Customised Programmes

Learning is a Process, Not an Event

Clearly, no one ever plans to run a training or development programme that delivers only short-lived benefits. Yet this is often precisely what happens. It is well recognised that training benefits for the majority of people decline rapidly after course completion - even if they recognise the benefit of changing their behaviours, less than 10% of them will get significant ongoing benefits.

A major reason for the ineffectiveness of traditional methods is their failure to recognise that the application, on a sustainable basis, of new knowledge from a training course requires changes in habitual behaviour. We can never get new results from old habits.

Habits reside in the subconscious mind, which is rarely changed easily. Thus, changes of behaviour are difficult to introduce in the classroom because, no matter how good the instruction may be, this approach primarily addresses the conscious mind. The subconscious needs repeated exposure to new information before modified behaviours become automatic. This requires reinforcement over much longer time frames than most courses offer, making them inadequate, on their own, to effect a lasting transformation.

It's what happens outside the training room that matters...

At Optimal Track we recognise that the only useful evidence that someone really knows anything comes when they are actually doing it. This is where value is created and is why all companies seek to pay people for what they do, not what they know. It is also why the most important measure by which we evaluate our success is whether our work leads to changes in the behaviours of our clients.

Effective learning automatically leads to a change of behaviour as the new information becomes fully integrated. However, it can require considerable effort, as anybody who has ever attempted to give up an addictive behaviour will generally acknowledge. This is because the fear of letting go of what they know and the comfort of familiar patterns of behaviour work against people's ability to change.

To install new behaviours requires regular reinforcement and repetition, allowing the replacement of ingrained beliefs and habits with the new ones. Once learning becomes embedded in the subconscious, sustained performance improvement follows without further effort. In this way, the return on investment of your training and development activities will dramatically improve.