I love to make complete meals for family and friends. But when I’m hungry and don’t want to cook or go out, I go to the online food delivery service site Grub Hub, place my order, and – presto – the food shows up. I pay and I eat. So, when I’m in a hurry or want something specific, I just take out my phone and my fingers do the swiping.
There is a caveat here; you must know what you want. That is easy for me because I have go-to meals I always order. I’m adventurous when I travel and will try almost anything, but at home I stick to what I know. It is one thing when you are in a restaurant and can consult the menu and the server, but quite another to decide from hundreds of choices with just pictures and short descriptions.
If you buy food this way there is another consideration: You’ll never get to try foods you have never heard of. It’s not that you can’t order unknown food, it’s just that hardly anyone does.
Traditional training approach
The same menu approach has expanded into professional education and training. For years you could access canned training on all kinds of topics – and you still can today. Think of it as the pizza delivery service of training: low-cost, quick and usually pretty good. Canned training programs also provide a low-cost (or gratis) option, don’t take much time and typically provide some insightful information. These programs can work especially well when the training needed is a skill that is well-defined. They are designed as a one-size-fits-all approach.
For example, New Standard Institute has provided specific training for over 10 years. They offer a wide variety of standalone training modules available online or by disc. What’s interesting is that you can have a meeting, decide to get everyone trained in say, Electrical Safe Practices, sign up and start the training that afternoon.
This training approach can provide the basics, but may not address all needs all the time.
Shortcomings of traditional training
As great as that training format is, it doesn’t work so well with more complicated topics that might vary by operation. Topics that require varied approaches to address different needs might include planning and scheduling, preventive maintenance, reliability-centered maintenance, total productive maintenance, etc. These topics are too big and too diverse to be handled this way, and the students are likely to have questions.
The other problem is that if you already have functioning planning and scheduling, you don’t need training in everything. You might only want training on work orders, failure codes or backlog – something specific.
Solve the problem
This type of ala carte training is becoming a major trend of the future given tightened budgets, lack of time and the inefficiency of traditional training.
To solve this problem in maintenance, reliability and asset management, there are new training programs available. One of those programs is Laser-Focused Training.
This online training program would offer specific topics and schedulable training, simultaneously to as many as hundreds of people at a time. Training can be tailored to the specific business, based on a conversation with a subject matter expert on current training needs.
This format would provide the opportunity for employees to all attend the same session simultaneously, with access to the instructor to ask questions and provide feedback.
I welcome any thoughts and feedback on this training approach, and any other shortcomings you’ve found with current training methods. You can reach me by email at [email protected].
Joel Levitt has trained more than 17,000 maintenance leaders from more than 3,000 organizations in 24 countries. He is the president of Springfield Resources, a management consulting firm that services a variety of clients on a wide range of maintenance issues www.maintenancetraining.com. He is also the designer of Laser-Focused Training, a flexible training program that provides specific targeted training on your schedule, online to one to 250 people in maintenance management, asset management and reliability.
