How to Implement a Complete Training System

Dave Basarab - 8/24/12

Isolated training events aren't enough; you need a more integrated approach to achieve optimal results.

Often, companies diagnose performance gaps, requiring training as the solution. Company ABC, for instance, may have five task teams operating inconsistently with respect to project management. While these teams were tightly aligned to the company’s overall business strategy, they were each operating in a vacuum with no commonality. A company might need to implement basic project management across all teams, striving to institutionalize common project management processes, methods and templates.

A firm, for example, may need a comprehensive training system, combining a variety of key elements — pre-training, post-training and an unusual step of training the company’s executives — for a well-rounded learning system. This hypothetical client was a consumer products company, but this methodology could work with any content — time management, sales, project management — for an organization in any industry.

But isolated training events, those that don’t take a “complete training approach,” produce less satisfying results — value to the business — than a more comprehensive, integrated approach, one that combines learning, leadership and change management competencies to produce documented, sustainable results and value.

A complete training system begins when leadership recognizes a problem, and a lack of skills as an obstacle to solving it. Follow these steps.

Step 1: Create an Impact Map for the Proposed Course or Curriculum.
The impact map is a proven method for identifying training needs, evaluating options and quickly prototyping innovative solutions. Its power lies in providing a clear line that visually links the content of the learning to management’s desired outcomes. Therefore, it is indispensable to the instructional designer and those tasked with delivering training.

If these courses are to produce valuable business results, they must produce lasting effects, including behavioral change. To ensure this learning works, it’s important to emphasize that learning drives performance, since it is performance and not just capability that contributes the most from training to impact.