The Opsimath

Resolutions for (Good) Trainers

Here's my suggestions for the top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for Business and Management Trainers:

1. I am a lifelong learner, therefore I will learn from other people - include any people that I am meant to be training
2. I will not be arrogant enough to think that I know all there is to know, so I commit to using the phrase "I don't know"
3. I will treat all delegates with fairness and tolerance, seeking first to know, to empathise
4. I will always seek to try new ways of delivery - stepping outside my comfort zone
5. I will not become dependent on visual media such as PowerPoint, and I will not use it as an instrument of boredom
6. I will check the arrangements, the logistics and my materials in advance - not taking anything for granted
7. I will seek to ask questions, in a way that will aid the learning of my delegates
8. I will try to understand what people are trying to express and not just listen to the words spoken
9. I will prioritise my own development to ensure that I 'sharpen the saw'
10. I commit to adding some value to the experience of the delegates attending the course I am leading

 

Other suggestions are welcome...

Why cheap training leaves a nasty taste...

Our company, pearcemayfield, operates in quite a crowded marketplace these days. A few years' ago there were fewer  organisations accredited to deliver training in PRINCE2 and other related subjects - now there are far more.

Some have said that this means that training in PRINCE2 has now been 'commoditised' - that it is now a generic product. Any PRINCE2 course is like any other PRINCE2 course.

This has, in turn, led to a simplification of differentiation - they are all the same, so the only variable is, you guessed it marketing students, price.

Some of our competitors even go so far as to claim that they “will not be beaten on price”.

Cheap training it is then.

Cheap on so many levels, because cheapness tends to stick around. Just like quality, except that it is just the opposite of quality.

Consider these facts:

•Over three quarters of organisations experience talent retention problems.
•Changing workforce demographics means that leadership and management skills are in short supply.
•Around two thirds of organisations find it difficult to identify, develop, engage and retain their talented people

Is the answer to that cheap training?

Do you want to put your management talent on a training course that is packed to the door with other 'pile em high' delegates; a course on which they are given poor quality training materials that lack any inspiration whatsoever; with a trainer whose sole objective is to get them through an end of course test? Would you want this sort of training?

Neither would I.

A cheap solution is the shortest of all solutions. Always.

The only thing that endures is the nasty taste that is left in the mouth.

Training in PRINCE2 is NOT a commodity. There are plenty of ways to discriminate. There are many measures of quality.

If you are considering training for yourself, your team, or your organisation, then please look beyond the 'price' headlines. Please, look beyond cheap.

Quality Training and more on Sheep Dipping

Not so long ago I wrote a blog post Stop the sheep dipping about how training has tended to become a commodity.

My colleague lubaid Khan has recently posted this post on the pearcemayfield blog:

Training? One wonders if we’ve lost sight of the inherent value this word represents.

The Oxford Dictionary defines training as ‘The action of teaching a person or animal a particular skill or type of behaviour’

The question to ask would be, if you herd 20 people in a room and run a set of PowerPoint slides for 8 hours a day, does it serve the purpose? Is that the human form of sheep-dipping?

In all honesty, should we expect a change of behaviour, orientation or enhanced skill levels as a result of such an exercise?

I doubt it. And we, at pearcemayfield believe that we do it differently - the right way.

I’d rather not be too salesy but just to furnish some context, let me share a recent incident. This is a quote from one of our Training Consultants:

“One of our delegates this week on a PRINCE2 course has flown from Germany upon the recommendation of a colleague, who, himself, came to England to take his course with pearcemayfield at the beginning of the year. His recommendation was so strong that it justified the travel expense, he confessed”

I’m convinced if it were just a set of PowerPoints we ran throughout the day, he might’ve been better served using a local training organisation.

We however, prefer to function by our values, one of which is excellence and creativity.

As for our delegate, he chose a training experience of a different kind to that served up in many training rooms this week...

