- Here's something that you might think was obvious,
but I really feel it needs to be called out.
Even the best tools in the world won't serve any useful
purpose if the audience doesn't know how they work.
There's a misperception that I've heard in the last couple
of years on more than one occasion.
Someone will say, oh, we don't need training for this,
it's so intuitive, everyone will get it.
Or they'll say something like we need our tools
to be as intuitive as Facebook.
So yes, I'll agree that intuitive tools are good
but these kinds of statements ignore two important facts.
Fact one is that there is a big difference between consumer
tools and enterprise or big business tools.
Business tools tend to have a lot more functionality
plus they're innately more complicated
and they have to take into consideration things like
compatibility with the rest of the technology environment
and with security.
Finding an enterprise tool that does everything
it needs to do and is as intuitive as a consumer tool
can be a difficult chore.
Factor two, intuitive for you doesn't mean intuitive
for everyone.
Most companies have a very wide range of digital literacy
in their workforces.
Not everyone has the same experience.
Not everyone has the same comfort level with technology.
Bottom line, if Facebook is so darned intuitive,
why has Facebook for Dummies sold millions of copies?
What's really needed is an understanding of the audience
or audiences who are going to be using new tools,
processes, and technologies, and defining their knowledge
gaps, then developing a plan to help close those gaps.
You need to provide for the lowest common denominator.
But you don't want to talk down to everyone else
so you'll probably need different learning materials
available for the different audiences.
And training and learning don't stop at roll out.
If you're like most work places, there will be people
moving in and out all the time.
You need to have training materials available
for new team members who may not be familiar
with your tools or processes and you need to be capturing
learnings from the team and making them available
to everyone else.
The goal should be to foster continual learning
through formal and informal offerings.
This can also serve as a catalyst for discovering new
and better ways of doing things.
Even more than that, in robust collaborative culture,
it's going to be the participants who are sharing that
how-to information and answering questions for peers.
Once again, I've seen this work in real life.
In a former role, I was responsible for being
the point of contact and providing technical triage
via a community site.
If someone had a question, they'd post it
into the chat stream.
But as time went by, more and more often,
I was not the first responder.
Other members of the community were chiming in
with answers before I even saw the questions.
Talk about a boost to team cohesiveness.
It was a perfect positive feedback loop.
By encouraging group participation and giving others
the opportunity to contribute, people got served faster.
And the volunteer contributors had an opportunity to grow
by showing themselves as natural leaders
within the community.