Much of what I do is change management, and as a result I’m often involved in developing trainings and helping others develop effective training. Here’s an experience that I have experienced in every workplace:
Leadership discussion: The north site is under performing on their immunization metric. After reviewing the data, we think the Medical Assistants are not using their tools in the most efficient manner.
Leadership Discussion: The Medical Assistants need to be retrained.
There was probably more back and forth, but the conclusion that I see leaders jump to over and over again is training. The Key Performance Indicator and business type can be changed to align with a discussion at every company I have worked for. Whenever a process is not working as planned, one group or another needs to be retrained.
I know I’m guilty of jumping straight to training, my guess is that you have, too. I have even leaned on training as the go to crutch at times. It ensures folks hear the same message, a sign in sheet can be demonstrated as evidence that they were trained, and, dang it, I am good at it.
Effective Training is a part of the change management process.
Folks need to have clear direction and understanding of the change you want to implement. They need to understand why the change is coming, what is required of them to implement the change, the consequences of not following through, and how they will be assisted through the valley of despair. Effective training can be a significant component of your change management process.
How often is the training that we do well done? Think of the last training you had for work:
- Was it engaging?
- Did you feel like you walked out with confidence that you could implement what was trained on?
- Were your questions answered to the extent you needed?
- Did you remember to implement it the next day?
- How long until you started forgetting to follow the new way?
The example I was thinking of had “no” as every one of those answers.
How do we make training effective?
I have a few keys that I strive to always keep in mind and discuss with those who are planning training:
- The adult brain is not a clean slate
- Your priority is not likely the priority of your audience.
- Expecting a successful change out of one training will leave you and the trainees frustrated.
1. The adult brain is not a clean slate.
What I mean by this is that the people who need to take action for this change to happen have habits already. They have a workflow already ingrained in their mind. Literally their neuropathways have been sculpted by the current process. When these processes are virtual or electronic, it is really easy to forget how well worn the path is in the brain.
The thing about pathways, be they neural or physical, is that it is human nature to trust the one that is strongest. Maybe it’s the shortest, easiest, the marked one, or the only one where the outcome is known. All of those are reasons to stay with the current process.
When we’re asking people to change something in their process, we are asking them to not only take a new path, but build it. They need to build new brain pathways and act differently.
If we keep this in mind as we plan effective trainings, we shift our focus from only being about the content of the change to being about the people. Our training will be grounded in the context of the current workflow and will seek to connect it to those existing structures as much as possible.
2. Your priority is not likely the priority of your audience
A few years back a large park I lived nearby wanted folks stick to the paved paths, so they used plastic fencing to restrict access to the Desired Paths in the park. Despite the physical barrier, these paths are still there and used today. What does that teach us?
- The walkers and runners in the park have different goals than the park management.
- The paved path does not achieve the goals of those walkers and runners in the same way.
- Not everyone sees a physical barrier as a reason to change their behavior.
What this means for training in the context of change management for the workplace is that we have to start with they “why” behind the change. And the “why” of leadership is not sufficient for inspiring action from those being trained. This is important because having a “why” that resonates with those who need to implement the change is what will keep them working at it.
Start with a compelling why
It is important to acknowledge here that coming to your training in the first place was probably not the priority of the attendee. Think about all of the times you have attended a training or meeting and thought, “I don’t have time for this.” We all have the list of tasks, both work and personal, that are taking priority in our mind, and walking into that room, it is not likely that the majority of your participants are thinking, “I’m so excited about learning the newest way we are going to check-in patients.”
A lot of folks will tell you the same thing as me – start with the “why” when you kick off your training. I want you to go one further – start with “why should you [audience member] care about this today.”
In all likelihood, you have 5-10 minutes at the start to capture your audience’s attention (shorter if it’s virtual). Don’t waste that time saying why this change matters to leadership. Focus on why it matters to your audience.
3. Expecting a successful change out of one training will leave you and the trainees frustrated.
This one to me is the result of adding the first two together. Once you realize that you need to be highly focused on assisting the attendees with developing new neuropathways and establishing a compelling why that will keep them trying, it is easy to see that a single training cannot create sustained change.
You need trainings that focus on the different audiences. A training for supervisors, leads, and any other form of leadership you have in your teams or locations needs to be held before a wider training. This training needs to capture their attention with how the change will improve their work. And it needs to teach them how to make that connection for their teams.
Due to this, I recommend having the initial training for each audience focus on 3 things:
- Why this change matters to the audience
- No more than 3 critical changes that have been clearly outlined
- Practice
The initial training then needs to be followed up on. Relentlessly.
The change leaders in your teams or locations need reminders to remind the team. Send them daily updates to provide to the team. This can be data on how well they did the previous day, a reminder to focus on one of the key changes for the morning huddle, and/or an award to the team or individual currently leading the pack with the change.
Smaller training sessions with teams or sites in the weeks following provide an opportunity to reinforce what was covered at the first training, answer questions that have arisen during implementation, and add additional changes that couldn’t be covered in the first session.
Get feedback from those who are implementing. Do they see something you don’t which is making the change hard? Do you have someone who is really excited about the impact and could speak up in a team meeting to help get others onboard?
I don’t have time for all of this…
Training of this nature is hard. It’s time consuming. It’s resource consuming. It’s hard.
In the IT world it’s a common saying that “Cheap. Fast. Well Built. You can have 2 but not all 3.” The same is true here. You can only have training that meets two of these: low cost, fast, effective. If you are able to invest the resources, you can have effective training and change management that is fast. If you are willing to extend the timeline of full implementation, you can have it be lower cost and still be effective.
Focusing only on low cost and fast will leave you with an ineffective change management process, which in the end will cost you more.
If this seems overwhelming, FairStitch Solutions is here to help you build and implement effective change management processes and the associated trainings.