The power of the visual

Many teachers of presentation skills will quote the fact that the communication of a message is composed of 55% visual - images, posture, body language, dress, facial expression etc - and of 38% vocal impact - tonality, volume, rhythm etc. (The remaining 7% accounts for the actual words spoken.)

While some will argue with the actual percentages, the undeniable fact is that the visual aspects of any presentation have tremendous power.

Communicators need to be aware of this, and then carefully consider how to best use the visual to improve the impact of their message.

(It must be stressed that simply using a tool such as PowerPoint does not count as a good use of the visual.)

As a training company, pearcemayfield are always disappointed to hear of training courses that consist of delegates sitting through hours of lectures complete with literally hundreds of slides, which in turn are made up entirely of bullet-pointed text after bullet-pointed text. It brings the industry into disrepute!

It's boring - and we have banned boring.

At last week's Best Practice Showcase in London we ran a series of workshops, and in order to bring out the best in the groups and the sessions, we used a strongly visual approach. Here's my colleague, Richard Rose, looking very pleased with the results (although for the sake of full disclosure, it should be said that this drawing was the work of my other colleague, Patrick Mayfield).

The power of the visual cannot be over-stated. The next time you are on a course or at a presentation, why not critique it for its use of the visual...?

Stop the sheep dipping!

You may know that I work for a specialist management training company called pearcemayfield. I say specialist because we are not a big 'wetrainanycourse.com' company. We specialise.

Well, as you ask, we specialise in:

• PRINCE2 Training Courses
• MSP® Training Courses
• Change Management Training Courses
• P30 Training Courses
• Management of Risk Training Courses
• OBASHI Training Courses

Now in recent times, many of these topics have become rather 'commoditised' - as there are a number of companies offering the same, fairly standard, courses.

(Now actually, they are not the same. Click here to read an excellent article by Patrick Mayfield on how to choose a PRINCE2 course.)

But that's not my point. I am concerned with the tendency of many organisations to 'sheep dip' their staff. The indiscriminate training of numbers of people on the same course without any thought to the business needs being met (or not met) by that training.

Staff are dipped in the same murky water, they come out with bits of knowledge hanging off them - but it soon dries up and drops off.

It was immensely encouraging recently to be talking with a client about their training needs and being able to explain what an MSP Practitioner Course was, and then to say (in a Chris Tarrant voice) "But we don't want to give you that..."

We went on to discuss exactly what they did need. Training that is targeted and focused, not broad and aimless. Training that will be meaningful to the people involved. training that will result in real world changes in behaviour - actual learning outcomes.

That's what I mean when I say we specialise!

Stop sending people on PRINCE2 Training courses...

... that is, unless you are truly serious about improving your organisation’s project management culture.

As part of my role within pearcemayfield, I get the occasional pleasure of delivering PRINCE2 training courses. It is almost guaranteed that at some point within the course we are going to have a discussion that includes a phrase like, “if only our senior management team could understand this...”

I was part of the team that developed the latest version of PRINCE2 (launched in 2009) and at the time it was recognised that one of the major areas of concern in the world of project management was the lack of understanding that many project boards/corporate management teams/directors had about leading projects. That situation has changed little.

This lack of appreciation of what is involved in successful project management leads to project managers and project team members being ‘sent’ on PRINCE2 training courses. The aim is that by training ‘them’ all the problems will be solved.

The reality is that on a PRINCE2 training course delegates are exposed to current best practice in project management and then can easily see the gap between what they are learning and the present reality of the workplace to which they will shortly be returning. At times their frustration is all too evident.

Of course, I do not want people to stop attending PRINCE2 training. It is an important part of how we can change the world of project management for the better. What I want is for senior managers to become more open in their recognition of the need to change their behaviour. This will mean addressing such things as

· Direction-setting

· Delegation, and

· Decision-making

In this way, project managers returning to their workplace, complete with PRINCE2 certificate, will be able to apply all their learning in a supportive, best practice environment.

Tests and exams - do they get in the way of good training?

I work for a management training company called pearcemayfield, and as part of quite a number of our courses we offer accredited examinations so that professionals can gain qualifications in topics such as project, programme and change management (eg PRINCE2).

