Turbo Charging Your Training Parachute‘Constitutional’ training turbo charges the training parachute. This is training "of the people, by the people, and for the people." ‘Constitutional’ training is based on several truisms:
• In any training situation, the person who learns the most is the trainer.
• The more involved a person is with the training, the more the person is likely to gain.
• The person closest to the job application probably knows best what needs to be done.
• Dramatic productivity improvements occur when people design and conduct their own training.
Money: A major food processor saved over $500,000 by having the customer service people cross train each other in the order processing. This enabled each person to handle a complete order and take personal responsibility for specific customers. Emergency orders were reduced from over 20 percent to 2.6 percent of all orders.
Service: A major insurance company attained measurably better service by establishing in-house technical subject matter ‘experts.’ These experts trained and coached their fellow customer service representatives on the basic technical skills and ongoing changes in their area of expertise. The people also designed and implemented the application and follow up measurements, recognition, and rewards. As a result:
Customers’ perception of satisfactory service rose from 6 to 10 [on a 1-10 scale]
Customer call time was reduced as a result of less use of hold time [while customer service representatives searched for information]
The employee to customer ratio was reduced
Cultural change: A major airline needed to train 2,400 crew supervisors in 44 cities within 90 days or face a strike. The project manager designed five leadership modules and then provided train-the-trainers sessions for second level managers from each of the cities. The new trainers got the job done very effectively. The newly trained crew supervisors subsequently performed very successfully.
The biggest impact was on the managers personal values and leadership style. Many, for the first time, experienced their people as individuals who wanted to provide good service, rather than unthinking "grunts" who barely followed orders. This was most dramatic with the hard nosed managers [authoritative, Theory X, "because I said so" type leaders].
There is no management class that would have effected the change in their values and management style that this experience of teaching leadership did. This revolution in their values and leadership style was then reinforced as they felt the internal commitment to walk-the-talk they had presented in their training sessions.
Everybody won - the crew supervisors, the managers, the airline, and the airline's customers.
Turbo powering the training parachute with ‘constitutional’ designs and implementations produces efficiencies that accomplish more than just the training - with the same time and resource allocation. The people become intellectually, physically, and emotionally involved in the entire process. Their commitment to change directly relates to their level of involvement.
Turbo charging is limited only by our imagination. As a member of the National Handicapped Ski Clinic Team, I asked a blind skier to help teach an instructor clinic on teaching skiing to blind and visually impaired people. The clinic was an overwhelming success. The blind trainer improved dramatically as a result of demonstrating proper communication and skiing techniques. The ski instructor trainees gained far more first hand understanding, empathy, and communications than any clinic I ever led.
Next time you’re responsible for designing and implementing training, consider assigning:
your worst customer relations person to design and present a course on improving customer relations.
an individual with time problems to design and implement a time management workshop.
your prima donna service engineer to design and lead a course on collaborative behaviors.
Is your training efficient?
Does your training investment produce cost effective results??
Does your training effect needed cultural changes??
How do you measure these results??
What applications exist right now for implementing ‘turbo charged’ training??
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Bill Werst founded Growth Associates, an international consulting firm specializing in practical and lasting customer driven organizational improvement, in 1973. He may be reached at 541-386-1117 or bill@growthassociates.org.
Bill’s second book, Common Sense Managing: Simple Actions That Produce Results, blasts through twenty years of management trends with proven simple common sense leadership tools and actions that produce lasting results. Available at http://www.growthassociates.org or www.amazon.com