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This week I'm involved in another technical training workshop. Yes, I attended a training workshop two weeks ago. This is another one. This time it's not about a new product of ours but a course to help my team bolster its skill on an important industry technology, Kubernetes. It's also being conducted remotely, so there's no travel involved— for good and bad. Good because it means no travel cost or time; bad because there's so much value in reaching consensus on sensitive topics and unscripted face-to-face conversations that simply can't happen on a big Zoom meet.
The meta-lesson in this training, though, isn't about the value of f2f vs. remote work. It's about how to plan how much time the training takes. Or, conversely, how little content it takes to fill a fixed time-box. Because this training, as valuable as it is, is running way behind schedule— which is, BTW, a very common problem with training.
On Tuesday, the first of three half-days of workshops, we got through less than 75% of the material planned for Tuesday. It took us until more than halfway through Day 2 to finish the Day 1 syllabus. Basically there's at least 1.5x as much stuff in this course as there is time allotted for it. In particular, the hands-on exercises are routinely running 3x as long as the instructors planned them to.
Part of the reason I make a point of this is that I've been on "the other side of the table" for training a lot. I've done technical sales enablement. It was as semi-official part of my job at a previous employer and an official part of my job for the first few years at this company.
Now, I'm not a "pro" at training. I don't have a college degree in it. I don't have formal training in it. It's a) an aptitude that b) I've spent time & effort getting better at.
I remember the first time I worked with a "pro" trainer several years ago at this company. We'd just hired him on, and I was meeting him over dinner the night before we delivered a day of sales training together in Boston. I'd reviewed his material on the flight out there.
"Tim, I'm concerned there's too content little here," I said. "We're booked for a full day tomorrow, but I think we could be done with this by lunchtime."
Tim just smiled. "It'll be a full day," he said. "You'll see."
I pushed back gently on that, asking him to elaborate. He did. Tim explained that he was allowing time for IT troubles to have to be resolved, extra time for break-out exercises, long breaks for sales people to catch up on their emails, and the ability to say, "Great! Everyone can go home an hour early," at the end of the day instead of asking everyone stay an hour late (as too often happens with training).
The next day happened exactly like Tim predicted. Everything he allowed for happened. People drifted in 15 minutes late. IT troubles caused us to start 1 hour after schedule. Allowing 2x to 3x the time for break-out exercises made them more meaningful for everyone. Allowing generous breaks for sales people to catch up on emails and keep in touch with their customers kept everyone focused in class— because if we didn't schedule generous breaks, sales people would just drop in and out on us, and we'd lose cohesion. And we finished comfortably before 5pm, allowing everyone to feel great about going home a bit early— or voluntarily stay a bit later to enjoy those unscripted f2f conversations I mentioned above.
So, what's the lesson here for trainers? Estimate how long the class should take, then add 50%. And either book a part day or be sure to include generous breaks— because the attendees all have "day job" responsibilities they need to address.
The meta-lesson in this training, though, isn't about the value of f2f vs. remote work. It's about how to plan how much time the training takes. Or, conversely, how little content it takes to fill a fixed time-box. Because this training, as valuable as it is, is running way behind schedule— which is, BTW, a very common problem with training.
On Tuesday, the first of three half-days of workshops, we got through less than 75% of the material planned for Tuesday. It took us until more than halfway through Day 2 to finish the Day 1 syllabus. Basically there's at least 1.5x as much stuff in this course as there is time allotted for it. In particular, the hands-on exercises are routinely running 3x as long as the instructors planned them to.
Part of the reason I make a point of this is that I've been on "the other side of the table" for training a lot. I've done technical sales enablement. It was as semi-official part of my job at a previous employer and an official part of my job for the first few years at this company.
Now, I'm not a "pro" at training. I don't have a college degree in it. I don't have formal training in it. It's a) an aptitude that b) I've spent time & effort getting better at.
I remember the first time I worked with a "pro" trainer several years ago at this company. We'd just hired him on, and I was meeting him over dinner the night before we delivered a day of sales training together in Boston. I'd reviewed his material on the flight out there.
"Tim, I'm concerned there's too content little here," I said. "We're booked for a full day tomorrow, but I think we could be done with this by lunchtime."
Tim just smiled. "It'll be a full day," he said. "You'll see."
I pushed back gently on that, asking him to elaborate. He did. Tim explained that he was allowing time for IT troubles to have to be resolved, extra time for break-out exercises, long breaks for sales people to catch up on their emails, and the ability to say, "Great! Everyone can go home an hour early," at the end of the day instead of asking everyone stay an hour late (as too often happens with training).
The next day happened exactly like Tim predicted. Everything he allowed for happened. People drifted in 15 minutes late. IT troubles caused us to start 1 hour after schedule. Allowing 2x to 3x the time for break-out exercises made them more meaningful for everyone. Allowing generous breaks for sales people to catch up on emails and keep in touch with their customers kept everyone focused in class— because if we didn't schedule generous breaks, sales people would just drop in and out on us, and we'd lose cohesion. And we finished comfortably before 5pm, allowing everyone to feel great about going home a bit early— or voluntarily stay a bit later to enjoy those unscripted f2f conversations I mentioned above.
So, what's the lesson here for trainers? Estimate how long the class should take, then add 50%. And either book a part day or be sure to include generous breaks— because the attendees all have "day job" responsibilities they need to address.
