This or that? My best advice for picking the best time for training

Whenever you’re thinking about training and when the business or the project is trying to make decisions about when to hold the training, there's two ways you can do it: Well In Advance or Just In Time. Let’s explore the pros and cons for both options and my recommendation for picking the best time for training.

OPTION 1: Well In Advance Training

Three months to four weeks out from go live would be considered Well In Advance. When you train this far out, there's lots of benefits from that. One of the benefits is that you work out all the stuff that's wrong. Even if it's just UAT Testers or Change Champions doing their training ahead of everybody else, you can work out stuff that's wrong in the solution. 

The problem with that obviously is retention. It's so far between when they got trained and when they're actually going to use or do the new thing or process, that if they’re not practising it ongoing, they can lose what they learned. But you can always set up a sandbox or training environment and give people tools, ideas, and encouragement to keep building that knowledge and that competence over time between when you trained them and go live. You can send out new training videos or new training guides or Quick Reference Guides and you can keep people warm in their learning, and then you could do a refresh before go live. It's awesome to actually do training really well in advance because so much gets flushed up around what actually needs to change in the solution.

OPTION 2: Just In Time Training

The other alternative which is used much more, is Just In Time. Just in Time would be two weeks to one week out from launch. That's what's usually done, because then you learn it and use it straight away, almost immediately. Just In Time means that you've got a lot more time to develop the training and finish the solution. A lot of end users or team members often rock up to training expecting the solution to be 100% and it never is because usually it's still being built or a process, roles, responsibilities etc are still being worked out. You need to then just caveat, “Hey, this isn't finished yet but we want to make sure that we give you enough of a runway, enough lead time to really build your capability and confidence in this area.” Just In Time can be great but the challenge is that you don't have time to remediate sometimes major issues with the change that get flushed up during training. 

My recommendation

There are pros and cons for both. But in my own experience, the earlier that people get trained (not too early, six months is too early!) can work in your favour if you keep people warm in between training and go live. You can always have the conversation just go, “Have we thought about doing it this way instead?”

If you’re wondering the best time to do my flagship training, Leading Successful Change, my recommendation is: today!

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All my belief,

Lata xx

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