Category: Learning

 

A Compass Gives you Direction.

A Navigation plan Gets you There.

 

I remember, as a young scout, getting my first compass.  I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, and, if Television and Movies were anything to go by, it would always point to where I needed to go.  Quickly, to my confusion, I learned differently.  The compass only points North.  How would I ever find where I needed to go?  

Then we started Orienteering, and I learned how the compass can be used as a tool as part of a wider plan.  A compass, by itself, only lets you know in which direction you are going.  You need other tools, like a map and GPS to understand where you are and how you can get to your destination.

Sailing changed things a bit more, because orientation on water means an understanding of wind, tides, and weather.  Now, instead of navigating around mountains, you are navigating shoals, reefs, storms, and large container ships.  Your navigation plan is essential to navigating to your destination.  

“Knowing where you’re going isn’t enough. You need to know how to get there and what might throw you off course”

 

Teams struggle similarly with their training plans.  They generally know what they want:  Growth, innovation, agility, product adoption, etc., yet they lack the actual plan to get there.  Often they start creating content for a product or service, covering features, shot-gunning capabilities in hopes that the learners will learn and apply what they need.  It’s distracting, confusing, and often falls flat.  

The problem is, the team isn’t directionless, just at a loss of what to do, and how that’s going to be done.  They know where to point their rudder, but need to navigate around islands they get frustrated.  Then, as leadership and/or messaging changes for the new Sales cycle, pressures mount to create content that talks to those new positions.  The storm hits, and the team is just bouncing, trying to do what they can with what they have.  There’s no vision, no plan, no structure to the process.  Some leaders will call this being “agile” but I call it blind panic.  

With a plan, even when the storms hit, you know where to go safely.  If you have a set process and procedures for your training, the Team can afford to be flexible and agile, knowing what to change, how much to change, and how much work it’s going to be.  No more panic, but structured refocus.  

A Navigation Plan Aligns the Team Around Milestones

Sailing with a crew can be amazing, when everyone knows what they are supposed to do, when they should do it, and how it’s done.  When I sail with my family, I have a son manning the port lines, my wife manning the starboard lines, so all I have to do is man the tiller and mainsheet as we navigate.  We know where we are going, how we are going to get there, how many tacks it will take, and how long in each tack we should be.  As everyone does their part, we move well and enjoy the experience. 

If I go out with an inexperienced crew, with no notion of what they need to do, how to do it, or when to do it, I’m left with having to do everything myself, hoping that they will just “get it”.  It impacts the plan, because they don’t know what to do, and I need to compensate.  It’s unnatural, slows things down, and we often ended up turning too far in a tack while I was securing lines.  

When everyone knows what they are doing and how it contributes to the bigger journey, everyone wins.  Not only do they know what they are doing, when to do it, and how, but they can flex as conditions change.  The plan, goals, and milestones remain the same, allowing for execution to flex with need.  Planning means agility, flexibility, and comfort for the team.  No plan means chaos, confusion, frustration, and increased turnover.  

The plan also creates a shared language when communicating issues, solutions, or changes, keeping everyone in the loop.  It also provides accountability and focus:  People know what they should be working on, what they own, to whom they report, and the priority of each task.  

And when the Storms hit, focus can flex using the plan as the guide.  Milestones may shift in timing, but remain.  Responsibilities and accountability is still there, just with new focus.  Priorities may shift, but the overall plan is still helping everyone make their final destination.  

Captain working on his navigation plan.

“It’s not about rigid planning.  It’s about intentional movement with shared awareness.”

Support continuous Learning, not Just one-time Training

I remember my first time out on any body of water.  I was camping with the family by a beaver pond in the mountains, and I gathered some logs together and lashed them into a raft.  My young mind thought of the adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I was going to float on the raft.  Did it work?  Sort of:  I had really wet feet, but I didn’t have to swim.  I wasn’t prepared, I didn’t know what I was really doing, I was just, well, doing.  

If you develop training without a plan, it’s like lashing some logs together and calling it a ship.  Sure, it works for now, but for how long?  What’s the impact?  Can it scale?  Ad hoc training doesn’t scale and means redoing everything from scratch, every time.  

A good navigation plan will weave learning into daily work, leadership coaching, onboarding, and product development.  Stakeholders will all have a voice in the development of training, with clear expectations in the process.  

Navigation Plans Help You Prioritize What Matters

Every time we take the boat out, we have a plan for where to go and how we are going to get there.  I know when we will tack, how long we will spend going in which direction, and when we will be heading back to the slip.  Checkpoints let us know where we are relative to our time:  Do we need to modify the plan to get back on time?  It’s all part of the navigation plan. 

Training is no different.  Clear waypoints, such as product launches, team scaling, onboarding new hires, set the pace of the plan, and we know how to choose the right tools and frameworks at the right time to hit those waypoints on time.  Instead of rushing to getting everything done at once, we hit the right sequence to provide a smooth launch.  

 

Leaders use Navigation Plans to Inspire Trust

When it’s just you, you can just climb aboard and go.  You know what you can do, you know where you are going, and you can build out the waypoints in your head, and you just do it.  Descriptions are not necessary, written or verbal plans are not needed, because it’s just you. 

The crew, on the other hand, need to know what’s going on.  They don’t just need a direction and will take orders barked at them while you go.  This isn’t Mutiny on the Bounty, and teams don’t work on blind faith.  They need to trust that you know what you are doing, how you will get there, and what their responsibilities will be. 

The thing is, this could be taken to extremes.  Some leaders jump in and set every step down in meticulous detail, which quickly gets overturned once headwinds change.  It’s not about knowing every wave, just where the shoals are.

 

 

You can’t JUst Wing It Anymore

Your company is growing, your team is growing.  More people are doing more specific tasks that contribute to the overall success of the company.  It’s not you, alone in your dinghy crossing the Bay, you are on a larger ship with a lot of hands.  There’s too much complexity to rely on instinct alone:  You need a plan, and a Fractional CLO can help you build one without full-time headcount costs.

Your clear navigation plan becomes your competitive advantage:  it saves time, reduces friction, resolves frustration, and boosts confidence across the organization.  

