ARTICLE: SWAT Team Principles Part 2 - Training like your Life Depends on It

Read SWAT Team Principles Part 1

This is my second installment of better business practices based on my learnings from a day with a local SWAT team, but before I get into the topic, I have a confession of sorts.

When I think about the day of shooting, running drills, and being with those great guys, I can’t stop smiling.  I’ve contracted a serious, though hopefully not fatal, condition I call “Chronic Grinitis”.  I smile so much that my cheeks hurt and the cheek muscles have grown rock hard.  I’ve thought about Botox injections but I don’t think the needle will penetrate the muscles.  I’m starting to look like the Joker of Batman fame, without the lipstick. But I digress.  Even though the experience for me was a once-in-a-lifetime day of fun, for the guys whose lives depend on proper execution and coordination, the day was deadly serious, and they managed to enjoy themselves along the way.

In business when times get rough, and it seems to get rough nearly every quarter, training seems to be the first thing to face the chopping block.  In fact, I hesitated to put training on the title of this post fearing that no one would read it.  Let’s face it, training to most is boring, ineffective, and not a priority.  We sometimes give training some focus, but the old saying, “You put your money where your heart is”, applies across the board, and when I looked back at all the companies I have had exposure to, I find the commitment to training lacking.  During the breaks during the day with the SWAT team, I asked the guys about how often they train because it seemed to me that this training they do really matters.  A mistake could cost one or more lives.  They told me that they need to train more than they do, but it costs a lot of money to suit up an 18 man team and spend a day at the training site.  Ammunition alone was several thousand dollars.  There’s the smile again… my cheeks are starting to hurt…  Training for the SWAT team is likely more critical than for most of us but no less important.  Let me explain.

In business, how a company works is as or more important than what the company produces.  In today’s world, our actions and decisions cascade into countless ripple effects and without the whole team working seamlessly, mistakes will happen, customers will be unhappy, and opportunities will be lost.  Is there anything more important to your business than happy customers?  The leader of the SWAT team explained how they train on every little motion as they move through the drills.  They always stand square to the threat because that’s where their body armor is strongest.  If their position is not correct as they move, they stand the risk of a “Lucky Shot” by the bad guy.  After that conversation, I noticed more and more the art and discipline these guys exhibited while doing some pretty difficult drills. How much time are we wasting because our sales force are filling out orders differently?  How much extra work are we experiencing because our ERP users don’t use the system as best designed?  How much scrap are we experiencing because of process losses due to operator error?  I can go on, but the cost to global companies is staggering.  While training is not the only solution, it is the one investment, if done properly, will insure that we don’t get hit by the “Lucky Shot”.  So here are 3 points I want to stress:

1. Train on what’s important.  Training dollars are usually the first to go, so be strategic in your training plan.  Consider it an investment and as such the training must be targeted and have purpose in your organization.  The SWAT team was limited in how long they could train, (sound familiar?), so they mapped every minute and worked on the things that mattered most.  In business, we need to also target our training rather than sending some of our people to attend a tradeshow with no goal or objective so we can put a check-box on an annual review.
2. Training is not training without proof of understanding and mastery. What gets my goat about most company training is either there is no post-training retention, or the evaluation is so easy a monkey on a keyboard could get a passing grade.  Yes, I’m talking about a test.   If we’re going to spend valuable resources to train our people, we need to know whether the training was effective.  The day I was at the SWAT team, they had to qualify by running a course that put physical, mental, and technical skills to test, and they were graded and timed.  If they did not make the right score, they were off the SWAT team.  Likewise, we need to be brave enough to demand that we all pass the evaluation and the evaluation needs to be hard enough to result in a portion of the group to retake to achieve mastery status. 
3. Training done right is engaging and fun. I’ve been to some training classes where the facilitator makes the group wear party hats and during the class we broke the boredom by throwing things at each other.  First of all, if the training is strategic and aligned with the mission, then everybody should be on the edge of their chairs, as if their corporate lives depended on it.  The participants know the value of the knowledge, understand the importance, and want to improve so that they, and the rest of the team, will be successful.  If training is done right, it ought to add energy, rather than drain.  I could tell the SWAT guys enjoyed their stressful and important day; they got better; they learned how execute more effectively; the chances of all them walking away from a difficult mission improved; and they had fun.

I hope this post helped you to rethink how you can retool your training to be more strategic and meaningful in your business.

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