That was what my father always told me and he was right. Learning by doing is not a revolutionary notion. It first promoted by the educational philosopher John Dewey in the 1920s. Learning by doing takes time and who has time to spare these days? This blog is for those of you who want to develop content right the first time.
Everyone wants to increase the interactivity of their training. Here are 10 ideas to start with.
Most training is accomplished on the job; in department stores, banks, and other non-retail establishments. Jane, a more senior employee, shows John how to perform a task, shares a few words of wisdom, and later watches John do it himself. It makes perfect sense, but there are several pitfalls with OJT.
All to often organizations believe that having a technical writer jot down a few notes or asking a product manager to create a PowerPoint presentations is what content development is all about.
I see content development as a far larger piece of the pie. It is analyzing a business problem, determining the behavior an organization wishes to change and how they wish to change it. Content development is arranging time with the right people and ferreting out information from business partners and subject matter experts. And of course, content development includes designing impactful instructional experiences, crafting tools to guide those experiences, and measuring the results.
Do you agree? I would enjoy hearing from you.
You just opened your consulting firm and are ready to hit the phones and find your first client. Before you start dialing for dollars, answer the questions below to make sure you focus your efforts on those people whom you can best communicate with you, who you can help, and who can help you.
Who?
Who have you worked well with in the past (such as human resource executives or manufacturing managers)?
Do these people have the need and money to purchase the products and services you offer? If not, who does?
Can the people who you are accustomed to talking with recommend you to those people?
What?
What concerns the people who buy your services or recommend you to others (such as reduce cycle-time, cut costs, increased market share, visibility in the marketplace, or enhance customer service)?
What problems are they facing (such as increased regulations, lower profit margins, eroding markets, foreign competition, globalization, or government regulation)?
What are their wishes, hopes, and dreams (such as create impact or secure their own job)?
What do they like (such as security, cutting-edge technology, breakthrough ideas, less involvement, or greater involvement)?
What do they dislike (such as risk or lack of control)?
When?
When do your prospective clients purchase the services and products you provide? Do they buy it at the beginning of their fiscal year or at the beginning of each quarter?
When do they plan these purchases? When are they receptive to considering new outside resources and products? When do they make these decisions?
How?
How do they buy what you are selling? How do they like to interact with outside resources? Do they first like to determine how to meet their needs on their own, and then consider outside resources, or do they involve outside resources in identifying their needs and determining solutions?
Do they have established relationships with other consultants?
How is that going? Really! All relationships have good and bad.
What do they need that they are currently not receiving from their established relationships (such as fresh ideas, cutting-edge technologies, or dynamic virtual presentations)?
Now that you have a good idea of the who, what, when and how of selling, you are ready to begin locating clients, which we will cover this in our next issue.
A senior executive asked me what his company’s training department does and does he really need all of those people. I answered that if you have to ask that question, they probably aren’t doing their job well and you may be better off without them.
Having been in the training and performance technology world long enough, I have noticed that the pendulum swings between creating a centralized training department to optimize resources and reduce expenses and creating business unit training groups to increase their alignment and responsiveness. When times and good and money is flush, companies go for smaller, more aligned, and more responsive business unit training groups. When money is tight, they move to the corporate centralized model.
Neither model is perfect. One tends to not be as aligned and the other creates some duplication and waste.
Which training model do you feel works best and why? What has been your experience? What have you done to make it work well?
I look forward to hearing from you.
