A colleague commented to me recently that one of my clients needed a “Dinosaur version and a 21st Century version” of a particular ERP softare training course. Indeed, the audience for the course was as diverse as I’ve seen in almost every respect: generationally, culturally, politically, and in their level of computer literacy and years of experience with the organization.

This was an instructor led course and the content was primarily conceptual. The client had tried for a balance between traditional lecture and interactive exercises and games with the intent of trying to address a variety of learning styles during the one day course.

So, combine a widely diverse audience with a course presenting content in a variety of ways and, what is the feedback from the particpants? Overwhelmingly, about half of the particpants wanted more lecture and far fewer exercises and games and the other half wanted less lecture and more exercises and games. Interestingly, (or maybe not) the divide between these two groups was not so much related to individual learning styles as is was to age and years of experience with the organization. So, at least for this organization, the generation gap is the biggest one of all.

Thus the comment about the dinosuars and the 21st century. But here’s the problem, a big part of the reason for making these people sit through a full day course was the get them to interact, share experiences, and learn from each other. Having two versions of the course would not help to achieve that goal. So what’s the solution? How can we avoid a classroom experience where half the class is bored and disengaged from the lectures, and the other half is annoyed at the forced participation in interactive exercises and games, which they see as a waste of time? How do we get to a level of interaction that is reasonably comfortable for everyone? I don’t have the answer yet. But, I’m working on it.

As I’ve been working with several customers over the past couple of weeks, the question keeps coming up: what are some good ways to sustain the impact of training after the initial classroom sessions are done?

I did a little online research and talked with an eLearning expert, Patty Stillwell, who I’m working with on several training projects. Here are some great ways to use technology to keep the initial excitement of in-person training alive while sharing business wins:

1. Give business managers exercises and surveys that they can push to learners using a survey tool. Learners complete and submit the survey, and results are shared with managers. This is a great way to measure classroom retention, ongoing change and provide recognition to those learners who find great business applications.

2. Create a wiki or blog for learners to share thoughts, ideas, new ways to use the training, etc. Encourage learning leaders who have successfully applied the training concepts to initiate the “dialogue” and support participation by others.

3. Implement a private channel for downloadable video or audio of lectures, recorded conference calls, presentations, etc. Utilize format-neutral options that work with a wide range of devices.
Develop short podcasts to share scheduled information updates or high priority notices (trends, competition, etc.)

4. Use your website to offer new tools and training updates with downloadable documents
Conduct Webex meetings and online discussions to foster collaboration between groups that may not otherwise interact.

5. Use Second-Life environments to expand learners’ understanding of changes throughout the company, supply chain and customer base.

Everybody knows good training is essential to the success of enterprise software implementations, right? Well, if that’s true, why do so many companies fail to budget for it sufficiently?

Once a typical ERP project is about to go-live, chances are it’s over budget. Unfortunately, just prior to go-live is also about the time that:

- Senior management and business unit leaders start asking how everyone is going to get trained.
- The project team starts asking where the money for training is going to come from.

To make matters worse, the software vendor’s sales pitch is starting to sound, at best, like an optimistic version of the truth: “Don’t worry, our software is so intuitive you won’t really need to add much for training.”

To help those caught in the trap of shrinking budgets and expanding training needs, here’s a list 10 ways to stretch a training budget.

1. Start early. Request system access for the training team months in advance, not weeks. The last thing you want to do at crunch time is figure out how to access for another half-dozen team members.

2. Insist that your software vendor and integration partner construct a stable training environment so that training developers don’t spend time (and money) debugging untested software.

3. Get virtual private network (VPN) access for training developers and remote employees involved in acceptance testing. This will save thousands on travel and living expenses.

4. Use web-based training (WBT) as much as possible. A solid curriculum of asynchronous WBT modules, and synchronous eLearning (webcasts) can greatly reduce – or even eliminate – the need for in-person classroom training.

5. If you out-source WBT development, provide your vendor with corporate standards for online material and access to your LMS for compatibility testing. Do this early. Don’t consume budget on last-minute hassles with LMS connectivity.

6. Manage all class logistics from enrollment through room setup and materials reproduction internally. This is administrative work – don’t pay external consultants for busy work.

