THE biggest challenge that we see companies encounter is getting started creating content.

We see two camps:

• The "Document Everything We Can Think of" crowd
• The "Create the Perfect Plan Before We Start" crowd

They both run into trouble. The first group starts out really strong, but quickly gets burned out. The worst part is they spend a lot of time writing articles that no one ever uses.

In most consulting engagements that involve any form of change management the consulting team is required to deliver some sort of training material to the customer. This often takes the form of a "train the trainer" approach.

If you have ever been on a backpacking trip, then you know that a backpacker has to deal with competing goals when packing.

What will this article help you do?

This article is going to help you achieve better training results in less time by teaching you how to create clear training "Outcome Statements".

What if I told you that you were lost? But then I didn’t tell you where you needed to go? How would you develop a plan? How would you know if you were making progress? How would you know when you weren’t lost any more?

Create an Outcome Statement

In employee training, you clarify the destination by creating a clear definition of the outcome you want to achieve. We call this an “Outcome Statement.” Getting this definition right can make all of the difference.

An ambiguous Outcome Statement will make it difficult to create training materials, measure progress, and determine success.

A clear Outcome Statement will help you know:

• Exactly what training materials to create
• Exactly what to measure
• Exactly when you have achieved success (or failure)

Attributes of a good Outcome Statement

When new employees are hired on, your company needs to take care of 3 main things:

1. Paperwork (insurance, taxes)
2. Compliance training (e.g. ethics training, security awareness training)
3. Operations training (policies, processes, and procedures)

I'm betting that you've already got something in place for #1 or #2. Plenty of HR systems deal with paperwork, and several LMS apps deal with compliance training.

The question for today is, do you have a system in place for #3?

This is the second of a 7-part series where we talk about different kinds of job aids that your Support Reps need you to make for them.

This is the first of a 7-part series where we talk about different kinds of job aids that your Support Reps need you to make for them.

When a manager sits down to "train" a new employee, the main focus is almost always on how to use the system.

But that approach leaves everybody frustrated. The employee doesn't actually know the context of when she should be doing those actions, NOR can she remember everything the manager showed her. And the manager is frustrated because he notices that the employee seems to constantly interrupt him with questions.

It's a lose-lose-lose (the system loses in this case, too) situation.

Instead of only focusing on showing employees how a system works, I recommend focusing on all 3 of these elements:

If you are planning a training session, I want you to pull out a piece of paper and a pen, and do 2 things.

Sometimes, hyperlinks are scary. You ask yourself, "Do I really want to leave the page I'm on?" 

This is especially true when reading documentation, policies, procedures, and job aids.

If you see a link (like this link here) in a knowledge base article, you don't want to click on it because you don't want to leave the help article you're on. After all, if you leave, there's a chance you'll never find your way back.