Training Analysis

Here's a problem for you Learning Professionals and Trainng Experts to solve:

Drivers and guards on some of the busiest railways on the planet sometimes 'make mistakes or skip some of the steps they are supposed to do'. They have had some 'close calls because of their mistakes'. They need help to pay closer attention to safety measures.

How would you set about this? Is your Instructional Design sense tingling? Some answers to how one nation approached this after some focused grumbling.

Computer says, "No. . ."


Yesterday, I fought the computers. And the computers won.

It started off okay. I'm supporting some teams to get better at planning. It's a fairly good learning environment I've helped set up, though nothing exciting. The examples were real and challenging. My TTT was minuscule. And it's social; one of the learners commented, "No offence, but I think we're learning more from each other than we are from you." (Yay! A Skinner point!) It went as well as can be expected. What with everybody knowing their achievements were doomed to failure and all.

The problem is their IT systems, which demand constant feeding with endless, mostly useless, context-free bits of data. If the computers aren't supplied with a continual diet of checks and balances, they flash red warnings and fire off email warnings to management. There's not time for much except feeding the system's control-freak habit.

Like I say, it was a bad day. We all had a great time. But the computers won.

Nasty Habits
I used to smoke and bite my nails. I tried to give up smoking loads of times and failed. I bought Stop 'n' Grow for my nails and grew to enjoy the taste.

I quit smoking when we had kids. That was easy. The nail-gnawing was tougher; I had twenty years of failure behind me and I got used to thinking it would never happen. But recently I noticed I'd stopped that too, without even trying. I cut out caffeine just before Christmas. My fingers were a window on my nervousness and agitation, apparently.

Training at work is often worse than useless. Some workers are so frustrated by the sheer amount of time they spend feeding the above compliance-junkie IT systems (and, consequently, not having time for actual work) that they're showing signs of workplace stress. And how does the organisation deal with this stress? Have a guess in the comments, though I suspect the answer is all-too obvious.

Many of the problems that workers have in organisations are not something any amount of training will help. Because it's the organisations which need fixing, not the people. I quit smoking and nail-biting when my systems changed. Managers need to work on their systems before they start 'behaviour change' programmes for their staff.

Pointing Checking
Japan, home of some of the busiest railways on the planet, is also the birthplace of Yubisashi Kakunin. Which translates as 'Pointing Checking' or Pointing and Calling. And they don't just use it on trains; people do it anywhere there's danger if you don't pay attention. It's difficult to describe (there's links to some training videos on How to Implement Pointing and Calling below) but workers basically point at things and say 'Check!' to help them remember to pay attention.

It sounds flakier than aromatherapy and looks like OCD. But I have no idea what I think about it. When I spoke to Japanese people I fully expected them to share my amusement and commiserate with the poor souls forced into carrying out this demeaning ritual. My amusement was met with polite tolerance and my commiserations with bemusement. It's just what some people in Japan do when they're responsible for the safety of hundreds of people.

I suppose you could call it a kind of training, or a job aid, at a push. But I prefer the Japanese description - it's a Total Participation Campaign. (And it's very effective.)

If I were to go back to a client and suggest a Pointing Checking initiative, I'd be laughed out of the building. But their own systems have pretty much the same effect. (Ditto most meetings, internal reports, still having Internet Explorer, MailMarshall or other hyper-aggressive firewall etc etc etc) Huge parts of the work that Learning Professionals and educators do is about sticking tape over a crappy product.

SMART targets in the wild
A great deal of the training and conditioning that Learning Professionals receive pushes you to focus on SMART Learning Objectives after careful Needs Analysis. And this is fine in school, where the really excellent teachers plan "exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome". This is fine because they set the exam and they know exactly what the desired outcome is. Analysis in the classroom is fine.

But in the wild, analytical thinking is less appropriate than synthesis and Systems Thinking. Training and Education struggle to be useful outside of a Total Participation Campaign.

Further Information
If you're interested in Japan, instructional films or general weirdness click through to How to Do Pointing and Checking in your Workplace below. I found the third film entrancing (but struggled to keep awake during the other two).

There's links to more information (and diagrams!) on Pointing and Checking over at Hypergogue: Put our Heart into your Fingers, Point and Call, Okay!

Direct links to the videos, very poor quality, sound in English. Part 1:
Are you Pointing and Calling?

And Part 2:
How to Point and Call, Basic Applications

And the absolutely unmissable Part 3:
Overcoming Workers' Embarrassment

In Part 3, I couldn't help but be reminded of the Internet Time Alliance. I can just see Jay Cross and Harold Jarche leading a Pointing and Calling Social Learning initiative. :)

Obligatory last note: to be honest, I'm not sure if Systems Thinking doesn't apply to schools too. I don't know very much about schools so I've moderated my tone above. One thing I am sure of is that the current mix of clearly defined 'subjects' and exams is mostly stupid. I'd be interested to hear from anybody who actually works in a school, though.


[Massive UX Fail image is from rdolishny on Flickr]