The top learning miss-steps that start-ups make. Part 5

Living and working as a Learning Pro out in Northern California I see and hear about a lot of training that is not serving an organization in the way it should.

So I've put together a list of the most common miss steps and mistakes I've seen and some thoughts on how these can be course corrected.

The first posting on this was about how Founders think that their systems are more obvious and intuitive than they may be.

The second was about cramming too much content into a course.

The third was about moving content online without understanding the difference of the delivery channel.

The fourth posting was about how failing to cross train makes silos worse.

This is the fifth and final posting in the series.

All learning is created equal(y).

Although too many startups have had their training materials created by people with no background in Instructional Design, many of them have hired trainers or instructional designers with experience.  Most people working in the Learning & Development field follow some version of the Instructional Systems Design ADDIE model when designing learning.  This approach is very much aligned with the old waterfall model of systems development, with each phase following on from the last. It's a really strong model for creating what I call learning products. These would be pieces of learning that can be expected to be delivered time and time again, either as elearning or in a regularly repeated class. It was created 70 years ago by the US Military as a tool to create training. Over the last 70 years it has been refined and reshaped to meet the needs of learning designers in an ever changing world.

Not surprisingly though some people look at this 70 year old technology and feel that there must be a better way.

As regular readers of this blog will know I'm a Thiagi fan. One of my most transformative learning experiences was a full day workshop he ran on Rapid Instructional Design at an AIN conference in Chicago in 2008. It was at that point that I realized that if your objective is to create learning rather than learning content then the ADDIE model is not the best model. For internal learning now I always default to a Rapid ID approach, that starts with the premise of making the learners create the learning content as they learn and having Subject Matter Experts on hand to ensure that the content is factually correct as well as a learning facilitator on hand to guide the learning experiences.

But just as I'd never consider using ADDIE for a single run internal class, I'd never use RID to create a training product.

My customers are the learners themselves AND the organization that is paying for the learning to happen. Understanding this balance and using the right tool is the only way to satisfy the needs of both sets of stakeholders.


Happy Learning

The top learning miss-steps that start-ups make. Part 4

Living and working as a Learning Pro out in Northern California I see and hear about a lot of training that is not serving an organization in the way it should.

So I've put together a list of the most common miss steps and mistakes I've seen and some thoughts on how these can be course corrected.

The first posting on this was about how Founders think that their systems are more obvious and intuitive than they may be.

The second was about cramming too much content into a course.

The third was about moving content online without understanding the difference of the delivery channel.

Here is the fourth, and there may be more to come.......

Failing to cross-train and allowing Silos to flourish.

Startups don't normally carry much in the way of spare capacity in terms of the people in the organization. The first few hires are usually engineers selected to achieve key things, building key pieces of functionality in the product. Next hires will start to fill out the people in areas like sales, finance. and professional services. Then maybe product management, customer support and marketing make the next wave. Usually just a single individual in each area at first. Within engineering your people become specialists in their part of the system.  As you grow each of these people gets to the point of maximum capacity and you add someone new, usually because you need someone to work on the next project.

Everyone is working heads down full out to get their work done. No one really knows the details of what the person two cubes over is really working on and as for that other department, well who has the time to find out? You might have a quarterly or even possibly a monthly 'all-hands' meeting but all that can ever be hoped to achieve in those is to give everyone a big picture of what the company is doing. 

This works, up to a point.

It falls down for two reasons.

The Talent War

In the Bay Area there is a cutthroat war going on for certain types of talent. Talk to any recruiter and they will tell you that finding the right people to allow for the growth that is expected is one of their biggest headaches. The investment in finding new people and getting them up to speed is a huge overhead. So when you do get someone in place and working on those critical projects the last thing you want to think about is that someone might poach them. After all isn't your company the best one out there? Don't you have great meals and regular fun times together? And of course everyone is just waiting for those stock grants to make them millionaires. 

But remember those incentives that you OK'ed for your recruiter to use to get your people to pull their friends and coworkers from former companies into your team? Other companies use them too.

So in the tightly knit community that is the Bay Area tech world you will have someone leave. 

And when that two weeks notice lands on your desk it's going to be very tough to start cross training someone else to pick up on that crucial work that was being done. 

Silos prevent cross functional cooperation.

When people on a team don't know what their colleagues on other teams do what happens when the inevitable requests for help or input come in? 

Without the bigger picture it's impossible for them to accurately evaluate them against all the other things on their desk. 

Two problems that share the same cause, but should be addressed in different ways.

• Peer reviews of work within teams is one of the best ways to not only produce better quality outputs by trapping and eliminating errors early, but they also mean that when your key person is on vacation or hands in their notice then there is someone else who won't be starting from scratch. 

• A well planned and executed orientation can give new (and existing) employees some vision into what each team does for an organization. 
• Regular communication on the projects that are being worked on give context to the request for help on those projects.

The knowledge in a startup's employees heads are it's most valuable asset.  A few well thought out actions can leverage those assets.

Happy Learning

The top learning miss-steps that start-ups make. Part 3

Living and working as a Learning Pro out in Northern California I see and hear about a lot of training that is not serving an organization in the way it should.

So I've put together a list of the most common miss steps and mistakes I've seen and some thoughts on how these can be course corrected.

The first posting on this was about how Founders think that their systems are more obvious and intuitive than they may be.

The second was about cramming too much content into a course.

Here is the third and there are more to come.......

We'll move our classes online.

