants to teach each other – an underestimated source of knowledge and know-how. Collective wisdom is often there waiting to be tapped, externalized, debated. Skilful facilitation will bring this out.

To cater for different learning styles it is useful for presentations, interactivity and experiential activities to alternate. And of course training that is enjoyable leads to better learning. Go back to your school years. Did you not learn better in the subjects you enjoyed and from those teachers who were also fun?

F – Facilitator. Trainees will soon recognize whether the trainer masters her material or not. And it’s not only the material. Skilful facilitators also sense the crowd. They do openers to open, set the pace and tone, energizers for when the energy is low, closers for a good finale. They are flexible, adjusting the program when necessary. They get the best out of people. They care for atmosphere.

A – Atmosphere. The time and space, the facilities, the materials, the equipment, the comfort, the background noise, the snacks, the food, the coffee. All these add to participant’s and facilitator’s human presence to make the training more pleasant and more effective.

Most training doesn’t work because one or more of the above are “out-of-phase”. It is our contention that all the above have to be “right” for an individual and an organization to have a lasting, useful learning experience.

At Performa we work hard to provide the best C, S and F in our areas of expertise. And we will work even harder to ensure that the T, M, O and A are also as good as can be. Honestly. We have sometimes refused business when we sensed these conditions were wrong!

Our reward? Our clients come back to us AND we all have a great time!

Performa News – recent events
http://www.performa.net/EN/news/434.html

Performa News - coming events
http://www.performa.net/EN/news/343.html

the Performa website
www.performa.net

PS Distinguished writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke, whom we featured in our January newsletter, died recently at the age of 90. May he remain in the galaxies of our imaginations...