By Jeanie McKay
NOVA Quality Communications
Anyone who has observed workplace
behavior for very long knows that getting people to comply with regulations
and adopt an improvement mindset requires a good measure of psychology.
While well-meaning corporate trainers have relied heavily on mighty
regulatory sticks and the recitation of "thou shalt" requirements,
all too often, they have met trainee resistance.
Discussions about touchy-feely topics like ‘emotions’, ‘incentives’ and ‘motivation’ have long been ignored in the highly technical world of process control and variation reduction. But failure to recognize how these factors affect performance is costly and hurtful to quality.
Psychologists remind us that when people are able to feel personally involved and are able to connect training to their own achievement needs, they will more readily learn and comply. Lately some highly pragmatic companies such as Nissan, Ford and Polaroid are zeroing in on the correlation between changing hearts and changing charts. They have hired top-notch performance consultants and training specialists to help them overcome barriers to effective quality improvement training.
Re-thinking Traditional Quality Improvement Training Approaches
In the past requirement-driven curricula centered around a company’s survival goals. Trainees were told that the goals for quality-oriented courses were primarily to increase productivity and profitability, to beat competition and to better satisfy stockholders. While these goals are certainly foremost in management’s mind, these goals have not been aligned with the personal goals of the workers taking the courses. With human nature being the way it is, employees are not apt to change or buy-in to quality directives for the long haul if they don’t see how this applies to their role and their personal needs.
Re-evaluating Lesson Plans
If your organization is not getting the desired results from your training, it is time to look closely at your company’s training goals and design. Recent studies have shown that the results of training through coercion more often than not winds up with unsatisfactory consequences.
Research tells us that 54% of all performance breakthroughs come about from working not with technology and processes, but by dealing head-on with issues that build up the human spirit. Because people are not merely cogs in a manufacturing production line, their emotions and perceptions determine to a large extent how they operate post- training.
Like it or not, quality is a people thing. By getting people engaged from the first few minutes and personalizing the training from the first hour and on, they can feel that they are equity owners of the process. It is extremely important for trainees to feel that their organization is doing things with them rather than to them.
Following are some questions to ask about your company’s quality improvement training. Does the training:
Point out the WIIFMs for trainees ("what’s in it for me?")
Typically organizations offer up organizationally-centered mantras like "increasing efficiency and getting more done with less." Such motives and goals are not wrong in themselves. The financial rationale behind these goals supports training in the first place. But we must be careful how these goals and motives are conveyed to trainees. How many trainees really care about working harder and producing more with less?
Answer these questions carefully:
How can you better demonstrate the personal benefits that come from both improving processes and producing superior products?
Can your organization reward mastery-level training and performance improvement in some motivational way?
Focus on solving trainees’ problems
Learning can be maximized when training is reality (rather than theoretical) based. Interest is quickly aroused when lessons require trainees to analyze and solve their own quality problems. If theoretical material is included, it should be in a solution-context and examples should quickly be shown to back it up.
Answer these questions carefully:
Do the course objectives get trainees engrossed in solving real problems?
Are trainees empowered to implement the solutions they come up with when they leave the classroom?
Is the training designed for ease-of-scheduling or can training be deployed in a learn-do-apply-assess format that takes place over time?
Allow trainees to walk in their customer’s shoes
Customer-focused improvement training means just that. Trainees need opportunities to see the completed product from both their internal and external customer’s viewpoint. They need a chance to personally experience quality...or the lack thereof. For example, one American motorcycle manufacturer decided to dump their worn and weary quality curricula. In its place, they introduced training designed to tap their employees’ collective analysis and improvement brain-power. Out went the boring lectures and quality tool slide shows. In its place, a required practicuum was designed that trainees were required to attend before beginning formal classroom training. Their pre-class assignment involved a lot of work by the training schedulers. Each participant checked out and rode a cycle for a specified number of hours. By the time they got to their quality improvement classes, they had experienced real user problems and they came to the first class fired up with solution ideas. As a result of their experience, they were open to learning and ready to apply the tools and concepts that were taught.
Answer these questions carefully:
How well do your quality improvement training courses simulate reality?
Can additional simulations and demonstrations be built into the training design to further personalize the material and assist the kinesthetic (hands-on) learners?
Pull...rather than push
Effective quality trainers don’t tell...they ask. Rather than solely forcing requirements or pushing mandated solutions, they generate discussion and ideas from the trainees.
Answer these questions carefully:
How much of your quality training is comprised of lecture and bullet lists?
Are lectures peppered with opportunities for trainee participation, discussion and analysis?
Are trainees invited to challenge points in order to generate helpful "will it work" questions?
Do your trainers read lists of compliance benefits rather than having trainees come up with and explain the benefits to them?
Offer help
In an ideal world, all training would be scheduled just-in-time. Adult learners are much more attuned to the present rather than the dim, distant future. But since corporate training is more likely to be too little...too late, consider offering pre- and post- supplements. These may include handy pocket-guides, well-designed job aids, and customized memory joggers. Attractive guides and aids reinforce learning and provide proof of the company’s quality mission.
Answer these questions carefully:
What can you do to prepare trainees before their scheduled training?
What can you send away with trainees to reinforce their learning?
What systems can you set up (on-line discussions, Q &A, newsletters, etc.) to further assist and reward post-training success?
So, which will it be...sticks or carrots?
In today’s harried, fast-paced competitive environment, the luxury of getting by with so-so training, is quickly changing. Training by stick and word-of-the-law has not delivered good results. Progressive companies continually improve their training strategies to better foster compliance, reward competence and inspire improvement thinking. What do you have to lose by asking the questions above and trying a carrot approach? If you are successful, everyone involved wins.
©Jeanie McKay,
2001
NOVA Quality Communications
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