It happens to everybody from time to time: You’re given a boring, overly difficult or otherwise unappealing training or instructional design project to complete. You’re certain that you’ll absolutely dread it, maybe because the client is too hard to please, the topic isn’t an exciting one, or you just have an overall bad feeling about it. As your enthusiasm begins to ebb, you think to yourself, “I’ll plod through, but my heart’s just not in it. And because of that, it won’t be well-developed.” You take every opportunity to gripe about the project to your friends and co-workers. You mentally prepare for weeks or months of agony and hope that at least the next project is better. If possible, s
Several years ago we were approached by a large outsourced call center company. They had tens of thousands of agents in call centers on five continents, and they didn’t have a unified company culture. Leadership had determined that is was due in part to the fact that they didn’t have a companywide onboarding program for new agents. Each region and, in some cases, individual large call centers, had developed their own new hire orientation and training program, and there was no consistency in the message that the programs presented about the company or its culture. Leadership believed that if every new employee was presented with the same message about the company and its values, it would be a
