Delivering a large-scale training initiative is no easy task. Sometimes, we are afforded the courtesy of being able to start a project from the ground up. We can gather data, explore our options for delivery and structure a program we can be confident in within a time frame that makes sense… but that’s not always the case.

Other times, we are tasked with cleaning up after someone and rushing to implement a solution to prevent or mitigate further issues down the road. Whether this manifests in the form of a manager attempting to change their team’s behavior and instead inspiring the opposite change, a senior-level employee stepping outside their scope and dis-investing the team with their solo take on a solution, or a leader haphazardly deploying their version of a training session, often it’s the learning leader’s role to step in, pick up the pieces and attempt to reach the end goal.

How To Turn the Tide

It might seem that you are inherently at a disadvantage in these situations, which can be true if you blindly tear through an initiative in full triage mode, but a skilled learning leader can leverage the experiences and outcomes of a failed pilot or program and deploy an effective solution in its place (or aftermath).

You have a few ways to move forward in the aftermath of a failed training initiative.

1.  Turn to the stakeholders.

Although we may tend to look directly at the content provided to learners, we should instead focus on the stakeholders throughout the process and solicit their feedback to build up the program. Starting from the top down, we can ask questions about what everyone who’s tied up in the process wants to get out of training.

• Executives and the C-suite: At this level, training is typically seen as any other type of investment. They fund training with the expectation that there will be significant return on their investment. Whether that is through compliance training and risk mitigation or through addressing emergent needs within the business, the typical executive wants to see the financial impact and scope of any training initiative laid out in language they can understand. The concerns and targets of this group should be taken into consideration when building out your measurement schema, especially when you’re highlighting which key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure.
• Managers: Their immediate concerns are “How long will this take?” and “Will I see immediate change?” Managers’ general attitude around a given training initiative can greatly impact its ultimate success or failure. The manager’s attitude is a “climate factor,” an external influence that can change how impactful training is, and typically trickles down into their subordinate’s reception of the content, skewing the results. To ensure we’re meeting the needs of this group we should consider:

— Timing of delivery.

Is this related to a real or perceived problem that is being actively seen by the manager. If it isn’t, can we convince them to see it that way?

— Required time investment.

Is the training worth the interruption of employee productivity? If it’s not, can we truncate training, change the method, or change the scope?

— Immediacy of results.

Manager want to see behavior change. Design small, actionable changes or improvements into your initiatives if you’re able. Even if it’s minor in the grand scheme of things, perception is important.

— Clear communication.

Keep managers in the loop about expectations, content, timing and progress. Never underestimate the power of having your “receipts” should something go awry in your delivery. This is doubly true of training initiatives that are under a time crunch.

— Front-line employees.

Regardless of the topics being covered, front-line employees want training that is supportive, worth their time and valuable, not an indictment of their behavior. It should make their work life easier, cover material in a way that’s not demeaning or condescending and contribute to their overall growth. If your message is not received by this group, you’ll have a much harder time illustrating your value up the chain of command.

2. Learn from others’ mistakes.

Extract information from the failure of a program to better inform the objectives for the revised program launch. What about those who were already involved in the initial failure of the program? What can we learn from them? Typically, the first thing you would measure when delivering a training program would be your surface level Kirkpatrick Level 1 considerations, “Did the learners enjoy their experience with training?”

In a project where you are starting with a negative, you want to identify the aspects of the training program that “turned them off” to the experience. Start by collecting standardized feedback from the groups that have already been exposed to the training. A common approach to feedback collection is to ask questions regarding the facilitator, content and application of information plus a section for free text feedback at the end to capture any additional comments. A tool like this will typically help you to home in on the problem quite quickly, as the areas of contact for the learners are explicitly separated.

As an example, let us highlight the two most common complaints I have seen when it comes to gathering feedback on a failed program and some potential solutions:

• “Executives telling us to do better rubs us the wrong way, they don’t do this work.”

Have someone who has recently worked on the front lines and performed the jobs of front-line workers themselves deliver the content. Anyone can read from a slide or prepared presentation, the real value that a facilitator brings is through sharing their experiences and being able to answer questions that may arise without hesitation or fabrication. Sincerity and a shared experience go a long way when attempting to influence the behaviors of groups.

• “We don’t care about driving profits, we aren’t in sales.”

Ultimately, we would like to see our KPIs surrounding client buy-in and utilization of services to improve. However, not all employees have a clear stake in profits. Public servants and health care workers care about individuals, their quality of life, their outcomes, and their well-being. If you can pull reports or metrics from internal resources, such as an outcomes committee, leverage these internal publications to better make the case to your teams. Show them the value.

3. Leverage your seat at the table.

A great first party to engage in the planning process for a relaunch is executive leadership. Typically, you will get some amount of corporate waffle, but if you are able to read between the lines, you will be able to extract some information to inform your method of approach.

Let’s look at some examples of typical senior leadership feedback after a failed training pilot and how learning leaders can respond:

• “We’ve already tried to address this on our own but…”

As a learning leader, you need to be cognizant of the feelings and personalities wrapped up in any project and seek to preserve the dignity of those who have already touched the project. This means not selling the initial attempt as an abject failure, nor drawing attention to the shortcomings of delivery until after the problem has been adequately addressed.

• “This is a priority for the organization.”

You are going to have a  tight schedule to deliver on this initiative, and you are going to be under a lot of extra scrutiny. Be sure to use validated methods and support for everything you do to keep detractors or doubters from influencing the outcome.

• “Our metrics seem to be trending away from our goal.”

Great, they have something they are measuring in mind! This helps us create our program with a Kirkpatrick Level 4 (KPI Improvement) outcome in mind, and we do not even have to dig for it ourselves. If this KPI is well defined, it can help us to discover what behaviors and areas feed into this measurement and may provide alternative ways to approach the problem.

• “The success of this program is tied to our annual bonuses.”

This is the part that piques everyone’s interest. With the expectation of timeliness and impact set, it is up to you as a learning leader to drive toward the goal by using all the tools available to you. Whether this is setting the scope of the program based on likelihood of behavioral change compared to the sentiment analyzed feedback for the early stages of a project, or shifting resources around to better support the goal, pull out all the stops to drive success.

There is a lot of valuable information to be gleaned that can help you deliver impactful training in the eyes of the executive team.

All training initiatives begin with planning. Even in the aftermath of a failure, planning is essential. Use the failure as an opportunity and begin to engage the involved parties as quickly as possible.

Want to learn more about driving the success of a training initiative and how we as learning leaders can minimize risk and maximize learner outcomes? Register for the next in-person Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) to hear Thomas Fenstermacher’s session, “Hey Training Team, Fix This! — Delivering an Impactful Training Initiative From the Ground Up.”