It’s time to:

  • Map your key journeys: Onboarding, product adoption, and role transitions
  • Set your clear waypoints: 30/60/90-day goals, enablement outcomes, and promotion criteria
  • Align stakeholders: Co-create the plan with team leads, not just top-down dictation
  • Revisit the map regularly:  Course correction is a feature, not a flaw

 

 

 

 

Training Happens Whether You Know It or Not

We’ve all been there: walking into a company with 3 to 5 learning management processes, three checklists with mostly the same content on each one, and a lot of outdated information that a new hire is expected to update when they find it doesn’t work.  Leaders rely heavily on tribal knowledge, existing documentation, shared knowledge dumps, and the occasional video walking through the product.  

The thing is, each of these methods really does count as training.  This might be a controversial statement to make as a Training leader, but training happens whether you want it or not.  People will share knowledge, best practices, and policies that are developed on the fly to create a cohesive experience for everyone.  

The question you have to ask yourself is, do you want your people trained in this way, with no oversight, no organization, no actual plan?  How long does it take for someone to be up to speed on your processes, vision, direction, or purpose?  How long until they are productive?  

If you don’t design your training process, chaos fills the gap, and poor knowledge transfer means lost productivity, repeated mistakes, uneven performance, and employee frustration.  

Leaders are training teams every day; the only question is whether it’s by design or by accident.  

 

 

Organizational Success Depends on Learning Agility

While working for ServiceNow, I had an amazing mentor who peeled back the business side of training for me.  I saw that our customer training program would grow right along with the company’s growth: maintaining 4% (at the time) of the overall company revenue.  That growth was just as organic as the company, keeping pace and flexing with the company’s direction.  

All other companies for which I’ve worked had struggled with that type of growth:  as Start-ups, they saw training as a secondary thing, something that was the responsibility of the Deployment or Implementation teams.  The results:  struggling adoption and a lot of questions on how to do things on their platforms.  The structure of training wasn’t there, the coherent messaging was missing, and resources to develop training were strained.   They needed something better.  

Early stages of an organization are fast-paced, with quick changes on every pivot.  Products change often, policies are developed on the fly to handle more and more common scenarios, and you need your people to keep pace.  Structured training programs with information capture processes, single-hosted training locations, and predictable session plans will provide the framework that employees will rely on when ramping up on new products, processes, and procedures.  

Having a single vision for knowledge transfer streamlines this experience across the board, standardizing all onboarding, upskilling, enablement, and customer training, keeping pace with the momentum of the company.   Without that vision and direction, without structured learning systems, growth velocity will stall.  

 

 

 

 

Onboarding is a Growth Multiplier

If you don’t have structured onboarding, it can increase your new hires’ time to productivity by 30-50%!  Think about that for a second:  newly hired people, hired because you are growing like crazy, can’t get up to speed as fast as they should.

 How fast is that?  Well, it generally takes between 90-100 days to be fully onboarded and productive for any new role.  New employees will, essentially, suck at their jobs for at least 45-60 days as they ramp up, get trained, and get experience in their new role.  Now, if you don’t train them, you increase the growth period by another 30-50 days.  Half a quarter longer, because they are not properly onboarded. 

Now, Onboarding isn’t just your general compliance training: It’s learning the tasks, proprietary knowledge, and vision that make your company, well, unique.  Don’t sacrifice that because you think it takes too much time. 

 

Playbooks, Not Tribal Knowledge

Too often, leaders will point to a senior member of their team and tell a new hire to “do it the way they do it” and expect to rubber-stamp an employee’s knowledge.  The thing is, it doesn’t work that way.  

Having lived through that more times than I care to count, I can tell you from experience that the senior member of the team is doing their job, and will not have the time to properly train their new co-workers.  Instead, they say, “Do this and let me know if you have any questions.”  The new hire, then, tries and fails, tries and fails, all the time feeling like they just can’t do the job.  

Then, what happens when your senior team member leaves the team?  Where does all that knowledge go?  Not a good situation, because not everyone creates a knowledge base to brain-dump before they leave, like I did. 

Building documented systems early, even when messy, prevents bottlenecks and standardizes knowledge across the team.  A good CLO will help turn your tribal knowledge into repeatable, scalable assets. 

 

 

 

 

Your Team Is More Than Sales

The Sales team is a critical team for the growth of a company, and leaders will pump a lot of funds into their enablement, as they should!  But what happens after you Close/Won an Opportunity?  

While working for a small start-up, we had that problem.  The economic headwinds spooked the Board, and hiring freezes were in place for every team but Sales.  Sales then had a bumper year, outstanding growth, lots of new customers, who couldn’t get onboarded.  We didn’t have the deployment team to support he growth.  Prioritizing Sales brought in a lot of new logos, but they weren’t happy when they were waiting 6 weeks to realize value. 

Enabling Sales is important, but you need to enable the rest of your teams with just as much passion and urgency.  The Customer Success team needs to know what Sales communicates to customers, Professional Services needs to have the knowledge/skill to get those customers launched as quickly as possible, and Support needs to know how to support the customer if something doesn’t work.  

A good CLO will support cross-functional learning so silos don’t slow down execution.  Sales, CS, Product, and Ops all benefit from unified learning leadership. 

 

 

Early Learning Culture means Long-Term Competitive Advantage

My favorite employer experience always came with well-organized training programs.  Proper onboarding, clear expressions of expectations, documented policies and procedures, and good on-the-job training sessions with a dedicated mentor who was dedicated entirely to my onboarding.  I spent more time being productive and building relationships than struggling to find answers, stressing about my performance, and doubting my own skills.  It’s such a pity it happened so rarely in my career.

Organizations that prioritize training early on in their growth develop a strong learning culture, generally democratized and collaborative, that naturally work cross-functionally.  They recovcer quicker from mistakes, adapt faster to the market, and build stronger cultural ties and practices that resonate across every role in the company.  

If you don’t start your learning culture before your Series A funding round, you will forever be playing catch-up.  Instead of greasing your growth engine, you will deal with organically grown, tribally driven training systems that are more wiki-driven, fractional, and disjointed than structured.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sailboats on San Diego Bay.

