Stop Over-Training Your People | DisruptHR Keynote | Glasgow, Scotland | March 13, 2019

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Enhanced Transcript

Clint Clarkson: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your training department in action. Yes, there is no department more effective at burning company money than training and the biggest reason for this is that we over train people, but to be fair, this is not entirely L&D's fault.

The managers have a problem, decide they want training and they go to the training department who produces the training. The problem with this situation is that training is only effective for solving problems that result from a skill or knowledge gap. Applying training to any other problem is like changing your oil to try and fix a flat tire. The two aren't related, it doesn't work, so how do we stop overtraining our people?

Well we start by resolving any other potential issues and we're going to do that using this fantastic tool that has a horrible name. It's called the Mager and Pipe's Performance Analysis Flow Diagram.

Check out Mager and Pipe's Performance Analysis Flow Diagram here:

God, that sounds dull, but it is awesome. Google it, you will find it is a one page flow chart that answers all of the questions you need to answer before you pursue training, like, what is the problem? Surprisingly, that's an incredibly complex question and you know this because how many of your performance improvement initiatives in your organization don't actually solve the problem that's causing the bigger issue?

Take customer service training, for example, what the hell is customer service training? Customer service is a large set of skills, not one thing that you can blast off in a lunch and learn. If you do figure out what the problem is, a bigger question is, is it even worth pursuing?

We see this all the time. Somebody, an executive, gets pissed off about something and everybody needs to be trained right now, but sometimes a mistake is just a mistake, even if it's incredibly costly. If that mistake wasn't caused by a gap in knowledge or skill, training cannot fix that problem. But let's say it is worth pursuing. The first thing we should do is look for some fast fixes because sometimes these things are easy to fix, such as establishing expectations. Who does what, when, and to what standard? If your employees cannot answer those four questions, the expectations are not clear. To meet those expectations, they need the proper resources. No amount of training has ever fixed a slow computer and our last fast fix is to make sure that the performance results are visible to the employees.

You're an HR. How many people are lousy employees and have no idea because nobody's told them so? Just telling them you're not doing that good is enough to fix somebody's performance because people do want to do good. 

If the fast fixes won't work, then we move on to consequences. Why are we surprised when employees do the things that we incent them to do? And then why are we further surprised when they don't do the things we want them to do, but punish them for doing? Like they lose incentive, they get screamed out by customers, they have to stay late to finish their work. Yeah, I don't do that. Why would anyone want to do that? The last element of consequences is the leaders themselves. People will do the things their managers manage. If your organizations value sales or customer service and that's what you manage, that's what people will do. No amount of training can fix that dynamic. So when do we train, when the expectations are clear, the proper resources are available, performance is visible and consequences are like, then we can consider training, but only if there's a genuine gap in knowledge or skill.

...when the expectations are clear, the proper resources are available, performance is visible and consequences are like, then we can consider training, but only if there's a genuine gap in knowledge or skill.

It's really easy to identify that you will just ask one of two questions. Have they done it before? Could they do it if you doubled their pay? We used to say, could they do it If you put a gun to their head? We're not allowed to say that anymore. Micro-aggression or something like that, but training can only fix, I've said it a number of times, a gap in knowledge or skill, and any other application of training is a waste of company money. So am I saying that we should just never use training unless those other issues are fixed? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

When we over train our people, we piss off our employees, we waste company money, and we convince the organization that training does not work and training doesn't work when it's applied to anything other than a knowledge or skill gap, so stop over-training your people and you will get better results. Thank you

Clint Clarkson, CTDP is just another victim who accidentally stumbled down the rabbit hole of corporate learning and development. He is the Founder & Managing Partner of eLearning Alchemy, a custom eLearning development firm. While he’s known for being upbeat, positive, and enthusiastic, Clint is still easily offended by comic-sans, bullet points, and the excessive use of buzzwords. Connect with Clint on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.