In my inaugural post, I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss the relationship between Change and Training. As the weeks and months progress, I plan to address both subjects separately when appropriate, and still bring them together when the time is right.
As a long time Trainer (20+ Years! Yikes!) one would think that I would have learned all of the ways to craft the training process and product to bridge the gaps between virtually any desired behaviour and the participant's existing skills and knowledge sets. It is true, I can pretty much dance the dance of training delivery to any tune a given corporate piper may play.
However, in the past several years I have made it my personal 'mission', as some might call it, to teach those who purchase and plan training that there are times to train, and times to do something else. I have often framed this concept in terms of the aforementioned 'skills gap.' If the participants aren't currently doing something that they need to be doing, then training may be the correct response.
The key to being able to develop training to bridge a skills gap is the Measurable Objective. If you haven't got one, then what you are doing may or may not be training.
There is a larger picture that training must fit into. While a needs analysis may reveal what the missing skills and knowledge are amongst the intended participants, it does little to address the cause of the gap. Essentially, training without the big picture is treating the symptom without understanding the disease which caused it.
This is where understanding Change Management comes in. While Change Management focuses on the future, preparing for an expected shift in the direction a business has taken, there is some additional value in applying the tools of Change to an existing problem. When a skills gap appears, performance dips, errors increase and the people that you once counted on to perform are no longer reliable, training may very well be the way to bring them back up. A series of needs analysis will go a long way to focusing the training by finding out what specific skills are missing.
What these things won't tell you is why. Why did performance dip? What changed? Using the tools of Change Management, skills gaps, the symptoms, can be traced back to their source. Having identified the source or sources of the change, we gain a far greater understanding of their impacts throughout the organization. We can trace the change of processes, procedures, and corporate attitudes to changes in behaviour further down the line. Then, and only then, can we be confident in selecting training as the proper response to change.
As a long time Trainer (20+ Years! Yikes!) one would think that I would have learned all of the ways to craft the training process and product to bridge the gaps between virtually any desired behaviour and the participant's existing skills and knowledge sets. It is true, I can pretty much dance the dance of training delivery to any tune a given corporate piper may play.
However, in the past several years I have made it my personal 'mission', as some might call it, to teach those who purchase and plan training that there are times to train, and times to do something else. I have often framed this concept in terms of the aforementioned 'skills gap.' If the participants aren't currently doing something that they need to be doing, then training may be the correct response.
The key to being able to develop training to bridge a skills gap is the Measurable Objective. If you haven't got one, then what you are doing may or may not be training.
This is where understanding Change Management comes in. While Change Management focuses on the future, preparing for an expected shift in the direction a business has taken, there is some additional value in applying the tools of Change to an existing problem. When a skills gap appears, performance dips, errors increase and the people that you once counted on to perform are no longer reliable, training may very well be the way to bring them back up. A series of needs analysis will go a long way to focusing the training by finding out what specific skills are missing.
What these things won't tell you is why. Why did performance dip? What changed? Using the tools of Change Management, skills gaps, the symptoms, can be traced back to their source. Having identified the source or sources of the change, we gain a far greater understanding of their impacts throughout the organization. We can trace the change of processes, procedures, and corporate attitudes to changes in behaviour further down the line. Then, and only then, can we be confident in selecting training as the proper response to change.
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