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(Lack of) Training
For the major part of my working life, I’ve been a trainer, so I know how to mold a raw recruit into a skilled user of custom software, a skilled computer support technician, or a skilled customer service agent. I’ve written training manuals and created PowerPoint presentations to help newbies gain useful skills. I’ve delivered in-person training sessions and online training sessions. Training is my gig.
Over the years, I’ve observed a cheapening of the training process. I’ve seen training reduced to having someone shadow for a few days or weeks (if lucky) before being thrown to the wolves. At one of my training gigs, we had carefully planned and delivered a 4.5-day training program to take someone who had never used our software before and get them to conscious proficiency by the end of the process. We had delivered this training hundreds of times with dozens of clients, and we knew it worked. However, one client demanded that we reduce our 4.5-day class to a single 8-hour day. The ultimate decision was made above my head, so I had to do a major hatchet job on our training curriculum to deliver something in 8 hours. They got the equivalent of tossing someone in the pool to see if they could swim rather than giving them swimming lessons.
Unfortunately, tossing newbies in the pool has become how “training” gets done, emphasizing running them through the meat grinder to see what comes…
