Top 5 Questions to ask BEFORE you hire your training consultant

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As a training manager (or a project manager in charge of the training), you will be faced with the prospect of hiring an internal team, hiring a consulting group, or a mix of both.  As you begin down the road to training development/delivery, here are five key elements that you will want to keep in mind in choosing your training strategy:

1. Who will deliver the training?

1. Insourcing—will it be your own employees (often referred to as Subject Matter Experts–SME’s–or, more informally, “volunteers”).  If so, then will your strategy need to include a Train-the-trainer session.
2. Outsourcing—will you be hiring an outside firm to deliver the stand-up training?  If so, what are the experiences, qualifications, and approach to training of the instructors?  Will you, as the client, have veto power over an instructor?

2. Who will develop the training?

1. Insourcing—will your employees have the necessary technical/educational resources to achieve the desired project?  Will their be a need to update/upgrade their skills with some upfront technical training of their own—for a Content Management program, for example—or a specifically desired course development software (Lectora, Camtasia, etc.)
2. Contractor—will they bring their own laptops or will you need to provide (different IT set-ups prefer different approaches).  Are their additional software licenses you will need to include into the budget to accommodate them?

3. Who will design the training approach?

1. Whether your project is a global ERP implementation, incorporating multiple languages, cultures, business sectors, etc, or just all of the receiving personnel at plant 6, you will need to have a specific, engaged approach to providing those users with specific, applicable training.
2. Is there someone in-house that can provide this with a professional level of insight into adult learning methods and practices?   Does this personal/department have the resources to dedicate to the life of the project?
3. If you go with an outside firm, do they tailor their approach?  Do they customize for each client, or do they provide a one-size fits all approach—especially important if they also sell a “tool” pack (which usually means that they offer fairly limited customization).

4. Who will be in charge of the training portion of the project?

1. If internal, what is the reporting structure?  Will the internal manager be responsible for any/all of the outside resources?
2. If external, how much veto power will be shared with an internal contact/counterpart?  How much leverage will the project manager have, ultimately, over the project plan, deliverables and timelines?

5. What are the checks that need to be/should be put into place?

1. For your end-users
   1. Are there certain regulatory requirements that need to be held in compliance, measured by an outside authority, to which your training needs to be held up against?
   2. Will there need to be a metric against which you will need to report proficiency/completeness of training?
2. For your trainers
   1. How will they handle scheduling?
   2. How will they handle accounting for attendance/competency/course evaluations?
3. For your stakeholders
   1. How will you report against progress, success?
   2. How will you demonstrate accountability?

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You should give Darth Vader a pacemaker

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I often teach subjects that are not, in themselves, very interesting at all.  For example, my last client needed to train temp workers to enter patient information into their new ERP system.  Typing in data from a paper into a computer is not fun.  It becomes tedious and mind-boring.

So, when faced with such challenges, I craft creative examples.  In this instance, I gave Darth Vader a pacemaker.  I gave one to George Bush and Obama as well (Cheney already had one).

By making my example data engaging, I hoped to make the data come, as it were, a little more alive to the students (whose status as temps meant they had even less interest than usual).

So, when faced with a rote or boring task, inject some fun.  Be creative.  Give Darth Vader a heart transplant.

Inclusive rates seem like a good idea

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I function in a very specialized field–developing training materials for large-scale ERP implementations.  And I have noticed a trend of late to only offer inclusive rates to consultants.

While I realize the down economy, I see this as short-sighted. If your needs include experience/talent that is specialized, looking only to the local talent pool will be, in the short term, severely limiting.  That is, you may pass this small budget hump, but your overall structure, product, training method, etc. will very likely take a direct and strong hit.  You are, in essence, banking on having the money later to fix the problems you are making today.

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WIKIs in Training

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WIKIs have been available for a couple of years for anyone with a hosting account.  That is, you can download the wiki software and begin pluggin away at building your own world of inter-referred documents.

As I trainer, I don’t see these used enough.  I consult with large-scale SAP (an ERP) training projects, and I have yet to see one use a wiki as part of their post-go live strategy (I have yet to see a valid post-go life strategy, but that is another post).

