Time To Plan Your Training

[tconnor]

Management Tips #176
Time To Plan Your Training


"Expecting different results from repeated actions and behavior is a mild form of insanity." Yogi Berra has been attributed to this profound and thought-provoking quote. Let's look at it from the perspective of an organization and it's performance.

One of the most common requests from employees from their management is the need for more, better, more timely and more relevant training no matter what the type or content. Over the years I have observed numerous organizations and their training philosophy. It is clear to me that most organizations need to:

• Do more training
• Do it more frequently
• Do it with commitment
• Do it with follow-up.
• And do it with accountability.

I have been preaching for years that an organization should: stay inside for its technical training and go outside the organization for everything else. I know nothing about the nuances and critical aspects of what most of my clients do on a day to day basis. If people need better skills and competence in any of these areas I guarantees someone in the organization is qualified to teach these skills. However, when it comes to training in the areas of:

• Sales skills
• Management skills
• Customer service skills
• Communication skills
• Planning techniques
• Negotiating skills

you are best served by using an outside resource who understands; your business, your culture, the trends impacting your business success and your employees. Why?

First. Let me give you a brief illustration. Let's say that the group who need more training and skill development is senior management. Let's also suppose that your training manager meets with the President and CEO and says something like, "I feel that the people in this organization who need the most training are the CEO, President and VP's. I want to schedule an in-house training program for you all."

You can imagine the potential response from the executives to this statement.

Let's also assume that on the day of the first session the President is busy and so doesn't show. The training manager walks into his/her office and says, "I have scheduled this program for you why didn't you attend?" Sure..... Get my point, an employee who is further down the food chain and needs the job will unlikely have either of these conversations. Yet, the training need persists.

Second, I have heard this more times than I can count in my 30 year career. "We need training. Our managers, salespeople - whomever - really need some better skills. But, right now we just don't have the cash. We just bought a new computer system and we need to redecorate the offices." Far fetched... not at all.

Here is the key to remember. The cost of not investing in your employees effectiveness is far greater than the cost of doing it. You pay a price either way - continued poor performance, mistakes, lost business, redundancy, mixed communication messages or the investment in improving these. My experience tells me that the investment in doing training it is always significantly less than the cost of not doing it.

Now is the time to plan and budget for the skill development of your employees. The price of waiting is too high, trust me.