You have a change you want to make, and you need to train people on a topic to get it accomplished. How do you go about it so the change actually happens?

One way is to train on the topic all at once. Whether it’s a half day, full day, several days or a week, you get everyone together and push through the training. Many times there is no follow up with this approach. The change is assumed to happen due to everyone having attended the training.

If you’ve been through this, you know often the topic and change that was sought becomes known as another “flavor of the day.” Once you have experienced these enough you know that you just need to sit through the training because this too will pass.

How do you avoid this scenario and engage people in the training to build something new?

Take a page from the marketer’s handbook.

You see it 7 times before you take action

I’ve heard many times that for a potential customer to become an actual customer on average that person needs to see your product or offer SEVEN times. 7 times!! So how likely are you to get buy-in when you out-of-the-blue show up with a training to affect change?

What marketers who convert potential customers into paying customers do very well is they show up consistently and frequently. You may immediately think of advertisements. Ads are one way marketers show up. But they show up other ways as well, such as on social media. Think of a successful author or podcaster. I’ll guess that they are posting one or more times each day. We don’t notice the volume most of the time because we simply don’t notice, or it doesn’t register and we don’t remember.

Consistent and frequent messaging

We can apply the principle of consistent and frequent messaging to making a change that sticks at work. In place of the all-at-once training, consider breaking the training into small pieces and delivering consistently over time. Create a video, article, or email communicating part of the change. If applicable, add actionable steps to take to demonstrate. Pick a cadence that works for you – daily, weekly, semi-monthly for example.

I’ve seen this work several times. The most recent was an effort to improve the quality of our engineering requirements. A subject matter expert – a seasoned business analyst – created content. Two times a month we published the content to other business analysts and product owners that opted in* for the info.

In all-hands meetings we mentioned where to sign up for updates. We had a lot of people sign up and we had a lot of good feedback. And because there is now a library of content, anyone can revisit it at any time.

The content was created as we went along. If there were particular questions or we noticed an issue that was hampering a lot of people, we would address it with the next article. Over time the subscribers looked forward to the information and knew where to find it again when needed.

Another example is safety training. At one company I was at we were required to do a short online safety training and take a short quiz every month. The topics recycled after a year or so. There was a lot of complaining about having to do the training every month (even though you could get through it in about 10 minutes). But I can tell you this – everyone knew how to evacuate the building. Everyone knew the basics of lock out/tag out. Everyone knew about PPE. Had the training been only one time a year it no doubt would have been less effective.

If you are a leader and you have a vision for your team or organization, remember that people need to hear it a lot just to hear it for the first time. Then they need to hear it consistently and frequently. I’ve heard it said that when you get tired of saying it, you are only just starting to reach everyone with your message!

engineer your life

  • If you have a major change that impacts other teams, consider communicating it a lot and on various platforms. Email, Teams (or similar), and in meetings are good choices. Sending one email is usually not enough to ward off the “Why didn’t you tell me?” question.
  • If there is a change you want to implement, consider breaking it into pieces and rolling it out consistently over time. Pick a cadence that is sustainable for the providers and recipients.

*If you have the ability to have the audience opt-in it’s even more powerful because they have given you permission to contact them repeatedly.

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