Bootcamps in Bali
Bootcamps in Bali
A mentor of mine once used this phrase and I have never gotten enough of it. This concept and its usefulness is what we will explore today.
We all love a good vacation, if you have seen any of my other posts you will note that I am no exception, however in this era of explosive innovation in communication it is only responsible to look at our existing systems of enablement and ask, are they the best way? This article will review the traditional enablement patterns and what our current technologies can do to get more bang for our learning buck.
Gone are the days where bringing a bunch of salespeople into some five star resort in Bali / Hawaii / the Caribbean is the best way to train people. Really were those ever the right choices? Or more likely did we just like getting to strut our stuff in some exotic locale? The primary goal of any enablement program is affecting change. And to do that you need one thing above all else: information retention. So how do we get retention?
First you need to hold someone’s attention. Isolating them from the normal flow of the day is a good way to do it, that's often the basic idea behind offsites in general. But once you start factoring in the distractions of travel, the obvious events each night, the possibility of family tagging along, the narrative gets pretty hollow. So how do we get that? Classrooms at HQ? Still too much noise. The fact is that with today’s modern interconnected world; isolation isn’t practical, so we need to evolve. If the goal is attention then make it easy. Short digestible self paced content with testing each step of the way. We can help users by turning off fast forward and skipping, and by releasing content on a steady pace but overall it hits people where they can choose the battlefield that works best for them.
Next WIIFM, or what’s in it for me. Content needs to be actionable to the students job. Executive presentations for an entire day on company direction, economic trends, and the like are going to glaze over even the most zealous new hire. That content is great for context but make it short. Sprinkle it into the relevant job related content like sales methods, value proposition, and systems tutorials. These are topics that will hit quickly and decrease ramp time to productivity. Remember, specifically sales teams are just as driven to reduce ramp time as the company as their compensation generally depends on it.
Third and honestly most important is to use the knowledge. Without using whatever is taught quickly you will lose it immediately. This is why workshops in retreat based training sessions are key. But we can once again do it better today. Mentorship programs I find are the best way to ensure the content being trained is retained. A combination of continuously available ‘canned’ enablement materials and a human mentor gives the bang for your buck we were looking for at the top. A general rubric and some light train the trainer work with the mentors, will enable someone getting all the startup knowledge they need from the pre-recorded materials. This is then reinforced and driven home by a human who they can connect with who has been through the same experience.
Through a combination of virtual meetings, ride alongs, and email you can have a full partnership experience and really cement the messages in your enablement program. No boot camps necessary.
What's the best part of moving to this hybrid online mentorship model? Beyond simple cost savings on trainers, travel, and event space; its time. This program can start day one for any hire, minute one. The content is all there in your online platform and the new hire can hit the ground running. Mentors can be assigned prior to the hire starting and calls can start day one as well. Bootcamps invariably lead to dead time, partial training for weeks or months prior to the event, it's a mess.
So what's your action here enablement peers? Well step one is take all those slide decks from your retreats, or even you live online trainings and get them into a static format. Depending on your company size / resources / etc. that can be interactive gamified trainings, videos, structured wikis, or some combination. Then start finding your best people in whatever function you are training for and get their buy-in, not only on being mentors but on the content and creating a sustainable system for growing the field of mentors beyond the built in high performers. Once you have a few mentors on board and your content moved you can start spinning down your old school systems and have immediate interactive end to end enablement for today.