10 Tips for Making Your Training “Stick,” Part I: Before the Training

Greg Alexander — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 21:34:25 +0000

“No classroom training is ever, on its own, going to solve or fix a problem.” - Amy Suchodolski, Director, Global Learning & Development, Hexion, Inc.

So you are considering a training class; what are some of the key factors to consider in making it successful? In this blog, we address elements to consider before you conduct a class.

1. Step one is to identify the purpose of your training. Having an answer to this question is the first step, and a very important factor. Clearly articulating your desired outcomes will provide the context for the subsequent decisions you make on selecting (or developing) an appropriate program.

Questions to ask include:

What are the skill gaps that training will address?
What behavior changes do you seek in the workforce?

2. Step two is to identify roles and responsibilities. The sponsors and training coordinator should both know and be prepared to fulfill their roles. Who are sponsors? Sponsors are those with a vested interest in training outcomes. Sponsors can comprise line management, human resources department, and an executive team. The sponsors and training coordinator should jointly establish what needs to be done and who will do it. This listing should include setting clear expectations and planning of activities to occur both during and after the training.

3. Step three is to identify and analyze the audience. It is important to match the class participants with the desired outcomes. Training classes often comprise the prisoners (“my boss made me come”), the vacationers (“free lunch!..donuts!.. A day off my normal duties!”), and those who are there to really learn. Although you might win over some prisoners and vacationers, it is incumbent on management and the stakeholders to cultivate a desire to learn prior to the training experience. The ideal situation for both the learner and the organization is training that is the answer to an already-identified development plan for the learner. This occurs in many organizations as part of an annual review cycle. This purposeful approach encourages emotional investment of your attendees in the training experience; they will more likely see and embrace it based on the clear relevance to his or her job.

4. Step four is student and instructor preparation. This preparation is critically important. In addition to the aforementioned appeal to hearts and minds, some introduction to students of the actual course content is often helpful. We have found assigned pre-reading and preparatory webinars to be effective pre-class activities. A pre-class survey using a tool such as SurveyMonkey can help the instructor better understand the expectations and learning readiness of the class attendees.

In a future blog, we’ll address how careful consideration of Methods and Materials contribute to making your training stick.

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Three COVID-19 Takeaways for Project Management Training

Greg Alexander — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 21:07:00 +0000

Do you conduct project management training or coaching?

Are you on the lookout for up to date, real-life examples for class or for coaching? This article provides food for thought that might help you come up with some new and compelling real-life examples based on our shared COVID-19 experience.

Examples from a true story

Stories can enhance motivation for changes in behavior, a desired outcome in much of the training we do. [See, for example, Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling, Paul Zak, HBR online, October 2014.]

We are all characters in the COVID-19 story. The vaccine program and underlying development projects offer a plethora of opportunities to enhance effectiveness of project management (PM) training. How so? By incorporation of compelling examples from this shared experience.

In this article I offer an example from each of three different aspects:

Technical skill: schedule compression
Soft skill (which in my experience are the harder skills): stakeholder management
Governance: diversity and inclusion in scope definition and oversight

These are but three of many possible examples; perhaps they can prime the pump in your thinking for refreshment and enhancement of your class participants’ learning experiences. And each of these examples can lead to in-depth discussions of the interdependence of the various concepts and competencies in project and program management.

Technical skill: schedule compression

As my wife and I were watching the news recently, images of the vaccine production infrastructure buildup flooded the screen. She posed the question: “how can they be doing this when it’s not even approved yet?”

I got to man-splain the difference between mandatory and discretionary dependencies and the impact on schedule compression, depending on the risk tolerance of the project and economic stakeholders. This example clearly affords the opportunity to revisit topics of the triple constraint triangle, activity network diagrams, schedule, critical path, and risk management.

Soft (harder) skill: stakeholder management

Operation Warp Speed and the various underlying projects presented complex challenges in stakeholder management. A critical decision in managing competing stakeholder interests was when, where and how to announce that a vaccine was successful: both safe and efficacious. The desire to satisfy a small group with a premature announcement by election day was trumped by the need to reinforce integrity of the development process. Program and project leadership recognized that undermining public confidence in vaccine safety and efficacy would have been severely compromised by an announcement lacking data with supporting statistical analysis. They held to the axiom that vaccines do not save lives; vaccinations save lives.

Governance: impact of diversity on scope definition and oversight

In the recent annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the importance of diversity and inclusion was a major theme. The conference included compelling stories (supported with data) of positive business results owing to racial diversity at all levels. We often emphasize that diversity of perspectives on teams will lead to improved outcomes. Moderna’s experience offers an example of how lack of racial diversity in leadership can profoundly and negatively affect results. Even though blacks and Hispanics have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, these groups were significantly underrepresented in Moderna’s trials. This put their timeline in serious jeopardy.

Although Moderna’s executive team exhibits geographic and gender diversity, racial diversity appears to be absent. Was this a contributing factor to the imbalance in trial subject makeup? Or was it a subordinate group responsible for the makeup of the trial subjects? Answers to these questions are unknowable to most of us. Nevertheless, an account of this incident with these acknowledged caveats against the backdrop of photos of the executive team could open up a valuable discussion not only of the importance of diversity and inclusion at the leadership level, but also of project control (Moderna did recover) and of establishing clear project success criteria (also known as conditions of satisfaction).

In summary...

I plan to use these three examples at my next opportunity to teach my Real World Project Management class. Many other examples can be mined from this highly topical program and the underlying projects. Each of them can provide opportunities to discuss the multi-faceted inter-dependencies amongst PM concepts and competencies. A starting point for exploring possible examples is the excellent reporting in the NY Times article: Politics, Science and the Remarkable Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine.

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