With a wiki (SharePoint is a form), a user (super-user, SME, etc.) would be able to create a posting (describe the SAP receiving process), possibly culled directly from the training documents–which were probably culled, themselves, from the documentation of the project (BPPs, etc.).  The added benefit if putting these items on an intranet is that the user community can, with user-IDs, edit, update and maintain these documents.

Why aren’t you using one?

Lifelong Learning: the Introduction to Lori Reed

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In my quest to work through the 23 new web 2.0 things, I have started with the general introduction to the concept of Lifelong Learning.  The “course” links to an Articulate-produced, e-learning module/course designed by Lori Reed, whose site indicates:

My name is Lori Reed. I’m the Employee Learning & Development Coordinator for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC)*

Hi Lori.  Nice to meet you.

The Lifelong Learning course introduces the concept that adults do not stop learning after leaving secondary school–or even college–for that matter.  In fact, learning occurs throughout ones life.  It seems simple enough of a concept to be blatantly evident, but there it is.

The courselet encourages the student to break free and take charge of her own lifelong learning by developing a plan.  I never complete these sorts of exercises, and I feel that few adults do (kids may, but only under compulsion).  So, I think she did well introducing the concept, but performed poorly on the exercise.

Learning 2.0 – 23 Things

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Learning 2.0 – 23 Things.

I stumbled across this mini-course, made in Blogger, which purports to teach the user 23 new and cool things about the web in as many weeks (perhaps sooner).

I am going to try it out.

The Role of Corporate Training: Economic Downturn Edition

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[Thanks to Will Thalheimer for the heads up]

With the Dow Jones half of what it was a year ago, millions in mortgage default, GM nearly bankrupt (as its former parts division Delphi has been for two years) and seemingly countless millions of taxpayer dollars shoring up multinational banks, Eric Sheperd, CEO of QuestionMark, asks (and by extension implicates)

As Learning and Assessment Professionals What Could We Have Done to Prevent the Financial Crisis

Shepherd goes on to question whether adequate and proper training could have prevented the current situation.  Here is a sampling:

…

Where were our regulators?  Did they know what they were meant to be doing? Were they assessed?

…

Should there have been more effective learning around these financial instruments?

All of which goes to his main point:

At this year’s User Conference I’d love to learn what we could have done to prevent the unethical/uneducated behaviors and questionable practices that led us on this journey of mass financial destruction not to agonize over what has happened but to help our profession be a part of the solution (emphasis mine).

A couple of key points, though, to Shepherd’s line of questioning:

• Deregulation, letting people do more without oversight, is, by definition, allowing a “lack of training”
• It was not for a lack of adequate and timely training that mortgage-backed securities failed…it was because of greed and lack of regulation (see above point)

Shepherd, as CEO, does, though, see the near-future prospects of increased regulation and its co-committant call for training and oversight.  I think, instead of furthering helpful debate, he is seeking coporate positioning.

Writing for the Right Community

Tony Karrer, writing in his recent post about writing style, noted that the type of writing that is considered “good” changes not only over time (Hawthorn’s sentence-long paragraphs were once considered cool) but dependent on the audience (high school English teachers look for different flags for “good” than do blog readers).

There is, in writing instruction, the notion of discourse communities (groups with specialized language–jargon–and particularized format).  Blogging is a discourse community, as are IMs, e-mails and linked-in recommendations.

Instructional materials should reflect the community to which it addresses (the traditional audience) as well as the “grammar” or “rules” of the training medium.  PPT slides are visual with very direct text.  E-learning classes can offer more social scenarios for greater contextualization of content.  And so on.

Readers read to the point they have to (especially in business and especially in training).  Nothing says “is this going to be on the test?” more than training mandated for a job.  If there is no test, which there probably should be if you want any measure of retention, then the reader will skim, sleep and hope that the manual will be within reach when they need to do X, Y or Z.

When developing training materials, keep in mind the skimming reader.  Encourage, with both carrot and stick, to actually read the material.  The carrot can be as simple as making the information engaging (incorporate the social side of training–scenarios, case studies, real life impact, etc.) or very, very direct (push this button and your entire warehouse inventory will be deleted from the system).

Also, use a stick.  The best stick is a certificate of completion that only comes from completing a test or survey that draws directly upon the material.  Without the passing paper, social/corporate pressure comes to bear.  Use that pressure to nudge your learners to their knowledge.

Good luck.

