If something isn’t working right in your workplace, you need to fix it. Achieving your business goals and getting your needs met is essential to success. You don’t want to spend your career patch-fixing and putting out fires!
Constantly throwing resources and money at a problem without truly understanding the route cause of this issue will only create more problems down the road. Taking a step back, analyzing not only the situation, but the path you took to get there and the goals you are trying to meet is the best way to make your organization run a lot more smoothly.
As we learned in our CPTM class, (Certified Professional Training Manager course through Training Industry) analyzing the situation is your best first step. We learned a few really good ways to methodically gather information in order to successfully problem solve.
The CPTM experts have outlined a really simple three phase process.
Phase 1
First, you must understand your business needs and the root causes of problems that have come up. How do you do this? Gather information! You can do this through observations, face-to-face interviews, surveys, or group chats. Talking with the people involved can give you valuable insight to where in the process something might have gone wrong.
Phase 2
Once you have your information, you need to identify solutions to these issues. Most likely – but not always – the answer to your problems is training. Getting people to follow the right process by teaching them how and why it will help their day to day work can solve most issues but can require a lot of partnering with leadership. Your management team must also buy in to your solution. Use skills like strategic thinking, problem solving and coaching to build trust and a partnership with the decision makers in your organization.
Phase 3
Have you come up with your solution yet? Once phase 2 is done, you should have a clear picture of your plan. Now, on to Instructional Design. The last phase is all about creating a plan to implement your solution through an expert Instructional Designer. You can use an in-house ID, or partner with one through a vendor. Either way, it’s their job to make your plan a reality.
By following this simple process, you’ll have a plan in place to fix existing problems, and avoid more in the future.
If Lesson 7 is the first post you’ve seen, read more about the other lessons we’ve learned here:
-L&D thoughts
-Have a thought on our blog post? Please comment below, we love to start new discussions!