Just gimme training…

Author’s note: The names have been changed, faces blurred and voices altered to protect the innocent in this post. 

It’s a story I have heard many times. The boss wants training, the Instructional designer – performance technologist – analyst KNOWS that training isn’t going to fix the problem but is told to “gimme the training.”

A client told me awhile back that they needed a course. That’s always the first red flag right!?

I asked “Why? What’s the problem?” Turned out that my client was told that a group in another part of the organization wasn’t performing as needed when requesting and using my client’s services to get their job done. Their boss wanted my client to train his people. Classic example of picking the solution before understanding the problem.

To make the story easier to understand, let’s call the group that is experiencing the performance issue the “Jocks.” We’ll call my client – the one told to fix the problem, the “Wizards.” The Wizards are responsible for producing some pretty cool magic that helps the Jocks prepare for their games. The problem is that the Jocks don’t understand exactly what type of magic the Wizards can provide, how to ask for or use the magic once they do get it and as you can imagine – Jocks and Wizards don’t exactly speak the same language, so they don’t even know how to interact with each other at this stage.

As a good performance technologist or CPT, I asked for more information from the Wizards and the Jocks – starting at the end – the outcome – the desired level of performance. In this case, that would be the Jocks being ready for the game. Two other key pieces of the puzzle were the Jock’s “playbook” and the Wizard’s “spells book.” Much to my surprise, the playbook used by the jocks to get ready for games had much the same process as used by the Wizards.  It may look familiar:

1. Define the objective
2. Plan
3. Prepare
4. Execute
5. Analyse/Evaluate results

Yes… at a deeper level of fidelity, there are some differences, but overall, the Jocks and the Wizards are using the same process, with the same goal. So after carefully reviewing the plays and the spells, it was pretty apparent to me that if we added the information that the jocks had to give to the Wizards at each step above, training really wasn’t necessary. All we had to do was update the playbook!

A meeting was held! After showing the Jocks and the Wizards that what they are doing is similar enough that the time and effort required to build a course might be better spent on improving the playbook, I was not at all surprised to be told, “just gimme the training.”

It might be because the direction given to my client was for a training solution. It might be because the Jocks don’t know what they don’t know at this point and they want to have the training first, work through the process a couple time first and THEN update the playbook. It might be because the Wizards don’t want to pay me to update the Jock’s playbook. I’m not sure at this point. I noted in a previous post that you may just end up getting a training solution when you really need a performance solution. It’s killing me that we are going to spend a lot of time and energy developing this course, knowing that the solution is an updated process.

In 2007 I attended the International Society of Performance Improvement’s (ISPI) “Principles and Practices of Performance Technology Workshop.” Geary Rummler and Roger Addison were my teachers. To this day I remember our discussion about this very situation and Roger’s advice that no matter how much training you develop – always leave them a job-aid.

In 2012, my good friend and mentor Dr. Roger Kaufman – a legend in the field of performance technology (far right), introduced me to another legend, Dr. Joe Harless (middle). I had read many of Joe’s articles which all hold true today. As Guy Wallace explains at the linked article about Joe, you never say no to training. Harless (1985) is also credited with coining the term “Inside every fat course there’s a thin Job Aid crying to get out.”

So I am bashing ahead with designing and developing the course. I’m going to add in a “Student Manual” that will contain one page that explains the whole process. Thanks Geary, Roger A., Roger K. and Joe.

Reference

Harless, J. (1985). Performance technology and other popular myths. Performance & Instruction Journal, July 1985.