You are sitting at your desk and are told you are on training next week. Survival skills. Really? You go, you listen, you may drift a little. You may have a meeting with a customer which you prioritise, which means you miss the session altogether and hope (or not) to go on the next one.
Let’s wind back. All company meeting, big boss is giving a state of the nation and then announces something. You are all going to be sent individually to a desert island. You are going to need to be self sufficient. Some of you may find the going too much (think Hunger Games for the suited …) but he is going to arrange some survival skills training for you. Provide you the skills you need. Do you attend your survival skills training? Listen? Try to understand?
The point being some training really sticks and starts to create the expected behaviour change and some just becomes a nice day out of the office?
For the latter the most common issue is lack of challenge. Training in itself is not some strategic objective for a business but a tool to realise some other goal. Building skills to achieve something that is difficult at present. The key is “Achieve Something”.
So what’s a good challenge? What would it look like?
1. Exciting
2. Litte bit uncomfortable
3. Valuable to the business
4. Have a timescale on it
5. Come from the top
Example
“You are going to have to present back to the board in the new year on the future of interactive technology and how it will affect us? – We’ll make sure you get the training on the interactive tech side”
“Within a month I need everyone to update their clients and customers on programmatic and data and what we are doing. There is some training scheduled for those who would like to know what we are doing in that space”
“The Big Cheese wants us to be more open with our customers and involve them in how we get to the answer. He wants ideas and models for how this could work by next month. He’s given you a training budget of £10,000 for you and a team of 5 – you choose team and what training you need”
Support without challenge is the day out training, challenge without support is just a very stressful and lonely place. When the two circles cross – you can really feel the excitement and energy.
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