In their early days most start-ups do their training live as part of a high touch implementation. As they grow they often find that this option no longer scales beyond the 1 or 2 sessions a month they did in their first months and maybe years. The solution that so many of them take is to simply move their live class to a virtual classroom. As a concept the virtual classroom is fine and has be successfully implemented by many organizations.

Three problems however tend to rear their ugly heads.

• Firstly that any weakness in the existing content get amplified by the physical disconnect between the facilitator and the learners.  A good 'stand up' trainer is constantly scanning the faces of their learners, looking for nods of understanding or those puzzled looks that indicate that it's worth spending a few extra moments on this point or that concept. Even the best online classroom tools do not give the facilitator that level of connection
• Secondly most online facilitators don't really know the full functionality of their delivery platform and those that do all too often don't use that full functionality.  Trainers who would never dream of starting a live class without putting a flip chart sheet up on the wall to act as a parking lot, so often don't bother to get everyone using the chat capability of their tool if only to say Hi.
• Thirdly using virtual classrooms make it much harder to give the learners an opportunity to demonstrate that they have learned. In a live classroom people can work in groups on role plays or to create teach backs or other tools. If you are dealing with software use then a classroom will usually have the learners using some sort of sandbox to show that they can follow the processes they have just learned. 

Moving your content online does not mean you have to completely rewrite it, but it is worth a good look to see if the three problems outlined above are risks to the learning being effective.

Lesson structure can be altered to get regular check-ins with the learners, facilitators can learn and use best practice with their tool sets and facilitators can hand control of their environments to the learners to demonstrate learning.

There are solid solutions, but first you must understand that you need them.

The top learning miss-steps that start-ups make. Part 2

Living and working as a Learning Pro out in Northern California I see and hear about a lot of training that is not serving an organization in the way it should.

So I've put together a list of the most common miss steps and mistakes I've seen and some thoughts on how these can be course corrected. 

The first posting on this was about how Founders think that their systems are more obvious and intuitive than they may be.

Here is the second. 

More to come

2. There is a lot they need to know.

Start-ups put years of development time into producing software with a wide array of features and functionality. Product managers have put long hours into conversations with existing and potential customers to define what the software needs to do. It is quite likely that the software has been enhanced multiple times based on the wishes, or needs, of specific customers. It is quite understandable then that you want your users to know about all these great features and options that have been painstakingly built into the product to give it the depth and fullness that you are so rightly proud of. However as this list gets longer and longer the time taken to introduce these to a new user in a way that is useful to them when they come to use the product, starts creeping up and up.  

How long is reasonable for an online training class? 15 minutes?  4 hours? 

How many modules of self paced learning is it reasonable to expect a new user to sit through to be able to use your product? 5? 10? 50?

I've seen classes grow and grow. What started out as a 90 minute web class grew to 2 hours, then 3. And then into a pair of 2 hour sessions. 

I'd ask you to think back to the last time you learned something for work. How long was your company prepared to invest in your learning time?

As Learning Professionals we love creating courses. The more the merrier. The longer the better. But if we are going to be honest advisers and partners in our businesses, we do need to ask if all this content needs to be in the training.

I take the 80:20 rule as my guide. 

I've seen that time and again 80% or more of the use of any piece of software uses 20% or less of the functionality. To be truly effective training you need to identify that 20% and get your learners a chance to learn it and do it. 

What about the rest?

• Would a single page job aid work instead? 
• Is your user manual set out in such a way that the information is easy to find? 
• Do you have a social platform that your users might go to like a LinkedIn or Facebook group? Or a YouTube channel?  
• Have you tried Googling the question? 
• If you are building eLearning, can these be optional modules?

It's way too easy to overwhelm your learners. When that happens, they miss the 20% that they need to be able to use the product. If you are lucky that means they call support for help. If not they just give up, or tell their bosses, colleagues and peers that your software just doesn't do what they need it to do.

So decide what really needs to be in that precious time you get with a new learner, and find other ways to get the rest to them.

The top learning miss-steps that start-ups make. Part 1

Living and working as a Learning Pro out in Northern California I see and hear about a lot of training that is not serving an organization in the way it should.

So I've put together a list of the most common miss steps and mistakes I've seen and some thoughts on how these can be course corrected. Here is the first. More to come.

1. It's obvious. It's Intuitive

By there very nature start-ups are founded by smart people who see a need that is not being fulfilled. In Silicon Valley that usually means they have an idea that translates into a software solution to a problem that people have. Founders live and breath that idea and that solution. They see it through iteration after iteration, continuously improving and refining it. The lucky ones convince backers and develop that solution into a product and then iterate again and again. Then customers connect with the solution and those first few connections are always very high touch interactions. All the people connected with the solution are passionate about it and the invest heavily in making sure that the customers get the most out of it. Maybe you create some training for it. Leveraging existing content from the sales cycle into a training presentation and reworking the sales demo into a hands-on user experience for training. Then, if all goes according to plan, there are more customers and more people connecting with the product.

Then you get that piece of feedback.
People aren't using the software fully.
Or.
People are calling support to help through something that you thought was covered in training.

When you take a look at the what it is they are doing you just don't see why they just don't get it.
It's Obvious. It's Intuitive.

You are right of course. It is always obvious. But sadly not as obvious to someone who has not lived and breathed this idea and it's execution for the last few months and years.

As a learning Professional I always start with the fresh novice mind.  I am able to start with the luxury of looking at the product fresh and clean, without the impact of years of experience with the product, but with years of experience of people learning software.

Take a fresh look, or better yet ask someone else to take that look for you.

Part 2 follows soon

Happy Learning
Alan