The Upside-Down Training Cake

The Upside-Down Training Cake

I'll bet you want your organization's investment in training to pay off in better performance, more quickly. Well, there is a way to reduce the time to proficiency - let them eat upside-down cake!

Please indulge me for a minute by thinking of training as an upside-down cake. This kind of cake has delicious fruit on the bottom of the cake pan and then the rest of the cake is layered on top of it. When an upside-down cake is served, it is turned (you guessed it) upside down - so the fruit is on the top. That's how training should be served - beginning with the job task (the fruit) and then getting the supporting content (the rest of the cake) as needed to complete the task.

The typical training program doesn't turn the cake upside down. Trainees have to get through the rest of the cake (content) before they get to the delicious fruit (the job task). But what if your designers and developers turned the traditional learning model upside down? Instead of presenting a bunch of information sequentially, they start with a realistic job task or problem and then build in the relevant content as it's needed, just in time, at the teachable moment. By turning training on its head, your training investment can result in faster attainment of proficiency on the job - especially with relatively complex tasks like sales, customer service, system usage and technical skills.

Hungry to find out why this is so? Read on...

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