What Does Honest Abe Lincoln Have To Do With Company Growth? by:Jim Symcox - Marketing Magician

Is formal training important? After all we can all learn from

other employees or from outside consultants we bring in can't we?

Well, in my previous life as a consultant IT project director I

noticed people would often be too busy doing their own job

to learn the skills of an outside consultant too.

That's despite massive efforts made to train people.

But unless skills are used regularly after training they fade

away.

Learning from others in your own organisation can also be

fraught.

Learning by "sitting next to Nellie" as it's known can work. But

it means that any weak custom and practise procedures are copied.

These weak procedures may actually be the direct opposite

of the company strategy.

Also if you're learning from someone because they're just about

to leave the company. For whatever reason.You don't get their

total focus on teaching you their job.

So ways of doing things can become less and less effective as

time goes on.

That means that service to your customers becomes worse. Simply

because the people serving them don't know the best way of

working.

Research shows that over 60% of customers leave a business

because of poor, ineffective or indifferent service.

The Story Of Two Wood Cutters

Let's look at the story of two woodcutters

Once there were twin brothers. They were tall, strapping lads who

had both become lumberjacks at the same time. One year they took

part in a logging competition together. Each was strong and beat

everyone they came up against. Until they reached the final where

they met each other.

They seemed evenly matched. The crowd looked and urged them on as

they both started cutting timber at a strong rate of knots. After

an hour one of the brothers stopped for a few minutes. Let's call

him the "idle chopper". He soon resumed work but every hour he

kept stopping.

Eventually the competition finished and it was immediately

obvious that the idle chopper had cut down significantly more

wood than his brother.

His brother shook his hand to congratulate him and asked, "how on

earth did you cut twice as much wood as me despite stopping so

frequently?"

The idle chopper smiled and said "I wasn't really resting I was

sharpening my axe so my cuts went deeper faster than yours with

your blunt axe."

The "idle chopper" was really the "smart chopper" because he'd

taken to heart what President Abraham Lincoln had said.

Abraham Lincoln said "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I

will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

People can look at training as a complete waste of a company's

time. Because it's preventing their staff from getting the job

done.

But look at the woodcutters the one who kept stopping to sharpen

his axe won.

The same is true of any company that gives their staff training.

It may stop the busy, busy time for a short while but it means

that staff become more productive and therefore achieve more.

Continuous Training Is Vital To A Company's Growth

Getting yourself and your staff trained is essential if you want

to continue to grow and develop,

If you don't you'll be like 90% of businesses over a 10 year time

frame and be out of business.

It's really that stark a choice.

There are a number of effective training strategies that I would

recommend you to use.

Two of the most powerful are as follows:

a) A Weekly Company Workshop

b) Formal Courses - with a twist

Let me explain exactly how they work so that you can go and apply

them in your business immediately.

How A Weekly Company Workshop Works (Step By Step)

1) Set-up an hour per week where all employees gather together.

The first workshop is the Set-up and Introduction Workshop.

2) In this workshop you all brainstorm the issues and problems

that you and your customers have with the company.

Someone is designated to takes action notes. That is notes that

simply list the actions to be taken with the person responsible

and the date to be completed (always before the next meeting).

3) You then prioritise and agree the issues amongst everyone

there.

Hint: Give particular weight to customer issues as they are quite

likely to resolve one or more internal issues too.

4) Provide a full list of prioritised issues to all attendees.

The attendees should be everyone who works for the company,

unless they're sick.

The Second and subsequent workshops are Issue Eaters

5) Take the first issue from the list that was issued the day of

the last meeting - it's that important.

6) Brainstorm possible solutions to the issue.

For example the customers are returning a product to you in large

numbers but you can't see why. The issue is "You don't know why

the product is being returned".

Several possible solutions occur:

a) Ring customers and ask them why they're returning them. Also

ring customer's who've kept them and ask them why too.

b) Send every customer a questionnaire asking several questions,

including one on returns and also specifically for the product in

question.

c) Ask the sales force to go and see each customer and ask for

their most honest feedback.

d) The managing director to ring the companies concerned to see

what the problem is.

Collate the answers and provide the information and analysis to

the group the following week.

7) If the solution calls for a better procedure or company

process to be implemented designate someone to write it and for

it to be issued before the next meeting for review and agreement.

8) Only address one issue per session - even if you finish it in

10 minutes. But you must focus completely on that issue.

9) Review the solution and check that it is working. Then sign it

off and add to the list of completed issues.

Remember This Valuable Spin-off From The Exercise

Guess what you're building with the documentation?

It's a company file that allows new staff to get up to speed on

how your company has got to where it is now and what the current

procedures and processes are.

Not just that. It means that at a stroke you've pooled the

brainpower of several people to produce new and better ways of

working that help customers and your staff.

You tell me. Do you think your customers are going to become even

happier with an organisation that addresses and resolved issues?

Now you may be thinking I'm only a one person or two person

company?

This method applies equally well to you too.

The great thing about it is that as long as you document you'll

have processes in place when you get more staff.

Squeeze The Most From A Formal Course

Look at formal courses, but with a twist:

1) Have a formal training strategy for each person. It doesn't

matter whether you're a one person or 3,000 person company. You

need a strategy because otherwise you'll get asked for training

that doesn't fit with your company goals.

2) Plan what courses staff (and you) should attend during the

year.

3) Attend the course - there should be no excuse for non-

attendance.

4) Now here's the twist before your staff go on the course tell

them that you're going to ask them to do a short presentation on

the course at the next weekly meeting to all the staff. The

presentation is a short summary of the course content, and the 6

to 10 things that the person has learnt and will apply in their

job. Followed by 10 minutes of questions.

The reasons for this are:

a) Other people now benefit from hearing what the course was all

about

b) The attendee will pay much more attention to the course and

learn more from it

c) You're training staff to feel comfortable giving presentations

in a relaxed environment.

d) Other staff may learn things they can apply in their job.

5) Make sure that they do the presentation. If not you get none

of the benefits outlined previously. Make sure everyone does the

presentation, even someone who is quaking in dread. Help them get

over it by letting them stay seated, or just present over 2-3

weeks. But make sure they do present - it must be a condition of

attendance.

6) Been on a course yourself? Right. You do the same as your

staff. They're learning about what you do.

What Are The Golden Rules Of Training?

Finally and most importantly there is a set of Golden Training

Rules I always use which is

a) Training must be applied when you return from the course

b) You and your staff must support attempts to use the training.

It may not work very well initially as people start to apply it.

c) Re-train at intervals because skills can only be improved by

repetition. Look at karate, golf, football and other sports you

have to keep practising to get better. It's the same with work

training.

For example people learn everything on a time management course

but maybe only apply 10% of what they learnt and forget the rest.

When they go again they learn pretty much the same thing but then

apply another 10% of what they learn and forget the rest.

So over time they apply more and more of what they're taught

until eventually they're using all the time management techniques

and are experts. Get them to teach new staff!

d) Once you've got trained up experts use them to train your own

staff.

Does training staff stop the company making money? Ultimately the

answer is it makes you even more money than you did before they

were trained.

Remember the two axmen?

You want to be the smarter chopper.

About the author

Jim Symcox, also known as the Marketing Magician is a copywriter, marketing coach and the author of "How to Leap Ahead Of Your Competitors". For more marketing magic email web(AT)acornservice.com with "city" in the subject line and you'll be sent a copy of the book. Try Jim's blog at www.acornservice.blogspot.com for further tips

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