Training is for Cats & Dogs; People Learn

By Al Norval

This is a great saying that I heard the other day. I wish I knew who said it first as I would give them credit for it. It struck a chord in me since I've been at a couple of problem solving sessions lately where the countermeasure to the problem is “More Training” or “Re-train the people”.

I’ve come to realize that training never addresses the root cause of the problem.

If the original training people received didn’t have them operating in a standard way, why would training them over again give any different results and solve the problem? Now if we changed the training process, then yes, we would expect different results and could run the new training process as an experiment to see if it did produce different results.

Why then do people keep coming to training as a countermeasure to the root cause of problems?

I believe it’s because they aren't at root cause and it’s a popular countermeasure that gives the illusion that we’re actually doing something. Never mind that what we’re doing won’t solve the problem.

When we train dogs and cats – we teach them what to do; tricks like – roll-over, put their paw up, fetch a ball and bark on command. When they do these well, our pets get rewarded with a biscuit and the behavior gets reinforced.

People on the other hand, have a basic need to learn and to understand the “why” behind the “what” to do. By learning why things must be done in a certain way, people increase their basic capability and understanding resulting in a much higher likelihood that the standard will be followed.

What’s the best way for people to learn the why? – it’s through being engaged in problem solving. Simple problem solving engages people in such a way that they learn.

The result is people who are performing tasks not by rote waiting for their behavior to be reinforced but because they have a deep understanding of the situation and why things must be done this way. People who then can use this deep understanding to drive faster improvements within an organization.

Training or learning - which organization would you prefer to be part of?

Cheers

Standard Work or Training?

By Al Norval

As I start to introduce Standard Work to teams, I’m often faced with a lot of questions that go like this:

How can I get all the information I need to put down onto a 1 page document?

What’s interesting is that people want to write down absolutely everything about the task and put it into a Standard Work document. This includes not just “What to do”, but “How to do it” and even “Why we do it that way”. What they are trying to do is to mimic their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), which are often great volumes of documents buried in a computer system that nobody can or does read.



Why don’t people read them?

Their sheer size dictates they will never be read. Many times I’ve seen a 7 page introduction before the task details. The details themselves are written out in English with no visual indicators, diagrams or pictures. (This is done since the visuals take up too much memory in the computer). Then there is the perfunctory closing pages which gives a 10 – 15 page document on one task. No surprise that no one reads them.

When I’m at an organization, I like to ask to see the procedures and am told – “They are in the computer”. I then ask, can you find them for me and pull them up. After several minutes of trying, inevitably, the person says something like “The systems not responding” or “Somebody moved them” or “They used to be here”.

These organizations forget the purpose behind Standard Work, that is, to reduce waste and variation and to form a foundation for problem solving. Standard work is there to tell us when we can’t meet the standard due to abnormalities in the process. These get surfaced and problem solved by the team so the entire process gets stronger and stronger. The standard work constantly changes over time as the people who own the standard work develop new more waste free ways of doing the work.

Contrast that to large SOPs. Can you imagine the people who actually do the work, changing these routinely?

People also fail to distinguish between Standard Work and Training. The purposes are different although in many cases organizations mix the two together. I like to keep them separate. Standard work is there for qualified team members to use and to improve. A training system is there for new team members; to build their capability and bring them up to speed while ensuring the quality of their work. This is where the “Why” and “How” behind the “What” is critical.

Mixing the two together leads to confusion and to a lack of engagement of people in driving improvement.

Standard Work or Training – they are related but different. You need a system for both.

Cheers