Sailing as a Metaphor for Training Systems

I love metaphors, partly because so many different metaphors can be used for any given topic, but mostly because it helps folks relate to a topic by taking a familiar experience and relating it to something new. 

So why sailing?  Because I love sailing.  I’ve been a member of our local sailing club for a while now, and there’s something powerful about getting out on the water.  I’ve talked before about Blue Mind theory, and getting on the water seems to reinforce that theory for me (anecdotally, of course).  I therefore recommend anyone interested to try sailing.  

So, how can sailing relate to training?  There are a lot of ways, and we will explore them below.  

Whether Sailing or Delivering Training, it’s all about preparation, experience, and capacity planning.

Navigating Training Mechanics for Success

My last sailing session was a 4-hour trip around San Diego Bay.  It was a windy day for a small 22-foot keelboat, and even with the mainsail and jib reefed, we were easily moving between 5 to 6 knots in 11-knot winds.  The spray was flying off the bow, the rail was in the water, and my crew, some of whom had never sailed before, were not quite sure of the experience.  And yet, we kept it moving as I tried to single-handedly steer a boat that was built for at least two crew members.  It all came down to the mechanics.  

Upon reflection, I noticed that I could easily relate this experience to starting and running a scrappy, start-up training program:  The speed and size of the boat, the inexperienced crew, and the need for folks to take on multiple roles while the system was in motion:  All these previous experiences I’ve had building training programs at various organizations related to this one sailing trip.  It made me smile as I turned too far, having given the tiller to a crew member while I jumped up to tack the jib and lock it down, often stepping over crew members who, inexperienced as they were, didn’t know what to do.  

Training programs can be the same thing:  Often, when you start a new program, you are creating training content, delivering the training, scheduling sessions, and maintaining the LMS, all with a smile on your face when you see it work out.  It’s not best practice, it’s not efficient, and it’s often not scalable, but it’s working well enough until you can get the program properly staffed and working like a well-oiled machine.  But there are some pitfalls too, which we need to discuss.  So, let’s look at how the mechanics of Training can relate to Sailing, and vice versa. 

01

Prep For The Environment:  KNow Your LImits

This last sailing trip was in heavy winds for a small sailboat, requiring reefed sails for safety.  Could we have sailed under full sail?  Possibly, but if you put too much stress on the rigging from too much sail, you can snap the rigging and the mast, leaving you dead in the water, as best.  Preparing for the environment means knowing when you need to reef your sails to shrink your sail area for safety, and when even just using a mainsail or jib is all you need.  You can’t move as fast, but it’s safer, easier to handle, and doesn’t freak out your crew.  

For training, this means understanding your capacity.  No instructor should have more than 16-20 people in their class if you want your class to be well prepared.  Everyone needs to have the materials (if you provide them), and all lab environments should be prepped days in advance.  

Could you have 30-40 people in class, or 170-500 like lecture halls in college?  Well, let me ask you a question:  in your lecture hall, how many people asked a question of the professor?  Could you?  I’m willing to bet, if your experience was anything like mine, you could not.  The professor just couldn’t manage that type of experience.  No matter how many people are begging, they will not have a good experience if you overload a class.  Period.  If this becomes a regular problem, you probably need to hire more trainers to manage capacity (or start a Partner Training program).   

02

Establish Your Process:  Know Next Steps

Sailing a boat isn’t like motoring a boat:  you need to have momentum from the sail to get going, which means you need to be angled correctly against the wind.  Sometimes this means you need to tack several times to get where you are going, moving back and forth.  This means you need to organize the tiller movement, the filling of the sail, and unlocking/locking your jib (if it’s not self-tacking).  A lot is going on, and if you are not familiar, it can take you some time to get things set up right for successful forward movement.  Knowing your process, your lines, and getting the timing down is key.  

Process and mechanics apply to everything, and most definitely that includes training.  Make sure you follow your established processes, ideally documented, and have everyone on the team follow them.  If you don’t have established processes, but wing it every single time, it will stress everyone out and impact the training experience for learners.  

You need to have a solid registration process and a way to track registration.  Know how to add folks to your lab environment, distribute training materials, and provide meeting links if remotely taught.  A good Training Coordinator is a lifesaver in these scenarios, keeping track of everything, documenting processes, and establishing routines that make training a joy for those delivering.  

03

Short-Handed Struggles:  It Works, but not Well

Is single-handed sailing possible?  Provided the lines are properly set up for single-handed sailing, absolutely!  The sailboat we had put the winches too far forward, making it difficult to keep a hand on the tiller and winch in the jib.  Usually, I have a couple of crew members who take a winch each, which makes it easier, helping the sailing experience and making it more enjoyable with smooth tacks.  Without that help, I’ve got to trust the tiller to the crew who may not have experience, and often sends us too far to one side or the other.  It takes patience and understanding to manage this on your own with bodies in the way.  

Training can be the same, particularly for a scrappy start-up.  Leadership might think that a single manager can create training, deliver it, keep it all up to date, and manage registrations and course prep, all without breaking a sweat.  For really small start-ups, that’s possible if you are delivering training once a month.  Any more than that, you need to get some staff.  

Curriculum developers specialize in building out your content so that it best relates to the needs of the learner while making the training experience enjoyable.  They need to be aware of cognitive load, prerequisites, constructivist learning, and the whole works.  Content isn’t just about slides: it’s about making sure the structure and content support excellent delivery. 

Trainers excel at the delivery arts and performance that is leading training.  They know how to relate to the learners, provide experiences that help learners connect the dots faster, and answer questions from their own experiences.  Some can be excellent curriculum developers; most are not.  They don’t know, or care, about design; they are all about the art of delivery.  

Operations management is a whole different beast.  You need good people to understand who organizes office space for classrooms, links, and Zoom rooms needed for class, registration requirements, and training material logistics.  Could they teach?  Perhaps, but I’d rather they focus on operations and keeping the training engine running smoothly.  A good Operations person and make a successful training program.  

