(Go ahead. Hum that cheesy chunk of Kenny Loggins goodness. Every blog post needs a soundtrack.)

In the heyday of my youth, I longed to be a fighter pilot but my legally-blind nearsightedness kept me from the cockpit. I settled for building jet aircraft models and playing virtually every flight simulator game I could snare. But as marriage and children and career gave shape and color to life, my jet-fueled hobbies became by necessity impractical; model aircraft parts and glue don’t agree with toddlers, and most high-quality PC flight sims come with instruction manuals so lengthy that phone books cower in terror.

One of the most incredible facts about jet fighters is hidden in their design. Starting in 1976 with the F-16, pictured above, all fighter aircraft were designed to be “aerodynamically unstable.” That’s a very fancy term for the tendency of the fighter jet to fly out of control at virtually any time. At first glance, intentionally engineering a death wish into a multi-million dollar aircraft seems insane. After all, every winged vehicle since the Wright Brothers had been created to fly straight and level by default. This makes the pilot’s job very easy because they don’t have to spend every single second anticipating the creative ways their plane was plotting to kill them. But what the pilot gained in stability and predictability, they lost in maneuverability. A stable plane was slow, sluggish, and had all the nimbleness of a tranquilized elephant.

So when aircraft designers got the brilliant idea to shove jet engines into a plane’s rear end, they also realized they could make their new super-fast plane do the Macarena if they made it unstable enough. Exactly how they achieved this instability is far above my ability to understand but I know it involves complicated combinations of wing, body, and tail designs. What engineers essentially did was build just the right amount of crazy into their jet so it could do crazy things when it was in its element. All it needed was a control system strong and supple enough to keep it flying, and a pilot brave enough to take the whole nutty mix into the wild blue yonder.

We abhor instability. Unstable markets scare us. Unstable organizations confuse us. Unstable investments are ignored and written off. So are unstable people. But stability doesn’t let you maneuver. Stability turns you into a fat and slow 747. Sure, you’re reliable and may have earned a crowd of passengers clamoring to climb aboard, but you’re boring and forgettable. Strap yourself into the cockpit of an F-16, however, and your life changes. You never forget the thrill, that perfect blend of crazy and control and risk and reward. It’s not for the faint of heart. And that’s the point. There’s a reason why fighter jets don’t have passengers.

What if the one thing that makes any one person or company unstable is really the key to making that person, or group of people, great? What is your idea or talent or skill that seems crazy and incomprehensible to others but, with the right control and guidance, could be let off the chain to let you accomplish the impossible? How can we live a life, as speaker Dan Thurmon demonstrates, off balance yet on purpose? What would that mean for your credit union, your practice, your company, your family?

Time to buzz the tower.

You know who we are. We’re the “smile sheets” you give to attendees at the end of a training session. With our data, you hope you can show how valuable you are to your company or client.

We’ve got something to say to you, Mr./Ms. Training Professional.  It’s important and unconventional and a little scary for us to say, so we’re not gonna pull any punches:

STOP USING US.  THROW US AWAY.  NEVER USE US AGAIN.

Whew!  We feel better.  We’ve been waiting to say that to you and your industry for YEARS.  Why?

Well, in nutshell, your trainees and clients use us to lie to you.  Oh, come on now – don’t look so shocked.  Deep down, you know it’s true.  People scribble all over us and say “10 out of 10!”  “The best training EVER!”  “I’ve never been to a better program!”  They give you praise that makes Mother Teresa look like Bernie Madoff. 

But when (or, more correctly, IF) you actually followed up with those same folks a few weeks or months after they used us to canonize you, odds are that you’d find that they probably remember barely 10% of what you taught them.  Worse yet, you’d find that their behavior didn’t change, and that there was absolutely no bottom-line impact realized from the program.  By every objective measure that matters, therefore, the program failed. 

You may be protesting at this point, “No, it wasn’t a failure!  They loved my witty, charming facilitation style and flashy handouts!  My icebreaker and review exercises rocked and those cookies after lunch were a huge hit!  They liked me!  They really liked me!!”  Here’s a news flash, Sally Field…your popularity doesn’t pay the company’s bills.  Senior management didn’t hire you to be liked.  They hired you to get results.    

