Interviews
4 Secrets in training that maximize business impact

Interview to Sardek Love, keynote speaker at ATD 2015 Mexico Summit. As President and Founder of Infinity Consulting and Training Solutions (ICTS), Sardek has worked in 25 countries inspiring, developing, and educating managers and leaders and all levels of employees in Fortune 100 companies, high tech organizations, local / state / federal government agencies, and global brands.

 

(@americalearning) Sardek is an internationally recognized and highly sought after management consultant, motivational and keynote speaker, and training and development expert. He specializes in providing consulting and training services in management and leadership development, employee engagement, production and operations management, coaching, and human performance improvement.

 

His motto: ‘Inventing the Future by Delivering Results that Endure’.


 

What are the 4 secrets in training that maximize the business impact?

 

Sardek Love: There are many variables that affect the impact training has on an organization’s bottom line. However, in my work with thousands of managers and the training professionals that support them, I’ve uncovered 4 critical techniques that, when absent, all but assure the overwhelming majority of training will not be transfered and will not result in a significant positive impact on the bottom line.

 

The 4 critical techniques that lead to máximum positive business impact are:

  • Define the problem
  • Design the right intervention
  • Deliver the right solution
  • Determine the business impact

 

Those are not new and they are not innovative but what they are is this – they are almost always done incorrectly or not done at all.

 

What recommendations can you give to implement successfully these 4 secrets in an organization?

 

That is the basis of my Keynote presentation at the 2015 ATD Mexico Summit. In general, the recommendation is to follow a proven, step-by-step process that will enable the demostration of significant value when addressing the right problem. Too often training professionals provide solutions to the wrong issue which leads to a less than optimal solution. So here are some recommendations for each of the 4 secrets I outlined above:

 

1. Define the problem. Most often training professionals address symptoms and fail to identify and address the specific root cause of a problem. So the first thing they should always do is be like an investigative journalist and try to uncover the root of the problem. I’m going to cover the step-by-step process for rapidly uncovering root causes in my Keynote speech.

 

2. Design the Intervention. Whatever the root cause is, the next step is to propose and design the appropriate solution. Many times training is NOT the solution. It may be part of the overall solution, but very rarely is training (in isolation) the only thing needed to address the cause of any problem. And whatever the solutions may be, they MUST be aligned to a business driver or metric. This is critical because without the alignment to a business driver or metric, management / stakeholder support for the solution can evaporate quickly. If training is one component of the solution, I will share a simple template that enables training professionals to always design the training to ensure it is aligned to the metric that matters to the stakeholders.

 

3. Deliver the Solution. Once training is part of the solution, it has to be delivered in an engaging manner. Here is one fact about training delivery – the majority of the time it is delivered poorly because the trainer has not been adequately trained in adult learning principles. As a Master Trainer, I teach training professionals how to deliver training that creates 5x to 10x higher than normal levels of participant engagement regardless the size of the audience. I do this by masterfully using experiential activities to link the content to the participants’ needs. So my recommendation is that the trainer use experiential activities in a very targeted manner to increase the retention and transferrance of what was learned.

 

4. Determine the Business Impact. This is perhaps the most difficult task of all. Evaluating the impact does not have to be complex, but it does need to be attempted. My recommendation is to utilize the most appropriate evaluation approach base on your organization’s time, cost, and quality constraints. There are several methods available (Donald Kirkpatrick model, Jack Phillips model to name a few). In my keynote speech I will reveal another model that simplifies the level of effort required to assess the impact while providing credible data from which the value of the training can be reasonably determined.

 

How should evaluate the effectiveness of leadership to identify what works and what doesn’t work in an organization?

 

The effectiveness of leadership to determine what works and what doesn’t is really a function of a leader’s ability to demonstrate critical thinking and problem solving skills. Unfortunately, reports from leading organizations such as the Society for Human Resources (SHRM), Harris Interactive, Towers Watson, and Chief Learning Officer consistently identify critical thinking / problem solving skills as a major skills gap in leaders. One of the fastest and most observable ways to evaluate a leader’s critical thinking and problem solving skills is to simply observe and assess the leader’s questioning skills. Thinking essentially occurs as an internal question and answer process, and how they gather and process information is a strong predictor of their success in evaluating anything.

 

by Sardek P. Love - Infinity Consulting and Training Solutions / Activity in Indonesia


What suggestions you would ask to a company that needs to evaluate the level of its employee commitment and identify appropriate strategies to increase employee retention and top talent attraction, so that these companies can achieve this?

 

Assessing employee commitment and identifying strategies to attract top talent and increase employee retention all lies in the realm of Human Capital Management. I would recommend organizations look at their entire Human Capital strategy to ensure it is linked to the organization’s strategy, mission, vision, and values. This sounds a bit complex, and it can be but it really doesn’t have to be. The entire employee lifecycle can be charted out for an organization just as its product or service lifecycle can be done. When organizations identify the critical steps in the human capital management process, they can then easily identify where gaps may exist in attracting the right employee for a given role. So start with the process that has key steps outlined and owners of each step identified, and then conduct a quick analysis to see where strengths and gaps exist within each phase of the attraction, onboarding, and retention process.

 

October 2015

 

More about Sardek Love:

Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/sardeklove

Twitter: www.twitter.com/splove1

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ictscorp

YouTube: http://bit.ly/gi0hhH

Blog: www.think2successnow.com