04

Forcing The Passage:  Your Judgement Impacts The System

I wanted my crew members to enjoy the sail:  I wanted them to love it as much as I do.  I talked it up prior to the day, I hinted at the practicality of the experience, I talked about theory, and the joy of just being out on the water.  Then, when we got out there, I worked my tail off to make it as effortless as possible for them.  Did it work?  Well, a lot was missing from the experience because of a lack of knowledge.  The crew wasn’t properly prepared (there wasn’t time), and we went anyway.  If I had it to do all over again, I would have taken some time and trained them on the mechanics of sailing, so they understood what I was doing and why, even if I still did it myself.  

Training experiences are impacted by so many different things:  Environment, content quality, delivery quality, and learners having completed prerequisites.  If one thing is off, you don’t get that sweet spot.  To be honest, when you are short-handedly delivering training, that’s going to happen a lot.  Training sweet spots, like hitting a perfect close-haul on the ocean, require everything to be aligned.  

Sometimes it’s best to put things off, provide more time, so that the experience is better for everyone.  You may think loading down a class or adding folks from that high-profile customer into an advanced class without a basic understanding is good customer service.  It’s not.  It’s the worst thing you can do for your customers, and taints the reputation and quality of your program. 

Sailboats on San Diego Bay.

Learning the Lines

Proper planning, well-prepared teams, and good judgment can make all the difference in your training program.  Prepare well, have a good support system in the back end, and you are looking at some smooth sailing in the sweet spot, tasting the salty spray and feeling the breeze.  

 

 

Maximize your Time-To-Value

 

While working at a previous employer, our Professional Services team ran into a problem:  there were too many customers who needed deployment, and not enough Professional Services team members to do it promptly.  Tier 1 customers were prioritized, and the smaller customers were constantly pushed down the schedule until, in many cases, it took 6 weeks from Closed/Won to realize value.  

Everyone agreed that this was a problem, yet not enough to warrant bringing on more people.  We had to come up with a more efficient way to get smaller customers up and running without engaging more people.  The solution was simple:  organize some pre-launch steps that would simplify the deployment process for these customers, so the product could be turned on without the need for a Professional Services team.  

Now, depending on your experience, you can choose any number of possible solutions: 

  • Organize a series of tasks that you assign to your customer through a CRM platform:  This becomes hairy because it requires programming and difficult management.  Plus, assigning tasks to your customer?  Really?  
  • Provide a white paper to customers to guide their experience.  The white paper can be either a download PDF, knowledge articles, etc, and provide the steps the customer needs to take. I’m not a big fan of this process because reading documentation is not a clean process:  not everyone enjoys reading content. 
  • Build a wizard into the product.  This seems the most obvious solution, but we had a problem:  Development wasn’t going to deviate from their development schedule.  Our solution needed to be resolved without their help.  
  • Develop training to guide the customer through the self-guided deployment steps.  Now, the beauty of this solution was the reporting through the LMS on training completion.  Customers could complete the training and, when done, the deployment team would get a notification through Salesforce, check the settings on the customer’s account, turn things on, and all without the need to engage Development.  

The Training Solution

Not everyone was onboard at first, and the solution was kind of out-of-the-box.  It required some clear steps to make it work:

  • Reporting to Salesforce so completion could be tracked.  This meant that the LMS needed to have an integration with Salesforce.
  • Access to the LMS needed to be easy.  Most LMS solutions require a login created, OR some complex SSO solution that can be a beast to integrate.  There are a few, though, that have instance access solutions (Workramp is one of them), which makes things easier.  Customers can log into the platform with their existing login solution and instantly access the LMS with key identifiers passed based on their login.  
  • The tasks that the customers needed to complete had to be identified, with detailed step-by-step examples provided (with videos or other interactive examples).  For this solution, because of the limited content development technology, we used videos, which were very successful.  We also built out a clear Task Analysis for the process with the skills, examples, and steps needed at the Task, Subtask, Skill, Knowledge, and Attitude level (SKAs are needed to complete the Subtask, the Subtasks are needed to complete each Task). 

All this in place, we were ready to get it built and deploy.  

CRM Integration

Our LMS had an integration with Salesforce, it just needed to be deployed.  This was harder than you would think:  The Sales Operations team was as reluctant to deviate from their plans as the Development team.  Fortunately, we had a high-ranking champion for the team:  The Chief Review Officer wanted this to happen.  Because he was on board, we had the support of Sales Ops.  And it took all of 20 minutes to deploy.  

Instant Log-In for Customers

This was a beast as well, because it still required engagement with Deployment.  For context, I had requested this feature be added to the platform a full year before this project was launched.  Yes, a full year.  Each quarter, it would be considered and rejected.  

What changed this time?  The framing for the problem:  now it was less about customer convenience and more about time-to-value.  C-Suite champions greased some wheels, and I had a very heated discussion with the head of Development on getting this done.  Once implemented, it went live in a week (the process was really easy), with a week for testing.  

Task Analysis and Content Development

The easiest and least stress-inducing part of the process, I had this built within a week.  The process was simple, the tasks straightforward, and clear discussion points and questionnaires were built into the process, with quizzes, with quiz results shared through the Salesforce integration for variable configuration settings to be communicated to the deployment team.  

Having already been embedded into the Customer Success team, our L&D team had a good relationship with the Deployment team, making training development and content sign-off easy.  

 

 

Did it work?

Yes!  So much so that the first customers who ran through the beta version of the training went live with their newly purchased platform within a week, instead of 6 weeks.  As we refined the process, we tightened up the time-to-value to 2 business days.  

Think about that.  Two business days instead of 6 weeks of paying for a product you couldn’t use, and a deployment team that was snowed under with hundreds of customers in need of help, and a limited amount of time and number of team members to help.  Everyone wins in this scenario.  

 

 

 

Building Your L&D Team

As I become more familiar with the landscape of business organizations, particularly those who are still in start-up mode, I find that Learning and Development is often an afterthought, something that becomes a necessity because 

  • The Support team is getting overwhelmed by customers who have simple requests they, the customer, could do themselves.
  • The Customer Success team has customers that don’t know how their product or service works, or how to utilize it.
  • The Professional Services/Deployment/Implementation teams spend a lot of time giving introductory walkthroughs of the product as “training”
  • Angry CEOs are contacting the CEO of your company to ask why you don’t have training.
  • Industry comparison publications outline the lack of training as a “con” for using your product/service.

