2.3 How long does it take to develop training?

One of the main mistakes in training is rushing to content creation in an effort to save time.

You need to look at what you want people to be able to do at the end of the process. You need to understand how this links to a change you need to see in your work. CARE recommends the action mapping approach developed by Cathy Moore. If you don’t take the time (maybe an hour in an emergency) to think this through, you greatly increase the risk of training that doesn’t have the impact that you need it to. That isn’t an abstract waste – that is hundreds of hours of time you could be gaining in the coming months that you won’t gain.

Once you understand what people need to be able to do, it is often pretty straightforward to develop a workable plan for training. Give them a chance to practice the skill they need to (in a safe way). Provide them with rigorous feedback. Provide them with information that they NEED to know in order to do it. Practice the skills again, in a more challenging setting. Coming up with a plan like this could take you another hour or maybe two. Spend your time on identifying the problem and coming up with ways to practice, rather than on writing huge PowerPoint presentations packed with bullet points that few will read and even fewer will remember.