I apologise in advance for the didactic tone of this message - I'm probably
just summarising what you already know.
I've been speculating about CRM distance learning for years, particularly
to address situations where the alternative is no CRM training at all or
(perhaps worse) CRM developed and administered as a ritualistic and
under-funded management exercise to evade insurance or regulatory pressure.
And there are an increasing number of training providers looking at this
possibility for various reasons.
The short answer to the question is that CRM evolved from a style of
management training that focussed on interpersonal skills. The
conventional wisdom is that skills require practice and reinforcement.
This can be implicit or - as in the ISD assumptions underlying the AQP
program - explicit. If you accept the need for practice and reinforcement
of interpersonal skills (begging the question of whether CRM should really
focus on interpersonal or intra-personal skills) then the debate becomes
one about the delivery logistics of group interworking and facilitation.
The first point is, of course, that if you can't find a local facilitator
for classroom work who is going to debrief the LOFT? It seems unlikely
that an operator would have access to one but not the other. If you don't
have LOFT in some form - as LOS, as a line check, as a reduced fidelity
simulation - then there's no practice/reinforcement element, and to the
best of my knowledge nobody has yet challenged John Lauber's comments in
1986 about the importance of LOFT for CRM training.
On this basis the minimum requirement for bootstrapping an effective CRM
programme would be courseware plus dual role facilitator (classroom/line or
LOS). There are interesting questions about whether the facilitator needs
to be physically or virtually present in the classroom and whether virtual
facilitation could be delivered in the classroom using fairly smart
interactive learning tools or teleconferencing. When I talked to people
with 3rd world CRM training experience they politely suggested that
conditions on the ground might preempt that discussion.
Practically speaking, if the aim is to deliver minimum-cost CRM to an
acceptable standard in a variety of user situations I believe the answer is
to designate and train a key facilitator from the client organisation who
can return to his/her company with a complete set of resources, including
CD-ROMs and interactive multimedia netware, launch the programme and
monitor quality standards throughout. A wet-lease version would involve
the same resources administered by a contracted developer/facilitator.
Having said all of that, I'd think that CRM familiarisation/indoctrination
standalone courses could be delivered without classroom facilitation. This
is a less-favoured option, but the advantage of being able to provide a
very high quality of information in a highly interactive manner, to a
defined standard and flexible timetable, would at least be considerably
better than nothing (and probably quite a lot better than some current
conventional courses).
If conditions on site permit it might be possible to use interactive
distance training throughout, relying on reduced-fidelity simulation for
LOFT-like scenarios and video conferencing for session debrief. Neil
Johnston and Carolyn Prince (among others) have had good results with
desk-top simulation in slightly different contexts. There is a conference
on Low Cost Simulation today in London which might make some interesting
contributions in this area.
I believe the real strength of net-based and other interactive multimedia
learning tools is their ability to provide a superb set of training
resources in a consistent and cost-efficient manner. Whether these are
used effectively or not is likely to be the result of other factors,
incuding the cultural and regional issues about which you know a great deal
more than I.
Regards,
Rick Heybroek
Loftwork ltd.
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Message text written by INTERNET:crm-devel_at_db.erau.edu
>There seems to be an inherent assumption in the existing model that
facilitated group discussions and face to face interactions are essential
to the process. But it seems to be an assumption we have always worked
with.... can anyone give me the reasoning behind this? (don't get me wrong,
this is how I do the training currently, and intuitively it makes sense,
but must it be this way or can it take other forms?). <