Ultimately, for whatever reason, the decision is to build a training program. So leadership with little or no experience in Learning and Development starts to hire folks similar to their teams and use them as “trainers” because their product/service is intuitive, right? Training can’t be that hard. 

Here’s the thing:  Training isn’t Engineering, it’s not Sales, and it’s not PowerPoint slides.  There are whole disciplines dedicated to analyzing, creating, and delivering training.  Advanced degrees are dedicated to best-communicating information in such a way that it sticks.  You need a team that knows how to organize, deploy, and manage all phases of the training organization to be successful.  You need a Learning and Development organization.  So let’s talk about each role within that organization, so there’s a better understanding of how that works.  

For context, I will be talking about the fundamental structure of a Director, Managers, and Independent Contributors in a scaled-down organization expected for a reasonably successful, mature organization.  You could have more directors, more managers, VPs, etc. as your reach expands and the scope of learning expands, all the way up to a Chief Learning Officer who directs the development of internal and external learning.  Though, if you are reading this, you are likely not looking for a CLO, but rather an idea of where to start with your training organization.  So, let’s start with the basics.  

Except that training isn’t PowerPoints, but skills that take skilled professionals.

Image of woman with hat

Curriculum Development

Curriculum development is the process of analyzing the jobs, tasks, subtasks, skills, etc. necessary to be successful and compiling that information in a narrative form that layers skills from foundational to knowledgeable.  Curriculum developers know how to work with Engineering, Product Management, Product Marketing, Marketing, Sales, and Support to do their analysis.  They design the course based on the Jobs, Tasks, Subtasks, Skills, Knowledge, and Approaches necessary to be successful.  They develop the training in the medium(s) necessary for delivery.  They implement by using alpha runs to get a feel of the content, betas to get the feel of the delivery, and then go live and evaluate the results.  

Role KPIs

A good curriculum developer will have the following KPIs:

  • Customer Satisfaction:  Is the learner happy with the content and what they have learned?
  • Net Promoter Score:  Would the learner recommend the course to friends and colleagues? 
  • Course Completion:  Are learners who register to complete the course?
  • Exam Pass Rate:  If there is an associated exam, are people passing the exam At a minimum 70% of the time?
  • Customer Success:  Are learners more confident in their role after taking the training?

A curriculum development team will, ideally, own one product or suite at a time, so they can maintain expertise in that content.  Additional roles that can sub-divide Curriculum Development would be eLearning specialists and media production specialists. 

Image of man with hat

Trainers

Trainers, be they technical or not, deliver the training as created by the curriculum developers, placing the content within the context of the learners.  Their job is to assess the capabilities of their learners and help them best understand the content through related experiences and a certain amount of showmanship (some “dad jokes” thrown in can be helpful, too!).  It’s all about reading the room, getting a sense of the levels of understanding, and helping everyone feel confident in the content they have learned.  Where curriculum developers are writing their curriculum for everyone with a foundational knowledge level, trainers tailor that content to Bob and Charlene in class, helping Bob with some missing foundational knowledge while drawing on Charlene’s advanced experience to help explain more complex concepts.  

Role KPIs

A good trainer will have the following KPIs:

  • Customer Satisfaction:  Is the learner happy with the content and what they have learned?
  • Net Promoter Score:  Would the learner recommend the course to friends and colleagues?
  • Utilization:  How many classes does the trainer deliver in a week/month/quarter?
  • Scope:  How many courses can the trainer deliver?
  • Innovation: In what ways has the delivery of the content gotten better over time?
  • Customer Success: Are learners more confident in their role after taking the training?

The Training team can be further subdivided into varying levels, depending on experience, competency, and increased scope.  

Image of man with glasses drinking coffee

Exam Writers

Exam writers will use their understanding of the job tasks to build exams that test the ability to accomplish a particular job.  While this is somewhat similar to curriculum development, it is a completely different skill.  Curriculum development focuses on teaching the skills necessary to complete a job.  Exams test whether or not someone, at their level of understanding, is capable of completing a job.  Exams can be completely independent of training, and training can be conducted without requiring exams.  

It should also be noted that exams are different than review questions or class assessments (quizzes) to test understanding.  Those two methods are used by Trainers to evaluate how well the course is going and to determine if there needs to be a course correction during the class to make sure all content is fully understood and learned.  Exams, however, focus entirely on whether or not someone has the necessary competence to complete a task or job.  

Role KPIs

A good exam writer would have the following KPIs:

  • Exam Completion:  What percentage of learners completed the exam after starting it?
  • Exam Pass Rate:  How many learners passed the exam, with a pass rate target of around 70%?
  • Writing Errors:  How many errors does the exam contain?
  •  Exam Relevance:  How relevant is the exam to the role against which the exam is testing?

Exam writers can fall within a whole category that works with Operations, depending on how the exams are delivered and results are recorded.  Industry-standard exams need to be legally defensible in court, meaning if any discrepancy in the results due to incorrect answers, overly ambiguous questions or answers, or out-of-date questions that are no longer relevant to the job, companies can be liable.  In some small organizations, the curriculum developer can also be an exam writer, though this is not ideal.  

