Now that we have all finished celebrating the winter holidays, it’s resolution time! It’s that time of year when we look back on everything that didn’t go so well in the past year and vow to do things better this year. We make resolutions, then keep them until about February. Then we lose interest and it all falls apart.
This same drop-off sometimes happens in businesses, too, although it does not correlate to the calendar year. Does this scenario sound familiar to you? Mary, a department manager, discovers that her staff need to collaborate better. She goes to HR, who suggests she find a contractor to teach a course. She hires the contractor, who teaches two sessions of the course. Six months later, Mary’s team has another incident that makes her wonder why the collaboration training didn’t work. She decides that team building training is a waste of time and money.
The problem that we all face for New Years resolutions and that Mary faced for training is the same: Both lack a formal plan with accountability and reinforcement. With no particular process to follow, both suffered from “higher priority syndrome.”
In the world of training, there’s a simple solution to this: follow the training lifecycle. The training lifecycle is the process for providing quality learning products and services. Although most training companies have some version of a training lifecycle that they do follow, Comprehensive Learning Solutions endorses the use of the IFC-LPI Training Lifecycle and the IFC’s Principles for Learning. This lifecycle consists of seven phases with associated tasks, inputs, and outputs.
Over the course of this coming year, we will look at each phase in more depth, and, in particular, the most common mistakes to avoid in each phase.
Come back monthly to learn how you can make your training programs more effective and impactful!
Comprehensive Learning Solutions has decades of experience in all phases of the training lifecycle and is a co-developer of and signatory to the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC)’s Principles for Learning and Guide to Training. If you want cost-effective, efficient, and meaningful training for your organization, contact Comprehensive Learning Solutions.