Here’s another way to think about it…what if some really famous movie characters completed Level 1 evals on the people who trained them?  It wouldn’t be pretty: 

• Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back: “Short, green, and grumpy.  Needs SERIOUS help with sentence structure.” (Luke Skywalker)
• Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid: “Blindsided me with the whole ‘tournament’ thing.  And if I see one more jar of Turtle Wax, I’m gonna hurl.” (Daniel LaRusso)
• Morpheus, The Matrix: “He kicked me through a post and let me fall off a building.  Whoa.” (Neo)
• Johnny Castle, Dirty Dancing: “He thinks I have two left feet and has no faith in me.  And now here I am, just sittin’ in a corner, NOT having the time of my life!” (Frances “Baby” Houseman)

Think about what these characters eventually did, though, because of their Tinseltown Trainers.  They defeated Darth Vader, won the tournament, saved the world, got out of the corner and lived happily ever after.   The trainer was laser-focused on changing the character’s behavior and getting results.  Their trainer was never concerned about being liked…although they ended up earning the character’s deep devotion and respect in the end.  We thought that was pretty cool.  

This isn’t to say that you’re now allowed to be a jerk in your programs.  You still need to create a fun, focused, respectful, and results-driven learning atmosphere.  But if you’re going to measure and report anything, it should be what happens after the group leaves the room.  That’s where you prove your worth. 

Still not convinced?  Check out some additional perspectives from ReliableSurveys.com and the stellar “Are You Too Nice to Train?” article from Training Magazine. 

OK, we’re done.  For now.

To the Haters,

As much as I love training and trainers, you don’t. And you’re right.

Once upon a time, you trusted us to follow through on a promise: to help you hit a goal. You partnered with the learning and development process eager and able, determined to find the next square on the org chart or the next world to conquer.

We promised to make you better. You believed us.

But something happened along the way…or, more to the point, didn’t happen.

We didn’t stand up for your needs in the training process. We were so wrapped up in the business of your learning that we forgot to learn your business. We reduced you to a widget that should emerge, fully formed and functioning, after a set number of training hours and exercises.  Because if we created enough of you – quickly, cheaply, efficiently, predictably – then we’ll maybe have enough evidence to justify your investment and our existence.

To that end, we forced you to listen to us yet never really gave you the chance to learn through us. We turned your training into a place where you needed to focus on us, rather than the other way around. Lectures came fast and furious, as did the endless parade of PowerPoint slides we printed off and read to you word-for-word.

Over-copied and underwhelming handouts followed suit, followed by poor instructional design, bad presentation techniques, and one-size-fits-all e-learning modules. We topped it all off with a perfect storm of hokey icebreakers and unrealistic role-plays.

We cheapened your progress to a grade on a test and how you felt about us immediately after seeing us in action. Acceptable scores on both meant you were officially “trained” in our world and screwed in yours.

We stopped making training about your success and made it instead about our survival.

We messed up.

It’s no wonder that you’re done with all things training. And we see it. I could spout statistics all day about how more companies are putting less faith in their training efforts, laying off trainers, or just squeezing the entire function out of existence altogether.

But all I’d have to do is really look at you to know the truth.

You’re the basher in the back row, arms crossed, frowning, stage-whispering to your neighbors about how bad this training is and hoping that we wrap it up quickly so you can get back to real work. You’re the gloomy post-class comment, pushing us down and away from your people, dismissing us with a barely cordial “I don’t need you.”

Magazine covers, blog posts, tweets, articles, and emails have made plain your hatred of our waste of your time and money. We became a financial black hole on your org chart and balance sheet. We’ve ignored you because we’re scared of you. Avoid your complaints, or just refuse to acknowledge the full measure of your frustration with us, and we delay for one more day the opening of the floodgates behind which your anti-training vitriol simmers. We can’t handle that truth.

I don’t know how much of this book you’ll want to read but it’s all for you. I’d tell you I love you because of the work you’re doing and the work you wish to do, because you want to be a hero to the family that loves you, to the employees who work for you – or, at the very least, to yourself. But you may just want us to pack up our stuff quickly, move out quietly, and let you move on with your life. You wouldn’t be the first to throw us out and you won’t be the last.

If you give this book a chance, I promise that it’ll have advice that appeals to your wisdom, dignity, and hard-earned business sense. You’ll read about how companies large and small, famous and obscure, have successfully applied centuries-old truths about how people really learn, develop, grow, and save their world.

You’ll see how the movies in your collection and queue hold surprising and time-honored lessons on how training can work.

Should work.

Must work.

To the Torn,

You’re stuck in the middle of a messy divorce.

Truth be told, you probably don’t care about training nearly as much as the Trainers or the Haters. You attend it when you have to and occasionally sign up for some when you don’t. A few binders, handouts, certificates, and tchotchkes from classes gone by have scored show-off space on your desk or wall, while others are fading into obscurity inside a file drawer or drive.