Group of people working in the office

Training Operations

Training Operations is an umbrella term that includes a lot of different folks, and I place them together because their roles are specialized and are often combined into one or two people.  These roles include 

  • Training Coordinators:  These unsung heroes schedule training, assign instructors, bill learners, and answer all questions learners may have that are not topic-specific, like whether or not a service dog is allowed in class.  Whether or not you have live only, a mix of live and on-demand, or on-demand-only training, you will need someone to manage this part of the business.  It can be the training manager or a coordinator hired specifically for the role. 
  • LMS Admins:  Your Learning Management System administrator is your rock.  Nothing can happen without this person managing the environment through which you schedule and/or deliver your training.  Without your administrator, you would be running all training through Excel and Outlook, which is a recipe for disaster.  If you don’t have a Learning Management system, get one.  If you have one, make sure your admin is well taken care of.  
  • Training Marketing:  Once you have training out there, you need it marketed.  Whether you use the company Marketing team or you have a dedicated team/person in charge of marketing for your courses, if you don’t get the word out, you don’t get sign-ups.  
  • Training Sales:  If you are a P&L (Profit and Loss) department, you need to have dedicated sales teams.  Now, I know what you are thinking, “but I can just have our existing Sales team sell training, and that will work!”  No, it won’t.  This is why:  Training is an “add-on” that main Sales teams will cut in a heartbeat to get a bigger deal through and make it look like a discount.  No remorse, no second thought to the lack of training available for the customer and the inability to an effective implementation of the product/service.  Salesfolks don’t care about the customer’s implementation, they care about the deal and their commission from that deal.  If approvals are required, they will try to get around the approvals.  If Training Management approvals are required, they will go to senior executives.  I’ve seen it time and time again:  Every time a Training Sales team is rolled into the main Sales organization, Training revenues take a nose-dive.  Have dedicated sales teams for your Training, if you are selling training.  Period.  
  • Custom Enablement Training:  Large-scale training courses for user-level training may be required for your product/service if your product/service changes the way people work.  This is part of change management and should be regarded as necessary because it’s very likely that your customer is not going to provide this level of product enablement for their customers. 

There are probably several other roles I could add here, but they all become more valuable as your teams get bigger, and that’s a discussion for another post.  ^_^

Man with beanie

Management LEvel

Management of your training organization depends on the number of people on the team.  You could have one manager/director who is in charge of a few curriculum developers and trainers.  You could have a hierarchy of leadership from the CLO to SVPs to VPs to Senior Directors to Directors to Senior Managers to Managers, each managing several directs that make sense for your command structure.  My leadership design starts with two levels:  The Director, and the Independent Contributor.  

The Director

The L&D Director outlines the direction of the training program and the expectations of each role. If the team is less than 10 people altogether, then the Director can manage everyone effectively, even if they break them up into teams (Curriculum, Training, etc).  The Director can then outline their expectations to the teams, and manage any requirements for that team as necessary.  

The Independent Contributor

Independent Contributors are all the roles above (curriculum, training, etc) that have tasks to do and generally work directly with their customers.  They create the content and scope as directed by the Director, and execute the vision.  

Expanding the Leadership Team: Managers

If the team becomes larger than can be effectively managed (the general threshold is 10 ICs to one Leader), then the Director may want to hire Managers for their ICs.  Managers follow the direction as set by the Director, and manage the needs of their ICs by removing barriers that get in the way of their work.  As their teams grow (again, more than 10 ICs per leader) or different regions require more specialized knowledge, additional Managers can be hired.

Expanding Up:  More Directors

Additional Directors may be needed once the growth of the team becomes so large that each group and vision need to be addressed separately.  This usually happens once a company moves from Mid-sized to Corporate levels, with larger teams.  It also happens when Learning and Development teams start to consolidate around single visions and leaders, (i.e., a Chief Learning Officer), in which case each specialized learning area needs direction and execution (think Sales Enablement vs. New Hire vs. Customer vs. Partner enablement).  At this point, you may have Senior Directors, VPs, Senior VPs, etc. that execute the vision, scope, and direction based on specific needs.  

Now, if you are reading this, you likely are not at this point, so why bring it up?  Because you might be someday, and you want to be ready.  You will want to know how to scale your organization effectively or have someone who can scale it for you, and what that will entail.  

 

Structuring Your First Training Organization

The first step you need to make is to hire a good Director that knows how to build a training organization, because, likely, your existing leadership isn’t aware of how to do that.  They may be excellent Sales folks, know Customer Success well, or know how Engineering works, but they are going to look for Sales, Customer Success, or Engineering leaders.  You need to find someone who knows how Training and Development work, has had experience with the process, and has, ideally, built a training program at one point or another in the past.  

Once you know you have someone who can do the job, you need to let them do the job.  Don’t short-change them on people, resources, software, etc.  Good training can be created in PowerPoint, that’s true, but it limits engagement compared to a strong LMS, excellent social learning platforms, and AI-driven learning paths.  Don’t break the budget, but make sure you have the key roles in place for the scope of your need: 

  • One curriculum developer for each product/service family
  • One trainer per 4 training days a week
  • A coordinator to maintain a lot of the operational stuff
  • An LMS Admin (could be the Director/Manager) to keep the lights on.

Additional roles can be added, negotiated, etc. as necessary.  

Common Pitfall

Now, the common pitfall I see small companies make when they want to start training but don’t want to invest too much is to hire one person to do everything.  There’s the problem with it: 

  • Direction then has to come from people who don’t understand training or how it’s developed:  they don’t have the experience, and they fail to understand why the training team just doesn’t “create a PowerPoint” for training.  
  • Curriculum Development is time-consuming:  With full analysis time, it takes 40 hours of development time per 1 hour of delivery.  One full week to have content ready for one hours-worth of training.  Even if you have analysis taken care of, it can take one day to create the content for one hour.  That means the curriculum developer isn’t able to deliver the training while they are developing the next course.  They will get behind in their development, and the courses will quickly become outdated. 
  • Burnout:  That one person will burn out very quickly if they have to run everything because they can’t scale.  Even with on-demand training, there’s no way to scale the content creation, maintenance, delivery, and exam writing necessary to make a successful training program.  You have crippled your training program before it’s had a chance to grow.  

Take it from someone who has been in this position as their peers were released for various reasons and I became the last man standing:  It doesn’t work, and it makes the training guy look like an idiot that can’t do the work, regardless of their credentials.  It’s poor management, so don’t be caught in that trap.  

Final Comments

Designing a good, solid training program that can scale can be daunting if you don’t have the experience, so hopefully this guide has given you an idea of what that structure should look like. If you have any questions or are looking for help in building out your training program, don’t hesitate to reach out so we can help! 

