The Change Agents

Among trainers and consultants who make a living by teaching job skills to working adults, there is a recurring nightmare. The trainer opens a session by asking, “What do you hope to get from this class today?” And the answer is: “Beats me. I’m only here because my manager told me to show up.”

That response is especially alarming when the students’ jobs are about to change significantly—as when a company adopts a new software application to handle processes such as billing or payroll or customer record-keeping—and the class is supposed to teach employees how to use the new system.

“I’ve seen it happen,” says Leah Nordquist, a senior consultant with Computer Training International, Inc., a technology training firm in Wayzata. Out of the blue, management announces a software change and declares, “There will be a class on Tuesday to show you how to use it.” Two serious problems arise, Nordquist says. First, “[the students’] minds are closed.” They resent having something sprung on them and now are inclined to resist the change regardless of its merits. Second, “They begin asking questions that need to be asked,” she says, “but now they’re asking the trainer—the wrong person, who doesn’t have the answers.”

The glib response to this is that most people are recalcitrant donkeys who fear and hate any kind of change and can be counted upon to whine, moan, and drag their feet no matter what the company does. In fact, though, the questions to which Nordquist refers are sensible and legitimate: How will this affect the way I work? How will it affect my dealings with other employees or with customers? Who thinks the new system will work better than the one we already understand, and why?

Twin Cities technology-training specialists agree that teaching people how to use computer applications is usually the easiest part of the trainer’s job. The hard part is the change-management work that often must begin well before any training takes place.

Though consultants can help with that work, it is mainly the client’s responsibility. The price of failing to lay the groundwork well, specialists say, is ineffective training—and sometimes a failed implementation that can wound a company grievously.

“I’d say that about 30 percent of the calls we get for training are premature. The real need is for consulting on software,” says Elaine Koyama, CEO of Interlinx Associates, LLC, in Bloomington, which specializes in providing consulting and training on customer relationship management systems. “The presenting problem we’ll hear is, ‘Our people don’t know how to use the software, so they need training.’ But when we ask about the objectives for the application and the kinds of information [the company] wants to enter or extract from it, we find that the first need is for clarity, not training.”