The scope of all that can be customized in organizational learning is extremely broad. It is so broad that sometimes we haven’t yet thought of that possibility. This was the situation when a client asked us to be part of a very unique conference in Las Vegas. The organization had gone through many acquisitions, and because of that, had lost their competitive edge. The focus of the conference was to find ways to beat their competition.
If you picture Vegas, you know all the flashiness of the city; imagine what the conference was going to be like! It was being held by a well known technical company with 5000 people from around the world, attending. It was so big that they had Chris Gardner (the film, Pursuit of Happyness was based on his life) as one of the speakers. There were going to be endless things happening; it would be bedlam. I mean, it was Vegas, after all! All 5000 delegates would have the opportunity to choose their concurrent sessions, and we wanted them to choose ours. To design a compelling program for this kind of atmosphere, we knew we would really need to stand out.
After spending time with the client to understand their needs, we designed a Sports Show theme for each of the three programs we were creating…pre-game show, half time show, and post game wrap up. Every session had a panel of experts, each of whom spoke about one competitor: their threats, tactics and strategy. Audience response remote controls were used to answer questions from the panel. We also included sports show audio, video and animation in the program, along with commercials from the sponsors. A custom online playbook was provided for participants to review after the training. The sessions were a hit!
Without the inspiration of the client’s unique need, we could never have imagined such a customized approach to concurrent conference sessions. Custom learning comes in all formats; it is not just something that happens in the formal classroom setting. By keeping this in mind, we open ourselves up to a whole new realm of training possibilities. Does your latest training challenge need a “what’s possible?” approach?