As budget belts tighten it's more important than ever for trainers to come up with the right solution to a problem, says Bob Selden - and it isn't always training. Delving deeper into the problem itself is imperative for training and trainers to survive, he says.

People are talking about a downturn in the economy. Training budgets are getting tighter. In this scenario, trainers need to be smart. Now, more than ever, we have to justify the expense of training and in some cases, our very existence. How can we demonstrate that we can provide solutions to day-to-day problems and help improve the bottom line?

"Now, more than ever, we have to justify the expense of training... How can we demonstrate that we can provide solutions to day-to-day problems and help improve the bottom line?"

Many of us spend a lot of time evaluating the success of our training efforts – ranging from normative and summative evaluation (a la Kirkpatrick etc.) through to attempts at measuring ROI. In fact, through such evaluations, training was one of the first support functions to establish the value of investing organisational resources in people development in order to bolster organisational effectiveness. But all of these efforts (good as they might be) are to no avail when budgets start getting cut and senior management asks the question: 'What is training doing to improve the bottom line?'

If training's the answer, what's the question?

When a manager in the organisation says: 'We have a problem. We need to train our people better (or to handle this situation better)', it's very tempting for us to provide a training solution. But is training always the answer? Here are three examples from my own experience to illustrate an alternative.

As a young trainer in a major bank, I was asked to develop a training course to solve a problem they were having with their international transfers of money. A new, more updated electronic transfer system had been introduced and there were many mistakes. When they told me they wanted a training course, here are the questions I asked:

Q. "Why are people making mistakes?"

A. "Because they're not following the procedures"

Q. "Why are they not following procedures?"

A. "Either they don't understand them or they don't want to"

Now, it was easy to establish that the 'don't want to' was irrelevant – it was costing people time for reworking. The problem was not motivational, rather understanding. What was the best solution? To design far simpler procedures that had coloured illustrations (a first for the bank) of how to fill out the forms and complete the procedure. A simple solution that saved the bank a lot of time and money (and me designing and implementing an irrelevant training program).

The second example comes from my time in consulting. As consultants, we were asked to design and implement a training program to help cattle producers in the grain-fed beef industry introduce a quality assurance (QA) system. Now eventually, they did need some training. However, through a series of questions, it was established that the industry leaders' real immediate need was to make farmers aware of the need for a QA system. The solution? We direct-mailed an awareness raising video (using real farmers) to every beef farmer in the country. We now had people interested in establishing a QA system.

The third example is from a government initiative to improve change management practices in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturers were offered substantial grants to introduce changed methods of manufacturing that could then be used to demonstrate to others the benefits of these new methods. We were asked to train the small teams of joint industry/government representatives that would help the organisations implement their changes and monitor their success. Once again, there was eventually a need to perhaps train these teams. However, we found (through asking the right questions) that their immediate need was a set of detailed procedures that everyone could follow to ensure the scheme was implemented successfully. We became procedure writers and communicators rather than trainers.

Trainers are amongst the best placed people in any organisation to have a handle on what's going on – we can often see the problems before others do. This gives us a great opportunity to help people solve their problems, cut costs and improve the bottom line, without necessarily providing a training solution. As a former manager of mine once said to me: "Bob, you can do all the evaluating you like. I will not hold you accountable for the number of training programs you run, nor the number of bums on seats.

Neither will I hold you accountable for the effectiveness of those programs – that's a given (in those days I was into human asset accounting). However, I will hold you accountable for the number of times people in the organisation come to you to ask for your help in solving their problems. If I see no one at your door, I will know that you are not doing your job effectively."

Learning is about seeing things from a different perspective. Our role as trainers, is to help people improve their vision. So you always need to ask: 'If training’s the answer, what's the question?'

Bob Selden is the author of the recently published 'What To Do When You Become The Boss' – a self help book for new managers. He also coaches at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland and the Australian Graduate School of Management, Sydney. You can contact Bob via www.whenyoubecometheboss.com

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