Speaker 1: Step number 16, establish a budget for training and development. Well, we know that training is one of those four hats of a leadership. We want to make sure that we give our people the knowledge and the skills in order for them to perform in their job today, but also in the future. So telling people to change isn't good enough. You've got to give them the tools in order to change and the knowledge in order for them to understand what they're doing and how they're doing it. So training effectiveness requires some pre-training analysis, making sure that we have the proper training delivery, and that we give post-training support. And all three of those are important. So the performance improvement curve will rise dramatically when you do all three of these things. The other thing that we have to focus in on that training is not an event, but it's a process, and it's a sequential series of events that should be orchestrated by you as leaders. So you've got to start your training assessment with what you do now. So figure out, based on what I need my people to do today and where do I need them to be doing in the future, right, your 2B model, your vision of the next three to five years, you have to say, what do my people need to succeed now? What knowledge, what skills do they need? And then what skills should they have as we progress to the next stage? Both are equally as important because you have to remember you're going to be bringing people in from the inside and the outside to new jobs, new roles. And because they were successful over here doesn't mean they're going to be successful over there, doesn't mean that. Just because they were successful at a different company doesn't mean they're going to be successful here. So you've got to make sure that they are trained and they have the right skills. In order to do that, you've got to go, as I said, look at your job description and say, what do I need this person? I already know my search model. I know my results. I know my skills. And I know my experiences that I'm going to need. Your training plan should mirror that. They should have the right skills. You should give them the experiences. And therefore, they should have the results. So that's key. So as you do your pre-analysis, you really have to look at my job descriptions, my KPIs, what do I need to train to in order to hit that? And then during the delivery, you've got to set good expectations with your people. Like, what are the top two or three things that you expect to get out of this training program? Hey, based on where we're heading, this is why you're going to the training. This is what I want you to really focus in on. Here's how it's going to tie into your current job and your future job. And when we talk about post-training support, you've got to make sure that when you send them off to training, you don't check a box, that it becomes part of your talk track, that you support it. I've seen so many leaders send people to training, and they're doing the right thing because they're training them for tomorrow's skill. But when they get back, they say, yeah, training was great. Let's keep doing it my way. And so you've trained them for the future, but you've pulled them back to the present. And that's a struggle for most people. And because you are the leader, they will do what you're told. But in essence, you've cut the employees short. You've probably hurt their chances of success, but you've also wasted an awful lot of time and money training on things that you're not going to support. It's key. In our role, in my company, as I said, we knew we were doing a transformation. And once we had the org chart, once we understood which people were there, then we had to say, do they have the proper training in order to succeed? And certainly, do they have the proper training to exceed as we develop into this next set of our goals? And most of the time, the answer was no. So we had to go and give them additional training, and we had to identify what training was the best for them to get to. And that was a hard task. It took a lot of internal assessments for us to figure out where they were currently, but also a lot of heavy lifting to make sure that the training programs that we sent them to were really focused on the areas that we needed and that we had the reinforcement plan in place. And as new people came into the organization, we had to make sure that they were trained and that we had the budget necessary to bring them up to speed on the Sandler way, but also with the skills and experiences and results necessary to get to the next level. And I think that's key. People, I know I did, we minimize how important the training is, or we minimize how important it is to train our existing people, especially for the shift of the future. But without that, it doesn't really become their fault if we fall short. It becomes yours. So make training an important part of the process for you to increase the probability of success.

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