Start with the end in mind...

Come on; we've all been there; someone needs training, so we immediately start thinking about how we're going to do it. We start flipping through the imaginary Rolodex in our head to pick out the best option from whatever we happen to have been exposed to in the past. For some of us, that was around 240 years ago when we were still in secondary school, so the training we instinctively provide is an all-day classroom lecture with copious note-taking. More recent learning experiences might suggest that we should create a sexy piece of e-learning with interactive graphics and maybe even some video. For those of us right at the cutting edge of L&D, we may find ourselves itching to implement the latest technology - perhaps some VR or AR - or whatever buzz-term is the current industry zeitgeist.

This is what a Rolodex is, kids.

A car jack is excellent - as long as the problem is a flat tyre

Whichever delivery method we decide to go with, it's probably the wrong one. It's like if your car breaks down and you immediately reach for the car jack. As a solution, the car-jack is excellent - as long as the problem with your vehicle is a flat tyre, but it's not going to do you much good if you've run out of fuel. So the idea is that before we start considering the tool we're going to us, we need to first identify the problem that needs to be solved. In his seminal work, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey defines Habit 2 as "start with the end in mind". This is such an evident approach to problem-solving it's painful how often we don't actually use it. Need another analogy to illustrate it? How about travelling, on foot, to a place you've never been, without planning your journey and realising, after wearing out your shoes and a really long swim, that you probably should have booked a seat on a plane?

Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

We've got to be pretty disciplined to not get carried away with making things. I've been guilty of this many times; getting all excited and rushing off to create a brand new training package, when there was a simpler (and often cheaper) approach. So we need to focus first on an imaginary future where our problem no longer exists and consider what we needed to change - not yet concerning ourselves with the how - to get us there. For starters, is it even a people problem to begin with? It's easy when our people aren't performing to optimum levels to think that they must need training. And yet, haven't they already been trained? To paraphrase Homer Simpson; "Ah, training; the cause of, and solution to, all work performance problems."

Knowledge, skills and behaviour

I could write at length about the importance of conducting a thorough root cause analysis (and I probably will in another post) but for now, let's assume we have at least identified that our problem stems from our people; we still need to identify why. An old but effective approach is to identify the Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours (competencies) needed to do the job, and measure the person(s) performance against those. Once we identify the gaps, we can begin to design a solution, and what that looks like will depend heavily on whether we need to provide knowledge, develop skills, or improve behaviour. Then, having identified what needs to be solved, we can begin to consider how we go about it.