WK 3-1 DB Quickies: Difficulties starting new programs...

Photo taken by Laurie Kish

I was asked to train greater than 200 manufacturing workers on what Research and Development(R&D) teams do to design a new Medical Device and it had to include all regulatory requirements associated with it. As if this were not enough they then proceeded to inform me that it had to be done in one day through one-hour rotations of 40 employees’ in each session. My triumphs were many but the first and most critical was how to engage these manufacturing floor workers in such a complex topic in such a short amount of time. I interviewed some of the learners in advance to get a better understanding of what they knew about R&D so I could formulate my approach. It was simple; they saw R&D as Monsters that just tossed garbage through the double doors between the R&D labs and manufacturing and expected them to clean up the mess.

Photo taken by Laurie Kish

My mind immediately went to the Disney-Pixar movie Monster Inc. as my theme. I knew I had to make this session very interactive and hands on or I would lose them. I had created only 30 PowerPoint slides with little text and a lot of visuals to make them smile and have fun. This was a very new concept for my company as no training had ever been presented with only 30 slides with almost no text not to mention the hands on team exercises, dressing up, competition, music playing, and out right fun. There were 5 tables of 10 team members tasked with building a monster with blinking eyes according to the customers requirements following the development process in a specified amount of time and following all regulatory requirements. Lets just say that no two monsters looked the same and I had 100 new friends that stopped me for days after the training saying how much they had learned and it was the best training they ever had. Every time I think about it and all the hard work that went into it, I smile and consider this one of my best training experiences ever. I actually created a video of this experience in an early project in the EMDT program that I have posted here on my blog if you are interested to hear more.