Neal Boortz is outraged this morning. To be fair, no matter which day I choose to write this, I could start my post the same way and, to be fair again, there is a lot of stuff to get outraged about if you enjoy being outraged. Today’s particular outrage is about a school district here in the Atlanta area spending $400K of federal stimulus money to take 200 teachers to a conference in Hollywood, CA for 4 days of learning and development. The justification for this includes the idea that the teachers will come back from this trip excited about what they learned and eager to implement what they learned in the classrooms.
This topic made me think about the annual sales meeting that many salespeople just came back from. January is a hot time for this. It is typically fair to say that salespeople learn a lot during these annual meetings and do come back excited. But then what happens? Well, the same thing that will happen to these teachers. Back home things continue to churn and students need to pass tests, parent conferences need to continue, a failing student needs to be addressed, discipline problems continue, the school play needs to be rehearsed, tests need to be graded and so on. Before these teachers realize it, they are doing exactly the same things they were doing before they left for the conference and the conference was nothing more than a pep rally and a chance to socialize and sightsee with peers from around the country. Lfie can get in the way of great intentions after all.
Hopefully what will happen is this instead. The school system will follow this Hollywood conference with a plan to implement the top ideas from these meetings that will make the most impact on key areas this school district needs to address. Whether that is increasing graduation rate, implementing more sports programs, raising the SAT test scores or reducing absenteeism. What is the plan and what is the plan to hold these teachers accountable to bringing back the change that will make a difference?
If you’ve just had your annual sales meeting, what is different in the way you help customers because of the time you invested to attend your meeting? Some companies follow these up effectively and many, many do not. Everyone comes back after the company has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and selling time and salespeople have invested selling and family time and …. do the very same things they did before they left. Sure, they are a little excited, but are also now 4 days behind in their day jobs. Now it’s catch up time instead of implement-what-you’ve-learned time.
Bottom line, you should be outraged like Neal if your company dragged you half way around the country for a big rah-rah session with no plan to advance, reinforce and apply the valuable lessons and information you absorbed during your meeting. I know I would be.
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