“If You Know Your Party’s Extension, Dial it at Any Time”
I was calling my mobile phone provider a few days ago, and, not surprisingly, found myself immediately in the automatic messaging system. After patiently waiting through the usual friendly welcome and instructions, I heard the words, “If you know your party’s extension, dial it at any time.” It was not the first time I had heard those words. I hear them often in these messaging systems. Since I did not know my party’s extension, I had to wait for an operator. While I was waiting, I was struck by one word – “dial”. How long has it been since you “dialed” a phone? Months? Likely many years. Why then do so many recording still use the antiquated word?
This made me think about training. How many antiquated theories, traditions, and methods do we still hang on to. In his inaugural address, President Obama talked about removing ourselves from the dogma of worn out traditions and grasp the concepts and techniques of the “new generation”.
I am writing this from the international American Society for Training and Development conference in Washington D.C. where hundreds of workshops are being delivered to thousands of eager learning professionals. Many of the sessions are rehashing of old theories. Others present new ideas that hold little practical value. Still others present new ideas that, if implemented, would bring about wonderful results. The problem is that it is difficult to tell which are the valuable ones.
But before deciding to implement new methods, you might want to consider retiring the old. There are several ways to do this – some strategic, and some tactical. I will address the strategic issues in this article; the tactical next month. The strategic ones are the biggies, and ones we work with frequently. Examples are traditional but outdated dogmas such as, “training events will lead to positive results”, “our job in training is to deliver training programs”, “we can’t control participants’ on-the-job behaviors or business results, so we will leave that to the business to worry about.”
These traditions are seriously behind the times, like ‘dialing’ the phone. Much of our work at SMR and SMR USA is about how to extend the definition of training and learning from the classroom and computer into the business. Understanding and implementing the four levels – in particular, Levels 3 (on-the-job application) and Level 4 (business results) should be included in your chain of evidence – demonstrating the value you bring to the bottom line.
The more work we do, the more we find that learning professionals are not so challenged by how to develop and implement evaluation methods across the four levels, but how to make a business case to senior managers, line managers, and even training colleagues to actually get the chance to do so. This is easier said than done. Often when learning leaders address business partners and ask, “do you have time to discuss your business needs so we can help you meet your needs”, they often are met with, “go back to where you belong!” Meaning – “don’t bother us, just deliver the training programs we request”. This is a primary example of “dialing the phone”.
Here are some suggestions we at SMR have to help you get past the phone dialing mentality and into the world of becoming a true strategic business partner:
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Ask for a meeting with your key business partners and present to them the research that shows that 70% of training failure comes from a lack of opportunity, coaching, and follow-up after training events. (If you need this information, email me). |
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Meet with your partners and get their permission and support to conduct an impact study. This is where you select a key program (high potential, high investment) and run the full business partnership model with it, including reinforcement, and measurement at each of the four Kirkpatrick Levels of Evaluation (again, contact me for help with this). |
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Provide to key business leaders the opportunity to hear testimonials from past training participants that will testify as to the importance of training and managerial follow-up. |
Good luck with this. It is time to stop talking about “dialing” our phones and start becoming true, 21st century strategic business partners.
SMR USA's Public Sessions, 2009
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This 2-day program has been officially sanctioned by the International Society for Process Improvement (ISPI) and is worth 12 ISPI credits toward re-certification.
Please click here for more details on SMR USA's Public Sessions.