Success in Navigating your Motivational Pyramid

  • Identify what motivates you
  • Do your best to fulfill that need
  • Develop the necessary skills to do your part in navigating the next motivational need
  • Enjoy the journey, instead of focusing on the destination

Computer on the desk

How Does Training Relate to Motivation?

You Know What Motivates You, What Now?

There have been several jobs in my life that were taken because of survival: I needed a new role and I needed to get a paycheck that would fit my needs. Many I took because I was excited to learn something new, and others I took reluctantly because I needed the paycheck. In all cases, I still did my best in the role. After all, I needed the paycheck.

All Motivation is Still Motivation

I have pointed out the values of moving up the motivational pyramid toward Purpose, and I can understand it might cast each lower level of motivation as slightly negative:  you want to move to Purpose because it’s the most productive and valuable motivator.  The thing is, if you are just working to survive, that is a valid and good motivation!  If you are motivated by the good camaraderie of your peers, do it for them!  What motivates you is clearly what you need to get through the daily grind. 

Use that same motivation to get to the next level.  For instance:

  • If you are in survival mode, work to keep what you have and move to that feeling of safety
  • If you are feeling secure, do what you can to feel part of the team
  • If you work for your social connections, build your value, and earn recognition for your unique contributions
  • If you and your work are valued, find the connection between your values and the value your work brings to others

At every level of motivation, you have a desire to do well, at least to satisfy that level of need.  If you are motivated by survival, you will look for the best chances of survival.  If the work you are doing is your best chance, you will invest your time and effort into satisfying that need.  This means you will tolerate everything and anything to remain employed.  This isn’t necessarily a bad situation, though it might not be ideal.  There are several scenarios where this would be the case:  

  • If your company had gone through a cycle of lay-offs, you might feel like you are in survival mode  
  • You might be new to a company and want to show you are valuable as quickly as possible
  • Current economic conditions make it difficult to find a job, so you are looking for and working any role available, even if it is not your ideal position

In all three scenarios above, you are in a legitimate survival mode.  What makes the difference is how quickly you can move into a more stable mode of safety, which will reduce the amount of stress you are experiencing, and therefore improve the quality of work you can produce.  Each level of need will come with its own goals, situations, and reasons for succeeding, and it’s not wrong to be at whatever level of need you have.  The important thing is to realize where you are with your needs, you are getting what you need with as little stress as possible, and you can progress along your levels of need.  Skill development can assist with each method of motivation.

 

Leonardo da Vinci's diagram of a supporting bridge

Skills Development To Improve Motivation

While in survival mode, I moved my family over a thousand miles to the sunny coast of Southern California.  My boys needed better services for their disability, and I wanted to be able to provide them with the best possible options in life.  So, I took a Survival-type job, even as defined by leadership at the organization.  It was an entry-level position that was meant to leap-frog into another role.  I took that role seriously, did everything I could to make a positive, lasting impact, and took advantage of the skills training made available to all employees through Skillsoft training.  I quickly became the most active person on the platform in a 100,000+ person organization, learning everything I could so I could move to my next level of motivation:  Safety.  

Skills development training provides the tools necessary to navigate the motivational pyramid.  

  • Survival needs are met by providing the skills to land and retain positions that satisfy that need.  Perhaps you are moving into a new role or new industry and skills training is necessary, or you just need to complete your New Hire Training paths that will prepare you for the new position you just landed.  Either way, skills development training satisfies your needs. 
  • Safety needs are met by refining skills, learning soft skills, or utilizing parallel skill sets to increase productivity and value.  You could be preparing to move into a more secure role, or landing a new position within the firm that provides more stability. 
  • Social needs are benefited by additional soft-skills training, helping everyone help others feel more inclusive.  It’s often believed that others are responsible for your inclusion, and while that’s true at a high level, you need to start with what you can control:  your social interactions with the group.  If you struggle to feel part of the team, look for opportunities to contribute.  Social soft-skills training can be valuable here.  
    NOTE: I need to point out that everyone is responsible for social inclusion, not just the person on the outside.  While you as the outside person can learn soft skills and inclusion methods, everyone else needs to learn how to be inclusive as well.  Don’t think that through this list I’m laying the burden on the one on the outside.  That would be unfair, unrealistic, and very much the status quo that has broken many a corporate culture.  
  • Esteem/Recognition needs can be met by learning how to be more visible in your role.  New skills, mastery of skills, and new ways of approaching problems will draw attention to your work.  Striving for excellence in your day-to-day is a journey that will benefit you with a curious mind that explores new and better ways of doing things.  
  • Purpose needs can be met by learning about the industry, customer problems, customer needs, and how the company meets those needs.  Skills development in this area ranges from better industry understanding, customer issue awareness, and better communication skills.
Skills Development:  Build Your Bridge

I love the visuals that Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions give, particularly his bridge (pictured above).  The bridge is built of multiple logs, each notched in such a way that it can rest on another, and by the power of compression, these logs do not move.  The result is a bridge that can be carried, built, used, and disassembled without a single nail or piece of rope.  I have a small model replica sitting in my office as a reminder of the importance of pieces as a whole. 

It’s important to build your bridge to each level carefully.  Find the training that provides you with the necessary skillset you need to thrive in your current needs level and will help you along your journey to the next.  Remember that your needs journey will always be in flux, and your motivation will change.  New roles bring new challenges, changes in economies will make life a little less certain, and feeling comfortable and unchallenged in a role will bring a desire for new challenges and new growth.  Your career is a journey, your development will be part of that journey.  Sit back, take a deep breath, and enjoy the scenery! 

“Skill development can assist with each method of motivation.”

 

  • Fix the tribal knowledge problem by documenting the job. 
  • Fix your disjointed processes by documenting set processes for everyone to follow.  
  • Unify your learning and knowledge platforms to reduce technical debt

Employers:  Facilitate your team’s Motivational Growth

To this point, I’ve only talked to those going through their journey.  Now, let’s talk about the job of the Employer.  As an employment entity, you have a goal to accomplish.  You might be trying to end world hunger or make it easier to take pictures of cats and post them to social media.  Whatever your end goal, you have hired folks to help you meet and maintain that goal.  As part of the employment contract, you provide an environment that best supports your employees, so they in turn can provide your company with their best work.  Together, you move the organization forward and meet your goal.  