Training has helped you to an extent but the title on your business card is more than the sum of the parts we’ve thrown at you. You’re training, success, failure, ambition, and talent rolled into one. Measuring the contribution of each is not of first importance, especially if it’s centered on training.

Training is probably like sausage – you don’t know how it was made or what it was made of, and you really don’t care; you just know that some was good and some wasn’t, some sizzled, and some just stank.

But it’s a good bet you’ve had to train somebody, sometime, on something. The boss sends all the new folks to you because he knows you’ll take the right time to show them the right stuff, in the right way. Your best practices have become standard operating procedure on the jobsite. Everybody wants to be like you, so everybody watches you. The unofficial help desk is your desk, or wherever you decide to set up shop that day.  Your job performance and professionalism makes you the place where problems go to die, because you know your stuff backwards and forwards and can set anybody straight. A long line of supervisors, managers, and staff owe their success to the time they spent with you, and you with them.

You may be the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Cook and Bottle Washer, or somewhere in between. You haven’t studied adult education, don’t have any fancy certifications trumpeting your training prowess, don’t know your ADDIE from your ASTD, and wouldn’t recognize a Kirkpatrick if one fell on you. You don’t live and breathe all things training but aren’t violently opposed to it either. You see its value and flaws, and hope the right measure of each is included in the next training program you either attend or deliver.

We trainers call you a Subject Matter Expert: the hallowed intersection of knowledge and experience; your generosity with both guarantees your footsteps are worthy ones for others to follow. You’re probably the safest place for this book to land because you’re the most open-minded of the three audiences to whom I’m writing, and the most willing to change your mind about what training is and can be.

Thank you all for sticking around.  Together, we’re going to save the world.

But first, I have to break your heart.

“I am no one special. Just a common man with common thoughts. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who has ever lived. I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul and for me that has always been enough.”

-The Notebook (2004)

This book isn’t what it seems.

The main title implies another reheated rant about the evils of text-choked slides, hideous color schemes, and eye-frying animations. As worthy as those topics are, they’re not why we’re here today.

And while the subtitle attempts to explain the collision of a 900-year-old grammatically-challenged Star Wars character with the world’s most popular presentation software, I’ll understand if you’re still puzzled about what awaits you in the pages ahead. So here it is:

This is a love note.

To trainers, employees, businesses, and movies.

About waste, redemption, hope, and heroes.

And it’s all for you.

If the “love” angle has turned you off, I understand.  It’s not you…it’s me.

Love is fine for candlelight and midnight but a little underdressed for the florescent-and-flowchart world of work. Love is risky business, especially when talking about business. You may have been looking for something different, something less personal and more practical, like a brilliant Seth Godin tome or some Patrick Lencioni fable-based wisdom. If that’s the case, then I humbly bid you farewell.

I’d escort you over to their prodigious collections myself, or just give you a well-worn copy of their works from my own library if I could.  They are just a few of the shoulders upon which I’ve stood for most of my 25-year career and have provided some of the inspiration for the book you now hold and puzzle over.

Yet and still, love is my unabashed reason for writing this book about you, to you, and for you. It’s a good bet that you are one of three types of business people at whom this book is arrowed. But more – much more – about you in a second.

Writing an entire book about training, and letting both love and movies hitch a ride, could be bargain-bin lunacy for a first-time author like me. The titles in the bookstore about the nuts and bolts of training are a baby’s handful compared to the shelf space and sales numbers that Godin and Lencioni command, and with good reason: the value of training is hard to define, the effects are tricky to measure, and the returns are difficult to quantify – but its existence is all too easy to question and crush.

So why should you keep reading?

Because at some point in your career you have been, or will be, either the trainer or the taught. You’re showcasing the expertise that made you a master of the great or small, teaching those skills to someone else, or studying new ones that will let you move in, on, up, or out. You could be doing all four at once, but your heartbeat guarantees you’re doing at least one right now. None are particularly easy on you, to be sure, but they are vital roles you must play in the life you live and the lives you’ll touch.

You also know – whether formal or informal, good or bad – training happens in the business world. What you may not know is the sheer volume of it: over $100 billion spent every year in the US alone. Training has evolved into a world unto itself, with its own gravitational field, fault lines, peaks, valleys, seasons, and shadows. But the money invested in that world has been wasted at such an astronomical rate that the dollar bills can only be measured in 1,000-mile stacks. Change must come soon to the training world in order to save it – to keep it relevant to you and your employees, and to the companies around whom it orbits.

