Lessons From a Mime: Part I

Marcel Marceau passed away recently, the world's most famous mime. Younger people might not be terribly familiar with him, but his character "Bip" was well known to many of us. And Bip had a thing or to, er, "say" about employee communication and training.

Bip was a man of habits, and he seemed to encounter the same problems over and over again. For instance, he showed an exceptional facility for getting himself trapped in a glass cage, which we could infer as he felt his way along the invisible walls.

What was striking about Bip's approach to life is that he generally employed the same strategies every time he re-encountered a familar problem. And an awful lot of my training clients have shown the same behavior.

I think of these as "more of the same, but louder" clients. They've been telling the employees to do something a certain way, and it hasn't worked. They hire me to tell them again, with the expectation that I'll essentially duplicate what they have done, but that my message will be better written, and perhaps employ the dark arts, only known to professional writers, that instantly open the minds of recalcitrant employees.

These days, with my depth of experience, I usually don't mince words. I suggest that instead of just repackaging their strategy for reaching employees, they need to look at the strategy itself. They may need to change the message. Or the message may be fine, but perhaps management practices and workplace conditions work against employee change (ever try training a sales representative to push a product that pays a lower commission than everything else in the catalogue?). Or some aspects of the delivery could be enhanced -- perhaps shorter, more regular discussions of the best practice in question will have more effect than big announcements with a lot of fanfare, followed by months of silence.

The point is, if a strategy truly isn't working -- and they've probably tried it several times before they broke down and hired an outside consultant -- it isn't going to work in new hands, either. Fix the strategy. Otherwise you're like an American tourist speaking English progressively more slowly and more loudly to make the citizens of a foreign country understand you.

Of course, as a content developer and instructional designer, you need a couple of things. The first is the ability to see what is wrong with their strategy, and to be able to offer better options. The second, harder to come by, is the courage to tell a new client that they've brought you in to do something that won't work, and you'd rather not waste their time and money.

Some clients won't deviate from their preconceptions, no matter how persuasive you may be. Their training and communication project won't work, no matter how good you are.

You can take their money and run, that's up to you. I like working with clients who get results. It's one of the reasons I'm a freelancer instead of a staff person. So, I'm willing to speak up, and walk away if necessary.

It usually isn't.