In his 2008 book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker, the ex-Harvard lecturer and professional service consultant David Maister explained ‘Why (Most) Training is Useless’. Even starting from the point of being acknowledged as the best in his field, he recognises that, if you don’t put into practice what you have learned, you may as well not have learned it in the first place (much like the ‘Fat Smoker’, who knows exactly how to lose weight and quit smoking . . .).
Without wishing to compare ourselves to David, we have found much the same (understandable) tendency in some of our training feedback – the urgent business issues take priority over the important training lessons. We regularly receive excellent feedback from (most of) our delegates, and are told how they are going to implement their own ‘profit improvement campaign’ as soon as they get back to the office.
But, when we follow up to see how they have got on, they admit that progress is less than they had hoped – the main issues being:
The partners do not ‘buy-in’ to the campaign
The ‘campaign leader’ does not have/is not given sufficient authority to implement the necessary changes
The fee-earning staff do not recognise the importance of the programme for the firm’s (and their own) continued success
The support staff are not included, and therefore do not understand the importance of their role
For this reason, our training is designed to make staff at all levels understand why this programme is important, and how to achieve the desired results from it. This includes how to achieve buy-in at all levels, what to measure, provision of template documents for measurement, and how to balance the ‘carrot and stick’ approach to ensure success.
We also follow up every training session with the offer of free, remote follow-up consultancy, to help with implementation.
Our in-house training programme includes:
Strategic-level training for senior staff on the management of the performance improvement campaign
In-depth training for fee-earning staff on the why, and how, they can help to improve their firm’s profitability
Training suitable for support staff on their role in the profit improvement process
The benefits of our rigorous, cost-effective training programmes lie in our ability to prepare your staff for successful implementation of what they have learned, and our dedication to helping you achieve the maximum possible results from your follow up campaign.