You may love the process and profession of training, or hate it, or be torn somewhere between the two. To all of you, welcome. You’ve come to the right place. I’ve just a few final words before we go any further:

To the Trainers,

I love you. I’m one of you. And you are a freak.

At some point in your life, you realized that you were blessed with a desire to show others the right way to make, use, think about, talk about, sell, serve, lead, follow, and/or overcome objections to some gizmo or gadget or model or tool.  You loved writing instructional manuals, authoring online courses, designing learning, teaching 1 or 1,000 at a time, setting an example for others to follow.  Training came as easy as learning, as did your love for both.

You enjoy the thrill of public speaking and find fun, not the fear that surpasses death, on the stage at the front of the room.  There’s a relationship that forms between you and the audience. Their questions and silence and laughter? You know the meaning behind all of them, hear the unspoken-but-deafening conversation between speaker and listener, and know you must be both at once to become anything at all to them.

Your manuals and tests, flipcharts and brochures, handouts and stories don’t define you, though. What does is your unstoppable itch to change the world, one person at a time.

Your time under the sun is best spent making someone else better. That is your business.  That is your call.

The money isn’t why you do this.  You would train for free.  On too many days, if a full accounting of your time and talent were made, you probably do. But it doesn’t matter, does it? If you didn’t train and teach, those best parts of you would turn to dust.

The messy business of training – of intentionally changing another’s behavior for the good – isn’t a natural instinct for most but comes as simply as breathing for you.  It’s rare and noble and freaky.

The world, and all the heroes in it, needs you more than you know and has needed you far longer than you’ve realized. Your role is hard-wired into myth and legend.  You are a fundamental and unforgettable piece of literature, theater, art, and the blockbuster movies you know by heart. Our pedigree is as old and vital as civilization itself. The world demands we live up to that ancient, awesome heritage.

To you, my friend and colleague, I hope you still love the crowd and their questions.  I hope you still have the patience and the drive and the heart and the hope.  If so, then I offer this book as more fuel for your bright fire.

And if your own has gone dim, or died completely, then I hope you find in these pages the spark you once had. There are reasons your optimism and passion for this profession have been drowned and crushed. Some are out of your control, but others are pressed so deeply into our best practices that they will steal your success before you’ve even started. I’ll shine a light on these reasons in pages that follow. It’ll then be up to you to decide if training is still for you, because I love you enough to let you go.

Now please brace yourself. You won’t like what you’re about to read next.

(to be continued tomorrow…)

I’ve begun querying literary agents in earnest. For those of you unfamiliar with the publishing process, prospective authors seeking representation will send a query letter to one or several agents in their chosen genre. The letter is this author’s first, best, and probably only chance to sell my idea to a nearly-complete stranger. Tens of thousands of manuscript-ready words must be distilled into just a few hundred, pressed into the literary world’s equivalent of the 30-second elevator pitch. Grab an agent’s attention with a clever idea and set it with the book’s hook, and I just might get the honor of a response to my emailed query. That is, of course, if my credentials make me worth considering and my writing is worth reading.

Should these and a few thousand other variables fall into place, my book might make the journey from my keyboard to your hands or Kindle (or both – teacher said that everytime you buy a real book and an e-book, an angel gets its wings). Know a good literary agent interested in a non-fiction book about business and corporate training? Please leave their info in the comments section below.

The book’s working title is “Yoda Never Used PowerPoint: Tips from Tinseltown to Transform Your Employees and Save the Training Industry.” The estimated 50,000 words will be spread liberally amongst the following chapters:

• Foreword: A Confession
• Training is an Industrial Accident
• The Dark, The Light, and the Revelation
• Doormen and Doormats
• Leave the Room and Free Your Mind
• Pass the Right Test
• Cut Off Their Escape Routes
• Find Their Swamp
• Back It Up, Build Them Up, and Keep After the Fly
• When Trainers Attack: Clowns, Villains, and Sidekicks
• Fire Sally Field
• You Gotta Love ‘Em

The first two chapters are complete, with chapter 3 going back onto the keyboard for some liposuction and a face lift. The rest will be fully fleshed out upon a commitment from a publisher. A brave cadre of volunteer editors – Matt Monge, Mary McEwen, Bill Clancy, Kathy Lee, Marti Hoofer, Promotions Are Not Served at the Deli Counter author Michael Patterson, and Motherhood is the New MBA author Shari Storm – have graciously reviewed the first three chapters and provided much-needed and appreciated feedback.   

Want to read the foreword? Come back tomorrow and Friday. And feel free to leave as many suggestions as you’d like. This book has to be good. Angels need their wings, after all.