Just stumbled on an article I'd saved last December from the Wall Street Journal.'Lessons Learned' by Dr. Harry Martin at Cleveland State has some great research on how what's taught in training sessions actually gets put into practice in the organization. In a nut shell, what encourages people to change behavior?
The most impressive stat to me was how much 'peer support' improved these efforts. 3X greater than just management support alone! So, why do we make such a fuss about getting "management buy in"? I've leaned on this crutch myself and, thinking back over my career, the times when I accomplished the most was when my peers and I got aligned and committed to making something happen.
Enlisting peers in training and creating an environment where people support and hold each other accountable dramatically accelerates implementation (see my previous post on New Seasons Market). We did this very successfully for safety at one employer of mine. Most companies have, or can get, good content. It's the delivery and support afterwards that really does a belly flop.
We need to start thinking about how best to change behavior and THEN build our training content and methods and on-going support and reinforcement around THAT.
Why teach more than we can support afterwards? This is classic PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act), Lean and Stephen Covey thinking.
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1 comments:
This a fact! Getting input, buy-in, etc where the work is actually being done, by the stakeholders doing the work, is key to long term successful use of the new idea. It seems to differentiates "another idea from mgt" from "hey here is a new way of doing things around here that makes sense."
"...by the people, for people..." has new meaning.
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