15 Steps to Create a Successful Training for Organizations

People always ask me: Paulo, what is the process that you follow to create training for Organizations? So, I decided to share with you the process I developed and that I’ve been using for more than 6 years. It has 15 steps.

1. What is the need? What is the need of the Organization in terms of training? Once you identify the needs of the Organization, (most of the time they come from the strategic planning for that organization see Hoshin Kanri), you need to assess the current situation of the group and where the organization expects them to be in the future and when. Once the gap is identified, the training will become the bridge to take the group to the future state.

2. Goals of the training. It is a description of the future state. Example: When you complete this training you will understand the main concepts of the training, how to apply them, how to assess them, how to improve them, and how to sustain them. You can also say: When you complete this training you will be able to teach your team about this process, help them with the implementation, assess their performance, make improvements, and sustain the process.

3. What are the concepts that I/we need to teach? Here you have 3 main domains for concepts that you must follow to identify all the concepts needed for the training:

The first domain I call Foundational Concepts. These are overall concepts that will be the basis for the learning. They create the environment for learning. Let me give you one example: When I am teaching teams, the foundational concept I want them to understand is “everything is a system or we live in systems”. Everything they will learn from now on will be applied in the system environment.

The second domain I call Specific Concepts. These concepts are related to the subject of the training. When I am teaching Strategic Planning a specific concept is “strategy formation”.

The third domain I call Customized Concepts. These concepts will connect the specific concepts to the culture of the organization. In other words, it is translating the specific concepts to the culture of the company. For example: some companies work like networks, they are flat organizations. I need to link the specific concepts to the network concepts like flexibility, collaborative decision making.

4. Concepts flow. Once you determine the concepts you need to teach, you need to define the sequence you are going to teach these concepts. The overall flow is from Foundational Concepts, passing through Specific Concepts towards Customized Concepts. You must be aware that there is a flow within each domain. One concept must be built upon another concept, like in layers. It will help the participants learn how to structure their thinking.

5. Examples and stories. What are the examples and stories that you will link to your concepts? People also learn from your experience so you must share your own examples and stories to illustrate the concepts to the participants. You can also ask them to give examples.

6. Create a Process and assessment tool. All trainings must give steps to follow. When you are teaching a group you must give them a path to implement the process. Create the steps because they will be the basis of your training. You must also develop an assessment tool that will tell how successful the implementation is and how efficient the process is. The assessment tool must help the group to assess the current situation as they implement and perform the process.

7. Define Homework. You need to define the homework for the training so participants can practice the concepts and be prepared to share what they learned so you can correct their learning process. All training must have at least two sessions. One session for the training and another session to evaluate homework so the teacher can see if they have learned properly.

8. Time required. What is the time required to teach the training? I always recommend limiting each training session to 3 hours. If your training time is bigger than 3 hours, create more classes so the group will absorb the concepts more efficiently. I understand the challenges in this case because sometimes you need to do an intensive training.

9. Prepare syllabus. A syllabus is a description of the training explaining the goals of the training, the concepts you will teach, the duration of the training, how many classes, the days the classes will happen, the requirements to get certified as you complete the training, the behavior expected from the participants, who is the teacher, who is the assistant.

10. Prepare material and develop controls. What are the visual resources you will use? I.e. Handouts (i.e. PowerPoint Presentation), projector, whiteboard, post its, etc. Attendance control and homework control. The teacher must control the attendance and homework because they can be pre requisites to be certified.

11. Prepare an Assessment tool for the students to evaluate the training. I always like to assess at the end of each class so I can make corrections in the next class. If you just have one class, plan to create breaks so you can assess the training. These breaks must be limited to 5 minutes so you don’t disrupt the learning process. For a 3 hour training I would assess the training every 45 minutes.

12. Prepare letter of invitation. Create a letter of invitation with the title of the training and a brief description of the training and attach the syllabus for more detailed information.

13. Test training. Give the training to a small group. After the training, brainstorm with the group what worked well, what needs to be improved, and what was missing. You need to repeat this process at the end of each session, so you can make small improvements as you give the next session.

14. Training adjustment. Make adjustments on your training based on the feedback of the group. As part of continuous improvement I always do a plus and delta for small improvements at the end of each session. Plus means what worked well for that session, delta means what we need to do to improve the next session.

15. Training calendar. Now that your training is ready create a training calendar so participants can enroll in advance and you can have the training accomplished in the time required by the Organization.