Businesses and Consultants: missionaries and mercenaries

I have, for over ten years now, been a consultant.  I have worked in pretty much every configuration of the client/consultant relationship there is: as a hired hand for a consulting group (4 times), as a direct in-house hire (for 2 years), as a direct independent subcontracted through different layers of headhunters (one job was sub-contracted 5 times) and direct corp-to-corp.  The following outlines the start of a list of what I have learned.

When a company begins selecting a team for a new project, there has to be a real sense of excitement and opportunity.  This new team will usher in the future.  It will be a chance to step outside of the norm and experience the “edge” (as edgy as it gets in the cube world for some), to advance careers, or to just do something different.  Whatever the motivation, the new project team member will, on the whole, be not only a risk-taker, but often someone who truly believes that her effort will pay off in direct and positive benefits to not only herself but her company.  This group’s characteristics align, with broad strokes to be sure, with characteristics of missionaries.

Setting aside religious demands, promptings or callings, the desire to move outside of oneself to achieve a larger goal runs through both the religious missionary and the business one.  These are the people who will work the extra hours for the same pay, put in the sacrifices and expend the extra energy to help the project succeed.  Perhaps their may be some measure of personal interest involved (a promotion at the end, a raise, escaping a dead-end, etc.), but project team members, from my experience, really believe that with a little extra effort, they will be aiding in a goal larger than themselves.  They may be positioning themselves for a better position later, but they are still working to achieve a better, overall company in the process.  They are, in short, on a mission.

Consultants, on the other hand, are not, as has been my experience, as motivated by a higher goal as much as by more internal forces.  To be able to walk into a new business environment at the late Sunday night call (more the norm than not) on Monday morning, “hit the ground running,” integrate into a new client culture with their attendant expectations, biases and challenges takes a special niche of personality.  I have seen consultants motivated by the “juice” of new projects, by being the answer to the client problem or by knowing the answers and the satisfaction that brings.  I have seen consultants motivated by the novelty of new challenges, of not doing the same old routine day in and out.  Through it all there is the common thread of being special.  Consultants like to be called in for their specialty.  They are mercenary.

Now, don’t get caught by the religious tone of missionary or the hired-gun sense of mercenary, but, rather, seek to appreciate the distinction between what motivates the two groups.  Why?  Because in understanding each group’s motivations, one is able to understand not only what drives them, but what can motivate each to work to the best of their abilities.

When I catch a plane to go to a client site, I am leaving my family, my dogs, my yard with grass that needs attention.  I am leaving my friends, my cherished baubles all to go, usually Monday through Thursday to a different city, to eat out every meal and to retire, alone, to a hotel room.  Here is where the true sense of mercenary comes in.  When a company hires a consultant, they are, from the outset, stating that the company doesn’t want a long-term relationship.  They just want a precise and quick fix, and to then move on.  Both sides agree.  The consultant will move quickly (the business hopes) to rectify the problem/perform the task/offer the solution with no long-term HR ties.  There will be no benefits, no 401k, no medical and no vacation.  The consultant is hired by the hour with no strings.  Each of these aspects reinforces that the consultant is a hired gun, and it should come as no surprise that the consultant will, if pushed, retreat back to the base structure of the relationship.  That is, when crunch time comes, and with each project it will come, the missionaries step forward to sacrifice of themselves and the mercenaries will seek to ensure that they are paid.

This dichotomous relationship, although seemingly antagonistic and fraught with complications, is often the highest functioning, most efficient and best working business model around.  It can also be worst.

Here is some advice on how to make the best out of your project team/consultant arrangement.

Virtual or onsite

Trolling for a job always comes down to the following, expensive question (from my point of view): are expenses paid?  If no, then I have to calculate the out-of-pocket expenses to see if the per-hour rate is still viable.

This doesn’t have to be.  There is little doubt that onsite, face-to-face interaction exceeds e-mail, phone calls or webcams.  A dinner out solidifes more than a presentation ever will.

But, sitting in a cubicle, conference room or over-flow space while working on client work does not, on the whole, add the value that the travel expenses raise.  That is, if there is drudge work to be done (working on a class, curriculum, etc.), let me do it from home, and then come in for discussion, review, etc.

This saves the client money, saves my sanity (the road gets lonely), and the material gets completed all the same.