A waste of time?

PROPERLY IMPLEMENTED and reinforced through effective follow-up coaching, training can address individual weaknesses and build on existing skills and behaviours in order to deliver performance improvement, to the benefit of both the individual and the employer.
Equally importantly, such gains can be measured, thereby justifying training investment in the real-world terms of return on investment.
In over thirty years of sales, at Huthwaite International we have conducted research into what differentiates the exceptional sales or business development person from the merely average. Along the way, however, a disturbing picture has emerged of how law firms and other businesses continue to waste vast sums on training that does not work. Some of the best ways to waste money are listed below.

1. Don’t bother to get management buy-in
The first law of organisational behaviour states: ‘If the boss shows interest in it, it gets done.’ Training is about enabling performance improvement, and senior partners and managers responsible for broad business goals must throw their weight behind making it happen. This means: involvement in determining training content and provider; motivating and enabling participants to attend training events; being there to kick-off events; and, longer term, sticking with it! Otherwise, it quickly becomes just another wound in ‘death by a thousand initiatives’.

2. Leave organisational obstacles lying around
The corollary of the first law is ‘If the boss rewards it, it gets done first.’ Pity the poor employee who is exhorted and trained to use interactive, consultative skills to deliver better-quality business, but is rewarded on short-term revenue and activity measures.
Checking the appetite for training at ‘street level’ is also vital. Partners may resent training because it takes key staff offline – after all, time learning is time not earning. Their view may be shortsighted, but it needs addressing at the outset. Leave this clutter lying around and your training will surely trip and fall.

3. Rely on the classroom changing everything
Whisper this, (platform training gurus hate to hear it), but a period of time spent in a classroom will not, on its own, change behaviour long term.
If you want your people to have transferable skills that they can implement, they will need intermediate reinforcement of some sort – ideally, practice and on-the-job coaching, from their manager, for the first few weeks following training.

4. Believe that training will be the panacea for all your problems
Antibiotics will not mend a broken leg. Law firms, like the body, are complex entities in which things can go wrong. Training will frequently help solve a problem, but by itself will rarely provide the complete solution.

5. Buy training on price, not value
Lecture-style, en masse training, delivered over short time-spans can be fun and offer valid insights; it can explain ‘what to do’. Training to develop skills – the ‘how to do it’ – comprises repeated iterations of input, practice, feedback and review. It requires expensive resources – time and individual attention from talented people!
Remember what my granny used to say: ‘He who buys cheap, buys twice!’

6. Buy a ‘one size fits all’ training package
A ‘one size’ package will produce ‘one size’ results. These may be perfectly acceptable, and represent a reasonable return on investment. However, a supplier who is skilled at customising exercises and materials to reflect the participants’ real world will get you a bigger (and quicker) ‘bang for your buck’.

7. Don’t evaluate and review
A good driver looks in the mirror regularly. Let’s face it, even the best training provider rarely gets the programme 100 per cent spot on, first time. You may see ways to adapt the training once in action and, anyway, the world constantly moves on. Fail to look back and assess, and you fail to respond to change.

8. Expect your providers to do as they are told
You should expect your provider to challenge underlying assumptions and goals. You surely don’t hire them just so that you can push them around; you must have plenty of your own people you could push around for free? But of course – I was forgetting - you want to waste your budget.
There is a simple common denominator here. Training requirements always exist within a wider business development context within the practice. Failure to recognise and respond to this will ensure that any proposed solution will fall short of expectations – and be money wasted.

Peter Belsey is a director at HuthwaiteFleming.