As the year winds down, let’s look at some true stories from the sillyside of training and development. What, you say? There’s nothing silly aboutthe T&D business? Au contraire…
- Let themeat bagels. A survey at a major company found that employee morale was quitelow. What was the company’s response? Training? Nah. New leadership? Nope. Eachmorning, every department on every floor received a beautiful box of bagels,cream cheese, and accompaniments. Perfect, gourmet, yummy stuff. Morale problemsolved, right? Not even close. And several months later, when the business hada bad quarter, gone went the bagels.
- Retreatto nowhere. Speaking of morale, another business also discovered thatemployees were none-too-happy at work. Their response: a one-day retreat at alocal park. Nice barbecue, some games, and several team-building exercises. Aquick follow-up survey indicated, surprisingly, that people felt much betterabout the company. Not surprising, however, was that this warm feeling lastedabout three days, as employees realized they were back in the same lousyenvironment as before.
- Oh, thefood! A training organization was trying to decide what picture to put onthe cover of its new course catalog (yes, printed course catalogs still exist).Should it be students at work in their classes? How about someone using eLearning?Maybe a picture of the company’s latest products? The decision: the trainingcenter’s chef holding out some plates of delicious food.
- A placeto think (especially during the two- or three-hour drive to get there). Amajor corporation had most of its employees efficiently concentrated at anoffice campus in one city. When they decided they needed a training center,they bought one from another company. This was a well-designed, beautiful placein the woods—a place where employees could contemplate and collaborate. Unfortunately,it was in another state, about 80 miles away from where everyone worked. Theyalso built a helipad there, as they were sure that execs would want to chopperin for some think time and teach time. After a couple of years, can you guesswhat happened?
- Edificecomplex. The example above is not unique. As another company’s mammoth newresidential training center rose from the ground, a chorus of “Is this reallynecessary?” and “Do we need so many hotel rooms in an era of eLearning?” grewlouder. The CLO would have none of it; this was his crowning achievement. Afterjust a few years and several attempts to sell the space for weddings and barmitzvahs, the facility was mothballed. Dozens of companies have traveled thissame road.
- Big cost,no benefit. A company decided to teach every manager (thousands of them)about its new strategy. A massive instructor-led training program was designed(there was a bias against eLearning at the time) that required, among otherthings, significant classroom reconfigurations at six global training centers. Wallscame down, new furniture was ordered, and technology was installed. A largecohort of instructors began prepping and making travel plans. A ton ofparticipant guides were printed and shipped in advance. Six months and $1,000,000later, with only about 15 percent of the managers having gone through thetraining, the business strategy changed, significantly. The original 15 percentneeded refresher training and the entire program had to be redesigned. Anothermillion dollars needed. The program was abandoned.
- Trainingas vacation. Some people really do think that going to training is avacation. But this? A corporate university wanted to increase registrations forits business curriculum, so it offered training on cruise ships or at Caribbeanresorts. A beautiful color brochure was sent to selected people throughout thebusiness. One day, it landed on the CEO’s desk. Oops! End of program.
- Killingthe learning moment. In creating a new manufacturing course, theinstructional design team built a first-day simulation designed so the studentswould not succeed. From that singular learning moment, the rest of the coursewould focus on understanding why the simulation failed. This was not met with enthusiasm from the company.“We don’t believe in failure here. Redesign the simulation so that everyonesucceeds.” The instructional designers tried to explain the concept of failure(in a training context) as a powerful learning opportunity, to no avail. The course died, deservingly.
- My way orthe highway. An SME created an eLearning course on highway safety fortruckers. The first 15 minutes of this 60-minute course focused on the historyof road safety legislation, with pictures of various government officialssigning laws, giving speeches, etc. When some eLearning specialists suggestedthat employees might be better served if that time was devoted to a case study,some personal stories, or some questions to self-diagnose learner attitudes, itwas discovered that the SME was a former government employee who was veryactive in drafting some of the legislation in her state. So that content wasin, end of discussion.
- You getwhat you legislate. A company in a government-regulated industry wasrequired to put its entire staff through several mandated courses. Hundreds ofemployees took the course and “compliance” data—i.e., registrations and a puff10-item end-of-course survey captured by the LMS—was dutifully reported everyquarter. When the training department suggested that course attendance does notmean anyone actually learned anything, and that a more rigorous certificationstrategy might be more effective, they discovered that the law requiring thetraining also inexplicably forbade evaluating or reporting individualparticipants’ learning or performance back to local management.
- Whybother? A company wanted to move everything to eLearning (like we haven’theard this one before). In order to do this quickly, they converted the manuals,participant guides, and SOPs to a PDF format and put them online. When someonepointed out that it would be very difficult for learners to find the informationthey needed, or that there was no real “design” to the so-called courses, theresponse was, “that’s okay, they can just print everything out and read it.”
Again, every one of these stories is true. I just made them a littlemore generic to mask the culprits. If you have similar yarns, tell them, if youdare, below. I do have one more story, but it will take more space to tell. Nextmonth.
Here’shoping for lots of laughter in 2014, just not at the expense of gooddecision-making.
