The One Question To Ask Yourself Before Investing in Organizational Training
With a small investment of time, your team can feel confident they’ve reached a consensus on the problem, are marching forward in the right direction, and are solving the actual problem.
One Question to Ask Before Investing in Training
I’ll give you a hint, it’s NOT, “what’s in our budget?
The second hint I’ll provide is in a story:
In my time working with a busy call centre, customer satisfaction was a key metric tracked—and this metric had been slipping over a few months.
The management team held morning meetings and reminded employees of the importance of using their customer service skills to ensure callers were well-served and that the calls fell within the acceptable ‘talk time’ minutes.
Subsequently, management invested in a highly touted customer service program specifically for call centre agents, which involved a one-day session with 80+ agents. A month later, their customer satisfaction levels had not improved at all. Nothing was working.
Improving customer satisfaction numbers
Both the management team and call centre agents were beyond frustrated. Through focus groups with agents and supervisors, we listened to their feedback. Agents felt they could do a better job making customers happy if they had more time to let them vent, solve their issues, and wrap up the call kindly without fear of exceeding their talk time limit.
After reviewing their call history, we discovered a specific call type that presented more irate customers and, ideally, required a longer time to resolve.
We dug a little deeper and presented our solution to the management team.
The result?
Customer satisfaction numbers sharply increased, agents experienced less stress and were proud to be part of the problem-solving that helped create this Canada-wide solution.
And the huge ‘aha’ for our training department?
- The answer isn’t always training.
- Never skip the analysis phase of figuring out what is the actual problem we need to solve.
So, have you guessed it yet?
The number one question you need to ask yourself before investing in training is….
“What is the ACTUAL problem we’re trying to solve?”
Through decades of work in learning and development, we see that most managers recognize training is an easy box to check because they assume there’s a skills gap that must be closed.
Problems with people behind schedule? Time management training.
Numbers being filled out incorrectly in a new software tool? Software training.
Quick training solutions allow management to mobilize an action quickly. They can ‘do something’ about the problem.
The harder thing to ask is, is it the right thing?
If training isn’t the answer, then what is?
Is there a better solution than training?
Some of the most common issues we see being overlooked in favour of training are:
1Communication Issues
Gaps in communication about roles, responsibilities, deadlines, or information sharing can lead to performance problems that arise. In these cases, it’s typically not a skills gap, it’s more often a knowledge gap.
2Process problems
Inefficient or unclear processes for how work moves from one part of the organization to another can cause delays and quality issues. Again, this typically isn’t due to a skills gap and more frequently arises because of ill-defined processes, poorly planned hand-offs, or a lack of business context.
3People/cultural issues
Lack of alignment on priorities, values, or collaboration between different groups or individuals can contribute to performance problems that go beyond training needs.
What’s the root cause of the problem?
The key point is that the root cause of the problem may not be a lack of skills or knowledge, but rather issues with communication, processes, or the overall organizational culture and environment.
Defaulting to training as the solution without fully understanding the underlying problem can lead to wasted time, money, and effort.
Here’s another example.
Your department has taken on new initiatives but no new resources. Slowly, you have had to take on more work ‘off the side of your desk’ to the point that you’re doing the job of 2 people.
Will time management training fix this problem for you?
I’m willing to bet that not only will it NOT fix the problem, but it will also create even more problems. You’ve now wasted a day in training, so your work has piled up even more, and you’re now somewhat insulted and discouraged that your manager seems to think you’re the problem.
Want to avoid being the cause of such hardship and disengagement?
We have great news for you.
Rather than suffer the effects of a problem being stressful and negative, and everyone scrambling to ‘right the wrong’, exploring and finding agreement on the root of the problem in a strategy session is both satisfying (like pulling out a sliver) and energizing when your team is all on the same page and can brainstorm how to fix the ‘right’ problem.
The strategy session involves
1A small time investment
You are about to spend a chunk of time and money on a training solution to what may be an ill-defined problem. Before you do that, test your assumptions and see if you are on the right path. It can take as little as 90 minutes.
2The right people
You can’t fully understand a problem without the people who are cogs in the machine. Get a small group together who can represent each facet of the issue you’re faced with and help to explore root causes.
3The right process
For me, a clarifier at heart, this is where the magic happens.
With a small investment of time, the right people and the right process, your team can leave the strategy session feeling confident that they’ve reached a consensus on the problem and are all marching forward in the right direction and solving the actual problem.
Getting started is easy
Book a FREE 30-minute discovery call with us to run down the business challenge you’re facing. We will listen to what you’re working through and help you figure out your next best steps. You may find validation that there is a training need and you’re already moving in the right direction. Or you may discover that we can help you find a better solution.
Bottom line: it starts with 30 FREE minutes. Book a discovery call with us today.
