I did a course in Cambridge a few months ago and was met by a wall of “It won’t work” and “We already knew that”, with a little bit of “It’s good but our boss won’t let us do that” – what a fun day THAT was!
And it made me think that for training to be worthwhile you have to have all three of
- “We didn’t know that”
- “It would work”
- “My boss will allow it”
So then I made this:
Luckily I do spend most of the time in the middle – I don’t often get the Course From Hell
And if there’s an objection it’s often only one of the above. And they can be overcome – if the boss is against it we can work out how to persuade them, and if they think it won’t work we can investigate that…
With my favourite customers the management is receptive to change, and they’ve already selected people who don’t know it all (or they’ve told them that they need the course because they don’t know it all), so all I have to do is provide the third circle – show them things that will work for them.
