How to Increase Your Training Performance
You can make training more effective by using less lecture time and more interaction time. Better training performance comes from planning what learners should be able to do, giving them practice, checking whether the learning actually happened, and then revising the next session.
The Learning Loop, often described as PDCA, gives that improvement process a simple shape. It keeps training from becoming a one-way presentation and turns it into a repeatable cycle of Plan, Do, Check, and Act.
What Is Training Performance?
Training performance is the degree to which a training activity produces the learning, behavior, and work results it was designed to produce. It is not the number of slides delivered, the length of the class, or the amount of information covered. Those are inputs. Performance is shown when learners can do the work, explain the concept, solve the problem, or apply the procedure after the training is complete.
That is why a good training process needs more than presentation skills. It needs learning objectives, interaction, feedback, measurement, and revision. If the instructor talks for an hour but no one can apply the lesson afterward, the training activity was busy, but it did not perform.
How Does the PDCA Learning Loop Increase Training Performance?
The learning process is one of the most important processes in process improvement. It is also called the Shewhart or Deming cycle, after two key figures in the development and application of quality concepts and techniques. It is often referred to as the PDCA cycle, for Plan, Do, Check, Act. In ISO 9001 language, the same discipline is closely related to the process approach.
NIST describes PDCA as a long-standing improvement method that connects planning, action, checking, and further improvement. The same loop appears in science as the discovery process: hypothesis, experiment, conclusion, and revision. In training, it is the basic education or learning loop people use when they want to raise awareness and improve performance.
The practical lesson is simple: training improves when you treat it as a process that can be tested. The first version of a class, exercise, procedure walkthrough, or discussion question is a plan. The delivery is the experiment. Learner performance is the evidence. The next revision is the learning.
Plan
Plan means think about your training before you start. Making a plan, a checklist, an outline, or even a sketch of what you are supposed to do helps you think through the training that must be accomplished. Planning should include learning objectives, the work learners need to practice, and the materials needed to guide that work.
Planning also includes designing the PowerPoint slides, exercises, discussion questions, games, job aids, examples, and every interaction you think you need to demonstrate the learning objectives. This is where development work matters. A training plan that only lists topics is not enough. The plan should show what learners will do with the topic.
For example, a good learning objective describes what the learner will be able to do after the learning has occurred. The learning objective should be expressed in a way that can be tested. If the subject is statistics, two learning objectives might be: calculate mean, standard deviation, and range for a given set of numbers; and explain the characteristics of a normal distribution.
The idea is to plan your work and work your plan. Use your planning document to guide your training. Do not worry if everything does not work out exactly as planned. You are learning how to learn and how to improve. This is the learning process in action.
The plan should also be a source of inspiration. If your plan does not inspire you to work on training performance, then update the plan or rethink the training. Nobody learns by force, and no instructor improves by repeating a plan that clearly does not work.
Do
Do means work your plan and keep referring back to it. Do can also be thought of as data because this is where you collect evidence about what transpires. You deliver the training, use the slides, run the exercises, ask the discussion questions, play the games, and try every interaction you planned.
You are executing the plan, but execution alone is not enough. If you do not measure the performance of the learning materials, how will you know what to change or which materials failed to accomplish the learning objectives? Be careful that you do not get so caught up in doing that you forget what you were supposed to do in the first place and why.
Doing is not the same as making progress. A class can be energetic and still miss the objective. A discussion can feel productive and still leave learners unable to apply the procedure. That is why every Do step needs a Check step close behind it.
Check
The Check step is the most important step in the learning process. If you are developing policies and procedures, checking is the step when you implement your work and observe whether it functions. For training, it is the same idea. After delivering the training, test whether learners met the objectives in the plan.
Perform the checking as soon as there is something to check. Do not wait until the next quarter or the next annual review. The earlier you test feedback about the learning process, the earlier you can correct the learning delivery problem before it gets worse.
In a learning environment with a lot of interaction, checking should be easy. Ask questions that test each participant against the learning objective. Give learners a problem, scenario, form, checklist, or procedure and watch whether they can use it. Note whether the students are learning or not.
This is also where training performance becomes more than instructor preference. Harvard Business Review has noted that learning and development outcomes can be difficult to track, which is exactly why the Check step matters. If the training objective was testable in the Plan step, the Check step can tell you whether the training improved performance or only delivered content.
Act
Act is not the same as Do. Act involves a reevaluation of the whole process and then a change to the process. If there is no change, there is no Act. The Act step is where the training plan, materials, examples, questions, and exercises are rewritten based on what you learned.
What have you learned or discovered so far? Is the Plan still relevant, or should it be redesigned, erased, or replaced? Finding out that something does not work is learning. The important question is whether the problem is in the system or the student.
One rule of thumb is this: 85% of the time it will be the system, meaning the teacher, materials, or process. About 15% of the time it will be the student. That rule is not a law, but it keeps the trainer focused on improving the learning system before blaming the learner.
If you are not accomplishing your planned learning objectives, rethink and rewrite the plan. Reevaluate what you are doing. This is more important than the first writing and thinking of your plan because now you have evidence from real learners and real work.
How Can You Keep the PDCA Learning Loop Going?
You are now learning and improving using PDCA. The rewrite constitutes what you have learned. Your revisions are the result of your learning. A process that is never revised means there is no learning occurring, so revise.
Make sure you are able to carry out as many PDCA learning loops as possible in whatever learning project you carry out. The more PDCA learning loops you execute, the more learning performance occurs. With every learning loop, you improve your ability to learn, teach, and produce more effective training.
The best training programs are not the ones with the longest slide decks. They are the ones where the instructor plans the work, delivers the work, checks the learning, and acts on the evidence. That loop is how training performance increases over time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Training Performance?
Training performance is the degree to which a training activity produces the learning, behavior, or work result it was designed to create. It is measured by what learners can do after the training, not by how much content was presented.
How Does PDCA Improve Training?
PDCA improves training by turning each class or exercise into a learning loop. The trainer plans objectives, delivers the training, checks whether learners met the objectives, and acts on the evidence before the next session.
Why Are Learning Objectives Important?
Learning objectives define what the learner should be able to do after training. When objectives are specific and testable, the trainer can check whether the training worked and identify what needs to change.
What Is the Difference Between Do and Act?
Do means delivering the planned training activity and collecting evidence. Act means using that evidence to change the plan, materials, exercises, or delivery method so the next learning loop performs better.
When Should Training Be Checked?
Training should be checked as soon as there is something meaningful to evaluate. Early checks help the trainer correct weak materials, unclear objectives, or poor delivery before the learning problem grows.