Here’s the thing, particularly with start-ups:  the hiring trend is to try and find people who have done the job in a similar role and convince them to come over and do the same thing, structuring the department and team along the way.  If it’s a new role, new company, or new growth, this makes sense!  The new role and department need to be defined, and scaled, with roles, training, etc. all developed and documented as the department grows.  Here’s where it all breaks down:  because only people are hired who have done the job before, nothing gets documented, training isn’t developed, HR doesn’t know the necessary skills for which to hire, and everything becomes the wild West as folks from different companies and different process plans try to do their thing and make everyone else comply with their process.  Warring processes require a lot of substructure to make it work, and heavy technical debt, and only those folks can do the job because no one else will know what to do.  Tribal knowledge rules, and is lost as folks move on in their careers.  

Fix the Tribe: Write It Down!

I’m going to highlight this scenario by pulling from Ancient Athens.  For generations, they relied on a tribunal of judges that would “remember” the law and rule for or against citizens, and their rulings were final.  This period had no written law and no defined punishments.  It was left to the judges.  As I’m sure you could imagine, the common people were ready to revolt, feeling that the wealthy would be favored due to connections and gifts, while the same rulings were denied to everyone else.  It wasn’t until 621 BC when Draco was commissioned by the leaders of Athens to create their legal system that laws were finally written in stone, literally!  Laws and punishments were all clearly written for all to see, with the associated punishment.  We know these as Draconian Laws, because Draco made them, and they are considered harsh as death was the result of just about every infraction.  The people loved it because the laws were applied equally to everyone.  

Take this to your organization:  It’s difficult to feel safe and motivated if there’s no right way to do things and you are judging performance with subjective measures.  You can’t say, “Be more like Wilson” because Wilson doesn’t share, or have time to share, his processes.  Mentorships are great, but only work when the mentor is willing and able to share their knowledge.  This is why documentation of processes is so important in every organization as soon as possible.  

Unify your Knowledge:  Make Learning Accessible! 

As your teams grow and develop, new processes will be necessary.  To simplify your life, the lives of your team, and the technical debt the IT team needs to manage, unify your knowledge platforms.  So many companies will have more than 3 LMS platforms that are specific to teams, with their own licensing and configuration demands.  Additionally, the teams will have an equal number of Knowledge platforms to share information, all of which have their own licensing and configuration demands.  The result is a strange, Frankenstein-esque technical infrastructure that is so difficult that roles alone cannot maintain the complexity.  

Simplify.  Use one LMS platform, ideally with an integrated Knowledge platform that combines written and engaging training.  Don’t listen to the “need for specialist platforms” because knowledge is knowledge, skills are skills, and an LMS is an LMS, regardless of the bells and whistles they sport to cater to a particular demographic.  If you can’t use the LMS for onboarding, sales, employee development, and customer training, find another LMS.  

Have Questions?

Not sure where to go next?  Why not contact us and find out!  

Still wary and want to see what we are about?  Check out our free training courses or follow The Training Guy on YouTube!  

Jeremy Robb

Jeremy Robb

CLO and Consultant

 

You know you have a problem: users aren’t using the training you purchased, and Management wants to cut it. What can you do? How can you bridge the gap and show the value of training to Managers, while also encouraging your employees to use the courses available? Here are 5 ways:
1. Do your job task analyses
2. Centralize your learning in one place
3. Build job-based learning paths for every role
4. Include a budget for industry certifications
5. Have the Management Champion learning

You are a training professional, and your company has finally invested in a large learning library with curated content that covers just about every possible skill under the sun. You are thrilled because your co-workers in all departments can up-skill themselves and grow. And yet, it doesn’t get used, and management start asking why they even invested in the first place. Below we talk about why there’s a disconnect between management and employees regarding training.

The Training Disconnect: Why Isn't Your Learning Library Getting Used?
The Training Disconnect: Why Isn’t Your Learning Library Getting Used?

In my previous role, our company had invested in a large, curated online training library for use by our employees. It was amazing, massive, and a little difficult to use if you didn’t know what you needed. Still, it was an amazing investment in the growth of individuals: but no one knew it was there. I would like to say this was an exception to the rule, but at nearly every job I’ve ever had, this has been the standard. Companies will invest in training libraries and make them available to their employees, and yet they are rarely utilized. This has two impacts:

  1. Management feels that training is a waste of money
  2. Employees feel like they are on their own when it comes to advancing their career

Both are right, in a way, which is concerning, and yet it has management and employees at odds. Managers will point out that training isn’t being used when it’s available, and employees point out that they didn’t know it was there and couldn’t navigate the massive library.

Let’s talk about the Management position first, to understand their concerns. When they see an investment not being used, they see a waste of resources that could go to hiring another Sales executive or Engineer. Why are we paying for something that is standing idle? It’s not in the best interest of the business to have that program on the books when we can use those resources elsewhere to better grow the business. And, from a certain point of view, they are right. Any resource not used within a company is a wasted resource.

This prompts the first question from management: Why did we invest in this learning library in the first place? And any HR rep or L&D team member can quickly reply: to invest in up-skilling of our employee base and build a resilient organization. That should be obvious. But no one seems to ask the next question, or rather, don’t like the answer: Then why aren’t employees using it?

This goes to the Employee point of view. Employees want to grow in their careers, earn better pay, become more knowledgeable, and respected within their circles of influence. This comes from experience and learning. Training can help with this, and often a diverse, liberal training library can help fill gaps that otherwise are tough to pick up on the job. This is where those large, curated libraries of training topics are so valuable: they have such a diverse collection that employees can find just about any skill to learn and develop. It’s also their curse: there’s SO MUCH THERE that it’s tough to get started. Even if you have a general idea, often there are 5-10 difference courses on the same topic, which is right? Employees need guidance when navigating these large libraries to use them effectively.

So, why are the libraries not being used? Employees don’t know they are there, and/or they don’t know where to start. They need content to be organized in a logical manner that makes sense for their role.