Train your Workforce like Starship Troopers

In November of 1997, a Sci-Fi action movie called Starship Troopers hit the box o?ce. I love this movie. On the surface, the movie can come off as campy and silly, but after watching it enough times, one begins to see its fascinating elements. The way the film satires governmental power paradigms, fascism, fanaticism, and the use of propaganda is beyond genius. One of the elements of this movie which always caught my eye was how the earth’s uni?ed global government, referred to as “The United Citizen Federation,” educated its citizenry and military service personnel. In short, the global government used brief training videos to educate, sway public opinion, and prepare their people for war.

I enjoyed this movie so much that I had the poster in my o?ce while teaching at National Defense University (NDU) , College of International Security Affairs (CISA) at Fort McNair in Washington, DC. The curriculum I professed there was keenly focused on counterinsurgency, irregular warfare, and critical infrastructure protection. These are all sexy topics but to be honest, a lot of the nitty gritty subject matter was quite dry.

The military doctrine source materials I drew from, Counterinsurgency (COIN) and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Operations , were technical enough to turn off anyone's headlights, so I never got too agitated when I would catch a military o?cer catching some Rest & Relaxation (R&R) in the back of my classroom.

To combat student slumbering, my fellow facility cohort and I decided to re-strategize the way we taught to facilitate greater learning retention and initiate more student engagement. By doing so, I effectively learned valuable lessons about building and delivering engaging workforce training experiences, which I would like to share with my readers.

I hope companies will use these lessons to train their corporate workforces more pro?ciently as we embark on a new year ?lled with endless possibilities.

Step One: Use the US Military’s ADDIE Method of Adult Instructional Design

When building out and delivering your corporate training program, it would be wise to use the ADDIE Method of Instructional Design . ADDIE stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate, and it is an ideal work?ow which will help individuals ?gure out what they need to teach, how they will teach it, and if the students are applying the knowledge, skills, and abilities you desire them to have and implement in their work.

Analyze: Implement a formal Training Needs Assessment and use employee interviews, company surveys and the collect the qualitative and quantitative data to clearly identify the training gaps you wish to ?ll.

Design: Design the learning objectives using Bloom’s Taxonomy and remember that all learning objectives must be measurable and observable to be true learning objectives.

Develop: Using Instructional Designers, use a solid Learning Management System (LMS) to design the training modalities to enhance the learner’s learning experience. This can end up being an e-learning module, instructive video, a classroom experience or a combination of all three.

Implement: Deliver the learning experience in a set timeframe, be upfront on how long this training will take, and be clear about the expectations one desires from the workforce after completing this training.?

Evaluate: Utilize the Learning Management System (LMS) and the Instructional Designers to prove the Return on Investment (ROI) of your training experiences. If one’s current Instructional Designer Team (or vendor) says that cannot be done, simply have them retrained or hire a more experienced Instructional Designing Team (or vendor).

Step Two: Apply Malcolm Knowles's 6 Principles of Adult Learning to every corporate training that is delivered.

1. Need to Know/What’s in it for me: Clearly explain to the learner what they will get if they put effort into learning.

2: Experience: The learning material must be connected to existing knowledge whenever possible.

3.Self-Concept: Cultivate an environment where the learner is responsible for their own learning decisions.

4.Readiness: Remember that learners learn best when training can be used to solve a relatable and immediate problem.

5.Problem Orientation: Learners will be more engaged when the training gives them interesting knowledge or skills.

6.Intrinsic motivation: In the learning experience, remind the learners this is for their professional development.

Step Three: Be Interesting, and for goodness sake - Show, Don’t Tell

If you desire to effectively train, inform, develop, and build upon culture and community within your workforce, the best way to do it is to create and deliver short and snappy videos that are entertaining, creative (as much as possible) and adhere to most or all the elements of Malcolm Knowles' 6 principles of adult learning.

Some academic studies (pre-dating the social media era) rank the effectiveness of Active Learning Theory over Audiovisual Training modules; but these studies fail to consider the tech-oriented society we live in today. Audiovisual Training Modules are the smart and scalable solution if one genuinely desires to train their workforce effectively. I had seen this repeatedly proven when I worked at Google and Facebook/Meta and consulted for several Silicon Valley tech industry titans.

There is a variety of fantastic animation software out there which an Onboarding, Training, Development, and Awareness? team can use to create incredible learning experiences that resonate with today’s short attention spans and busy work schedules. These trainings can be easily uploaded into a company’s Learning Management System (LMS). Additionally, one can attach a knowledge check, track learner participation via a dashboard, and prove the Return on Investment (ROI) of all of their training deliverables. Almost all Learning Management Systems (LMS) have these capabilities.?

Animated training videos should be structured as follows:

1. Within the ?rst 5 seconds of the animated video, tell the learner what is in it individually if they pay attention. Simply answer the question, “what’s in it for me?”
2. Inform the learner how long this training will take. As a best practice, I always strive never to exceed 5 minutes per training video. Most of the training videos I make are at most 2 minutes.
3. In an obvious way, inform the learner about the learning objectives and how they should apply this knowledge once the learning experience is complete.
4. Before diving into the learning, insert humor or intelligent satire to capture the learner's attention. This step is called “the hook”, and it should be handled very carefully.
5. Dive right into the learning objective subject matter and give examples that “show, don’t tell”.
6. End the learning experiences with a recap of what the learner learned and reinforce why it is essential for them, society, and the company.
7. Once the learning is complete, one should use their LMS to direct the learner to a knowledge check which they embedded in their LMS. This part is critical, so they can evaluate and track how effective (or ineffective) your learning experiences. In time they will be able to use this data to prove the Return on Investment (ROI) of their overall Onboarding, Training, Development and Awareness Program.

Step Four: Make sure the Onboarding, Learning, Development, and Awareness (OTD&A) team and Corporate Instructors are creative and tech-savvy?

I have been an Instructional Designer for over 17 years across six diffrent organizations (in both the Federal and Private Sector) and I have found it alarming how many Onboarding, Training, Development, and Awareness teams, even at the most advanced tech companies in the world, struggle to meet their training objectives. I have come to believe that these corporate training short-comings are a result of many Onboarding, Training, Development, and Awareness teams underutilizing the advanced training technologies that are literally at their fingertips. Furthermore, the same teams allow their training experiences to be heavily influenced by outdated adult learning theories that were created well before many people owned and used personal computers.

Therefore, it is imperative that companies utilize Onboarding, Training, Development, and Awareness (OTD&A) teams that are tech-savvy, base their training experiences on modern ways of learning and are not afraid of crafting corperate training modules that are cutting-edge, engaging, and fun. If you fall short in doing that, then the blood of your company’s low performance will be on your hands, and all the great oceans of Neptune (paraphrased quote from Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s Macbeth) will not wash that off.

The ideas and guidance expressed within the article are entirely my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of the companies I work for in any way. If you have any questions, comments or feedback for the author of this article, don't hesitate to contact me via LinkedIn.