We’re starting another blog series tackling the sixth step of the PDCA process: Training Development. Before we proceed, let’s quickly recap the PDCA process. It consists of four stages: Plan, Do, Check, and Act.
In the Do phase, we focus on developing countermeasures to the problems identified in the previous steps of the Plan phase. In this blog series, we specifically address the last part of the Do phase, which is Training Development.
You can read the other blogs covering the previous steps of the PDCA process at the links below:
- How to Identify Problems in Process Improvement
- How Problem Prioritization Works and Why It Matters
- How to Identify Countermeasures in Process Improvement
- Developing Countermeasures in Process Improvement
The Common Mistakes in Training
In the previous step, your team divided and conquered to develop countermeasures. Now the question becomes, and this is a piece that companies so often miss, who needs to be trained on what to do because of the changes in your go-live.
Often, companies also make the mistake of providing training in a haphazard manner, such as through a quick Slack message or a brief video. Sometimes it’s on a Tuesday afternoon. Sometimes it’s on a Friday morning. It’s very chaotic, sporadic, and erratic.
The number one question I get asked when leading teams through process improvement is:
How do I get people to follow a process?
The root cause of why that question is being asked in the first place is because people are not being trained effectively on it. We throw things at them at the wrong time, on the wrong day of the week; it’s not structured, and there’s no background to understand where it’s coming from. Therefore, people don’t think it’s important, and they don’t retain the information.
People will only take the process as seriously as you do. If it’s a quick message on Slack or a quick little video, they’re going to think it’s a quick piece of information as well, and they’re going to treat it that way. That’s the thing we’re overlooking here. We’re not robots doing business with robots. People can’t just click a button and suddenly do things differently.
That’s why you need to formalize training and put seriousness around it so that people have the breathing room, the space, and the time to actually learn the information, retain it, and change their behavior.
The Two-Week Lead Time
To ensure effective training, we formalize the process and establish clear parameters. One of the key aspects is completing the training within two weeks.
Anything longer than two weeks makes the training feel elongated and boring, and people lose interest. Anything shorter is unrealistic. It’s too compressed and chaotic, and it pulls people out of their work too much. It actually builds resentment because you took them away for a week to do training or even a few days that were half days.
We are trying to build process as a part of day-to-day operations rather than as part of the business now. We’re rising above to see the whole picture. But when it comes to execution, we do not want to take your employees away for a week to do this work. It’s too much, and it does not sustain the information.
The two-week timeframe strikes a balance between effectiveness and efficiency, giving employees the necessary space to understand the background, learn, retain information, and practice new processes.
Stay tuned next week. We’ll get into the details of training development by effectively using the process worksheet (downloadable for free here).
In your service,
Hilary Corna