This means that during those courses there is the need to allocate a certain amount of time and effort to preparing delegates for those exams. This will include discussions about question style and exam format; sample papers; and tests and quizzes in the style of exam questions.

Does all that 'get in the way'?

Would the training be better, more interesting and more relevant if there were no exams waiting for delegates at the end of the week?

Some would say that it does interfere, that it does distract from the real learning experience. I fully understand that, and I have seen instances where exam-based courses have been entirely the wrong solution for individuals and groups.

However, used correctly, testing can be a truly important part of the learning process. Just as long as it is understood that getting answers wrong in tests is a step within the learning process - that failure is actually 'OK'.

(This is something that a previous post touched on - see Diana Laufenberg comments that learning must include an element of failure in order to be effective.)

I like tests, quizzes, mock papers and the like not because they are an easy training option (often used quite lazily) but because they present a platform for real learning. A good, learner-centric training facilitator can create energetic and creative learning experiences with them. We should not see a mock exam as something that simply 'prepares delegates for the real exam', but that instead is an integral part of the learning that is taking place.

So if we meet up on a course that I am leading, be prepared for that test. Question number one ...

Can you help me with an experiment?

I do not normally use this blog in any way to simply advertise products that our company pearcemayfield is selling. However, on this occasion I am doing so as a form of experiment.

I want to see if social media does really work.

So here's the idea. We have a Practitioner course in Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) running during the week commencing 31st January in central London, UK. The normal list price is £1,445. I am offering three places on this course at £1,045 - a saving of an impressive £400.

Now you might not be interested/available/requiring such a course, but you might know someone who is. Perhaps you would like to pass it on and make it, as they say, viral...

All anyone interested needs to do is to email their details to me at john.edmonds@pearcemayfield.com and we'll take it from there.

As they also say, first come, first served.

More knowledge - where's the application?

Following my recent post about tomatoes, knowledge and wisdom, I read this on the BBC website (the informative QI section):

Tomatoes, as everyone knows, are fruits not vegetables. Fewer people know that avocados, pumpkins, coconuts, cucumbers, peas, beans (green as well as all other beans), peppers, corn, aubergines, squash and all kinds of nuts are also fruits.

So, now we have more knowledge, but to what end?

Living, as we do, in this age of information, knowledge like this assaults us from all sides - but what should we do with it? Is it all pointless unless it makes a difference to our lives?

It's a challenge that we face at pearcemayfield when working with clients in delivering training and consultancy for their staff. Is it enough that we should deliver a training course, give out masses of information (we have masses available!) but ultimately leave the delegates in the same (if not worse) position than they were in before?

That is why we use ''GAPI' Action Planning. Following 4 steps, it recognises that good learning is not about the acquisition of knowledge alone. We need to understand Goals, Actions and Practice steps before we consider the underpinning knowledge (Information) required - hence GAPI.

For a little more about our philosophy towards training take a look at this on our website.

We think the knowledge/wisdom debate is a really serious issue for organisations today, and we take our role in that very seriously.

Knowledge or Wisdom - what is in short supply?

One of my favourite quotations:

"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad"

A little look around the Internet shows us that many companies are keen to sell us knowledge - in fact at pearcemayfield, we find that many of our competitors use the word 'knowledge' in their company names.

Knowledge is, of course, very important, and yes we do need it.

But how much more do we need wisdom? Take a look at this definition:

"Wisdom is the deep understanding of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to choose or act to consistently produce the optimum results with a minimum of time and energy. Wisdom is the ability to optimally (effectively and efficiently) apply perceptions and knowledge and so produce the desired results."

Think about applying that definition to the work on our projects, programmes and changes, and let's ask ourselves just how much wisdom we see at work there?

I believe that there is a lot of knowledge around, but that we are seeing a short supply of wisdom. So when you are next recruiting, looking to appoint a consultant, attempting to find a good training provider, why not use, and look for, a little wisdom...?