7. Document the job roles of system users and the tasks they will perform in the system. Provide your training developers with flowcharts or use cases that delineate job roles and process boundaries.

8. Assign one or more experts from the development/ configuration team to answer questions about the details of your customizations so that your training team or vendor can quickly document and prepare accurate scenarios. Don’t make them waste their time searching for answers.

9. Provide the training team with realistic training data for use in training classes – don’t make them spend their time searching for data.

10. Develop a team of super users who can attend classes (or stop in at scheduled intervals) to answer process-specific questions that might stump the stand-up trainers.

I know what you might be thinking: many of these items don’t seem like traditional cost-cutting measures. Assigning a member of the development team to training, for example (#8), sounds like a cost increase.

And it’s true, in the short run, some of these items might actually cost money. The trouble is, shortcuts in these areas will end up costing the company thousands – or millions – in lost productivity, errors, and re-work. (The term penny-wise and pound-foolish comes to mind).

In the end, it’s not just about the cost of training – it’s about cost of training’s impact on the organization.

Dozens of big companies have started running “serious play” workshops, in which participants construct Lego models to represent business challenges or opportunities. From an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the other day, “Lego Facilitator” Lewis Pinault says:

“We use Lego as a tool that enhances psychological flow. Lego takes people out of their usual comfort zones.”

Psychological flow: good. Lego-free workshop: bad.

Seriously though, it does make sense. Any activity that results in participants setting aside their conscious egos seems likely to produce more creative ideas more quickly.

Another Lego Facilitator, Robert Rasmussen, says the program is effective because it results in 100 percent participation from 100 percent of the group 100 percent of the time.

In general, Rasmussen said Lego is rare in that it functions as a universal language understood by people regardless of their age, race, gender, or culture.

Again, sounds like a cool idea, but I didn’t think it was new. In fact, during the 10 years or so that I worked for a big company, I attended three or four training events in which Legos played a prominent role.

Today, Lego facilitators like Pinault help clients in two-day training sessions at a cost of $7,000.

I guess it was only a matter of time before some consultants got hold of a Good Idea and turned it into a Good and Billable Idea.

Photo from Digger Digger Dogstar.

Karl Kapp put together some nice guidance on software training last week in his post Tips for Teaching Software to Others.

Of course, since teaching software to others is pretty much at the core of our business, I couldn’t resist leaving a terribly long-winded comment, which I will excerpt below.

But first, I want to point out another comment in the thread, by Dave Ferguson that I absolutely love:

With newcomers (to an application, or to computers generally), I also try to avoid alternative-itis, a disease pandemic among enthusiasts. Many actions have a menu route, a keyboard-shortcut route, and sometimes a mouse-action route. Telling someone three ways to save doesn’t usually facilitate learning. Mostly, it increases cognitive load.

While Dave makes a lot of other great points, this one has always bugged me. I’ve often said that software training courses should follow this sequence: 1. Get trained; 2. Use it for 30 days; 3. Get trained on all the hot-keys and shortcuts!

Finally, this probably violates about 25 blogospheric codes of conduct, but I am actually going to quote myself from Karl’s comment box. Here are some of my own tips for training software to others:

1. Require pre-work. A couple of concise web-based intros (or quick Captivate modules, or even Powerpoint slides), prior to arriving in class can yield a huge return in terms of what you can accomplish in the classroom. This kind of pre-work serves two purposes:

A) It brings widely disparate skill levels to a base level of understanding (logging on, basic navigation, simple searches). This is a huge time-saver in class, and greatly appreciated by faster learners.

B) Done right, it can reinforce for students why it matters that they learn the software. There’s nothing worse as a trainer than having to “justify-on-the-fly” the employer’s rationale for moving to the new software platform in the first place.

2) Place every software function in the context of a business process. This requires genuine preparation on the part of the trainer, and of course the curriculum developer. Software training that focuses on clicks and screens (like most “out of the box” curricula) loses steam every time. Start training people on how to do their jobs, and everyone gets engaged.

Remember when you first set out to learn Excel (or Lotus)? I remember pulling up that first blank spreadsheet and thinking to myself, “what the h*** am I supposed to do with this?” Once I had a problem to solve, though, I was hooked.

