I am currently engaged in developing a training course to introduce a new business process. My client would prefer that we talk through the 7 steps of the process, supported by PowerPoint, which will take about 3 hours!! I want to make it more interactive - more of a true training session rather than death by PowerPoint. He is open to that suggestion but wants to see an example of what I propose. However, I'm struggling to come up with interactive activities that the participants might do. Has anyone out there got any ideas for tasks or activities that might make it more interesting for the participants? The process is completely new to all participants so they will have no prior knowledge.
lindsay rich
9 Responses
Jigsaws
Hi,
If you can break the process down into individual stages why not get the group to try building the process up using large “jigsaw” type pieces? It might be interesting to do a before and after type activity i.e. what they think the logical process would be, deliver your powerpoint, and then get them to build the process again.
I did this type of exercise when delivering process training and it does work quite well and makes it a bit more interactive.
Business Process Training
Try and make the session as real as possible by getting delegates to realate back to what they actually do in the workplace. In doind so people will be thinking about the impact that teh process has upon their working day and the (hopefully) improvements it will make to their day. A good way to do this is to get them to explain their understanding of the process as is rather than the “to be” process. Thereafter you can break the process down into its constituent parts and critically appraise each. You then need to get buy in on the new process by selling its advantages over the “as is”. The new process may be adapted during this process so you will get the bestt of both worlds.
Hope this helps,
Jeremy
simulations for process training
Lindsay,
Use an interactive behavioural simulation of the process where the participants can experience it, comment on it, and if necessary try out modifications on it before it goes live. This can be custom designed to map both the existing and new processes so that people can try out both in a workshop setting. The simulation can be stopped for review and comments, changes made by the participants, and restarted. This way there can be ownership as well as understanding, and the learning and taking on board is emotive and practical and not just cognitive with powerpoint information! Good Luck.
John Teire
john.teire@virgin.net
Simulations on line as well as face to face
I agree with John’s comments about using a simulation so that the purpose for the process becomes apparent as well as the stages. If you have a large enough audience, it may be worth seeing if this can be created online – thereby creating not only an interactive learning experience but also the chance to have the individual learning sequences about the stages of the process available at a later stage as a just-on-time reference tool.
Make it 3D
Hi Lindsay
Further to Janis’s suggestion, I have used exercises where we translate paper based process maps into three entities suing a variety of materials to represent each process step. I usually have different teams or individuals take ownership for their part of the process so that toghther thy can look at what it means to each group or person. Please contact me if you’d like some more details.
Simulation +
I agree with John Tiere about the simulation and would add that the important thing to remember here is that you will be introducing change. Therefore there is likely to be resistance which may manifest in a variety of ways. It will be important to deal with this other wise the process is unlikely to be implemented properly.
Whatever your client thinks he needs in terms of teaching the process he will need at least 3 times as long to deal with people’s reactions to it.
Thanks
Thank you all for your comments and ideas. You’ve given me lots of food for thought.
Regards
Creatgive ways
Hello Lindsay,
There are lots of ways to make it interactive. Depends how creative you want to be/can be about it. You could ask groups of people to represent parts of the new process/old prcess – role play being the departments concerned. Ask others to represent the flow of information in the new process compared to the old process – to demonstrate how it’s better. Others can represent the way decisions are made in old compared to new. Depends what’s new and better…speed, quality, rework, cost? Getting them to imagine the experience of old vs. new will ‘stick’ better.
Rob Sheffield
Board game?
Perhaps an output of the session could be to develop a board game that maps the processes – but using a creative theme where the processes are mapped but in a totally different context -Survivor / Harry Potter type story / Space Odyssey etc – depends on the type of business process you are working with. And need to be careful that it doesnt become trite… but soemetimes using analogies like this can be great for reinforcing concepts and people tend to remember key points if they are embedded in something fun.
I am so over Powerpoint – I use charts and thick colourd pens as much as possible and build nice looking charts which then get stuck up on walls and build a map of the day. PP is good for supporting visuals for certain type sof information – but mix it up with chart work, and the other great ideas below…