Don’t Let That Training Go To Waste: 3 Ways To Keep The Momentum Going

You are hungry for the next big thing in your innovation pipeline, but your people seem to lack the confidence and capability to fill it. The answer to all your innovation needs? Innovation training! So you go through the pain of finding a vendor, sourcing budget, and aligning and clearing schedules in the hope that this will be the training to spark your teams’ internal innovation engine.

However, the day after your training it’s like it never happened. Where are all your game-changing ideas? Where’s the impact?

Experience tells us that igniting innovative thinking in modern business demands more than traditional, theoretical, classroom style learning. Your people need practical tools and approaches that build confidence and excitement in your teams to start innovating right away.

Bang from your training buck is all about momentum.

Momentum is the rocket fuel that any innovator needs to get going on a new challenge. And, this is equally true after innovation training.

At ?What If! our approach to embedding skills and techniques is grounded in a tangible toolkit that gives your innovators the momentum they need to start innovating from the word “go.”

We believe that training should be rooted in real innovation challenges and stories, making the connection between learning and application back at base easy.

How can you get the right momentum from your training?

We recently worked with a financial services organization that wanted to skill-up its high-potential leadership group on innovation, with more immediate results than previous trainings had yielded. To do this, we partnered with the organization to develop a “learning to action” program that would springboard their innovation ambition.

How did we do this?

Made it real: The group came armed with a real business challenge to solve in the room during the training, enabling them to use what they were learning on an immediate challenge.

Engaged sponsors: They enlisted a team of hands-on project owners to encourage and advocate the use of new methods in solving their challenges.

Post training support: They used a 24/7 digital coaching tool that helped keep the team engaged, showing them how and when to use innovation tools and techniques.

Momentum is everything.

So what can we learn from this approach? Making training impactful is more than just sending your people on a course. Thinking about how you can generate momentum for your people before, during and after training is the difference between creating immediate and lasting impact or wasting the experience.

Before your next innovation training, think about these tips for creating momentum for your people:

1. Give them practical tools and techniques they can actually use, not just read about.
2. Have them jump straight into a live project to start using what they have learned.
3. Have an engaged project sponsor to stoke the innovation fires and set permissions for a new approach on their projects.

If you’d like to know more about how to create an innovation spark in your people and how to make innovation training stick, drop us a line!