3) Spend way more time than you think teaching on-line help. I know I’m just reiterating your point, but it’s such a good one that I think it deserves repeating. Most software learners won’t have a need or an opportunity to put their learning to work for days, weeks, or even months after class. By they time they need it, they’ve forgotten it.

If classroom training gives learners a proverbial fish (allowing them to eat, or remember, for a day), then teaching the on-line help gives them a handy, if cliché, fish-pole.

In any given field of study, there is Perfection and Reality.

Let’s say you’re talking with a recent PhD graduate in Sub-Molecular Omni-Buzz (2.0), and you have a simple question.

You: “How do I get my sub-molecules to buzz, omni-wise, 2.0 times?”

PhD: “Well, technically, you’re supposed to read the manual, close all other applications, don your safety glasses, and most important, do not attempt to rock the machine.”

You: “Hmm, that sounds pretty complicated.”

PhD: “Actually, you can just unplug the Omni-Moleculator, wait 10 seconds, and plug it back in.”

Clark Aldrich has a great post about the difference between Math as a Perfect science vs. Math in the Real World. It’s true, Clark says, that one and one equals two.

1 + 1 always equals 2. Isn’t that perfection? It seems like it. [But] if I combine two piles of hay, what do I get? One pile of hay!

The same goes for Training in the Real World.

When companies do soft skills training, for example, they can apply Perfect World principles. They can use the right blend of study, practice, discourse, and testing. They can even throw in a wiki and a podcast and everybody’s thrilled.

Training in support of change management on a major change, like a software implementation, is closer to the Real World (Sorry, HR training departments; I’m exaggerating for effect).

For example: Company A is installing Big Hairy Software package XYZ (or should it be called ERP?). They’re spending $2 million on the software, $8 million on their Big 4 system integrator, and taking 20 people out of their regular jobs to work full-time on the project for a year.

So, with a monthly burn-rate of $1 million or more, training takes on a new flavor. Is there really time to let learners practice (what the heck is the ROI on practice, anyway?). A Wiki? That would only facilitate rumors and mis-information (or would it?). The fact is, we don’t know.

Of course, I know that theory has to run a few years ahead of practice. It has to be perfected in the lab before it can work in the real world.

The trick is to somehow use a solid, blended learning approach in the context of a costly, time-crunched change effort. That might mean backing off on the Perfection a bit, and striving for a tolerable Reality.

I think it’s really great when long-held beliefs are proven false - especially those created by “experts” in a given field. Usually, the experts propagate these beliefs because they cast a shroud of mystery over their industry. This way, unsuspecting clients can be reminded that they should “not try this at home.” Instead, the client should hire said expert to explain it all to them.

The latest is the “Cone of Experience,” developed in 1946 by Edgar Dale. You know the one; it tells us that people only retain 5% of what they read, 10% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, etc.

Will Thalheimer wrote a series of posts last year in which he confidently debunked the Cone of Experience. He added an update just recently.

It always did seem to me that this theory was a little too neat and tidy, but the Cone has been around in training circles for so long that I never really questioned it.

What other chunks of “established knowledge” do you suppose are guiding our decisions? What other theories do we espouse as the Truth, without enough data to support them? Finally, how much money are we telling our clients to spend on these theories. Probably a good idea to question these always, because you never know when the real truth may emerge.

Check out this handy collection of learning-related sites, assembled by by Karl Kapp and Steve Woodruff. It’s sorted into categories like Training and Education, eLearning, Corporate Blogs, and more. This Pageflakes site seems like it could be especially useful for those new to the industry or considering a career in one of the learning-related disciplines.

Good article in Chief Learning Officer magazine about the return on investment in training:

Contrary to what the “learning ROI” movement has said in recent years, C-level managers are less concerned about learning investments’ financial outcomes and more preoccupied in obtaining nonfinancial performance outcomes. In more direct terms, they want to see how learning and development delivers results in relation to organizational objectives. (Link to article here).

Unfortunately, some companies still try to justify training from a purely financial perspective.

It’s true that training - especially when it’s related to large software projects - can be expensive. But, as the old saying goes, how much do you suppose it costs to employ people who haven’t been trained?