Rol:
At 12:22 14/9/96 EDT, you wrote:
>Replying to LO9923 -- was "Intro -- Brian Wheeler"
>By the way, the practice needs to happen immediately after the class. If
>nothing happens within 3 days, then very likely nothing will happen. And
>management needs to know up front what will be expected of them.
I am keenly interested in your source(s) for the "3 day" figure, even if
it's empirical.
As a rule, we have to press clients to make time and resources available
for trainees to embed their training so that it will have a measurable
benefit for the individuals and the corporation. Without a controlled
opportunity to practice and build skills and confidence, most trainees
will not take the risk of trying to apply their classroom tools lest they
fail in the eyes of their peers and superiors -- the class is soon
forgotten save for the raised cynicism of the value of, and the time
committed to, training.
The results are bad enough when the "graduates" simply use the workshop
output for their internal use, but become far less productive when the
graduates are expected to train others. Good trainers do not spring out
of a class they need time to make the materials their own, build their
skills (especially people skills), steer projects through their corporate
environment, and learn to deal with the unexpected (which always happens).
More senior management is comissive by not explicitly expecting the tools
of the class to be used and the results to show up in the bottom line of
the firm.
We have variations on a theme to embed the course work, the preferred
being the "Basic course" immediately followed by a "Train the trainer"
process using real time training on the client's production problems using
a series of three workshops: Workshop One: we facilitate while trainees
observe; Workshop Two: we and the trainees co-facilitate; Workshop Three:
trainees facilitate and we observe. The client receives immediate results
to production/operational problems while the trainers have the opportunity
to "learn with a safety net" and improve their performance.
Second best is to extend the basic course. For example a two to three day
basis course is extended to four or five days to include role-playing and
greater interactivity between course leader and trainees. This approach is
OK, but it does not allow a trainee to learn to manage their time, their
team's time and insure that a successful outcome is obtained within their
workshop window.
Third best is adding one day to the basic course to help a project team
start to rough out their project(s) and set up action lists. (Securing
meaningful management support and resource allocation is a perineal topic
of this day.) We do much work for one automotive OEM and this "built-in
"extra day" is all that they can "afford" and it is this day for which the
class is supremely grateful. We've lost track of the times we've heard
comments such as, "Without this day it would have been a month before we
could have gathered/rescheduled the team back together again." And, of
course, in a month the course would have been cold and virtually useless.
There are other approaches that we weave in and out but this gives you the
idea. Back to your 3-day figure, we're always on the lookout for anything
that helps us convince management of what's needed for their folks to be
successful.
Best regards, Gordon Housworth
Intellectual Capital Group
ghidra@modulor.com
Tel: 810-626-1310
--Gordon Housworth <ghidra@modulor.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>