Ready-made training courses are usually competent. When they fail, it is rarely because the content is wrong. It is because of the gap between the course and the people taking it. There are three common gaps.
The examples
Generic courses use generic examples. Participants spend their time translating those examples into their own situation, and many stop believing the course applies to them. A custom course uses the participants’ own documents, customers and data.
The outcomes
Generic courses aim at understanding a topic. Employers need staff who can do something specific afterwards: quote a price, read a report, give feedback. A custom course is designed from those specific outcomes, and success can be checked against them.
The trainer
A ready-made course usually arrives as a set of slides. The trainer is left to work out the purpose of each part, how to run the exercises and how long everything takes. A course that comes with a proper briefing and a trainer’s guide is delivered with far more confidence.
What we do differently
- We speak to the client, the trainer and the participants before designing anything.
- We agree the outcomes in writing before writing the course.
- We build examples from the client’s own work.
- We write the materials for the format they will be delivered in.
- We brief the trainer by call and stay available during the first delivery.