To Train or not to Train

26Feb10

People, usually managers, tend to think that if a group of people who don’t understand something or are not performing to a certain level that the group of people need training.  I’ve found that the “training issues” that the manager tells me about aren’t training issues at all- they are cases of bad communication. (If you read my previous blog then you know something about ADDIE. Research what the A means!)

Bad communication can be as simple as someone sending you an email that says you have new standards to follow and nothing else. Or maybe you get a link to a document that covers a new procedure and that link takes you to the wrong file or is buried so far in your corporate servers that it’s totally lost. Bad communication can be someone telling you the “right way” to do something to later find out that the person has been doing it wrong for a long time as well.

The last example is what we call “tribal knowledge“. Tribal knowledge is the knowledge that a group of people have but it’s unwritten and unknown outside the group. Have you ever heard this, “That’s just the way it works around here.” or  ”Yeah, the standards say to do it a different way but we don’t follow them. It works better for us if we do it this way.”

Tribal knowledge can be a good thing but most of the time it can be very damaging for a group. Having all this unwritten and unknown knowledge residing with just a few within an organization limits the ability of the rest of the organization to capitalize on the knowledge. When we are talking about misinformation that is passed on within a group to a newcomer it becomes bad information and bad communication. 

By providing better forms of communication we can reduce the amount of perceived training for our organizations. Quick Reference Card, a web page with discreet directions, or webpage navigation that actually contains logically named sub-sections are simple solutions for better communication. By reorganizing information so that it is logical to everyone- not just to your webmaster or CAD Jockey- can correct a lot of “training issues”.  Giving someone a simple reference card that they can pull out when they need to do a specific task saves everyone time and money. These are known as learning aids.

So, do you train your group or do you reorganize information or present it in a new and usable way instead? That’s the tough question you need to ask yourself. But remember, you are a limited resource and so is your organizations cash! My recommendation is to really understand the need for the training first and foremost. Do an analysis to determine if you really have a training need.

Here’s an example I did of reorganizing the terms of spline in an online format. Previous to this the spline terms were defined and used in many different surfacing  and spline  creations documents that were scattered about a large software documentation system. By condensing the information to one location and providing an easy to use interface makes understanding the spline terms easier; the learner can relate to different components of the spline to whole spline. By providing a quick way for user to locate the learning aid when they need to refresh themselves is a good example of using learning aids.

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