People better teachers than DVDs

A washing machine and a cappuccino maker offer lessons in making the most of our office technology.

This past Christmas, we were visiting family when a relative of mine, Timothy, both extraordinarily bright and extremely capable, an information technology professional, pointed cheerfully at a brand-new cappuccino maker and admitted he didn't know how to use it yet. He added, "It came with a DVD."

Another relative, a woman, Alie, said, "So did our washing machine." We laughed. Several of us added our cell phones and PDAs to the "with DVD" list, but none of us said we'd actually watched the DVD. And none of us has read the entire 200-plus page instruction manuals we received.

We can learn a few lessons about the most effective use of office technology here.

One is about the best way to learn. When Timothy admitted that the cappuccino maker sat unused, Alie immediately volunteered to teach what she knew - how to steam the milk. Since several of us wanted lattes, this seemed a promising step. With Alie's help, in just minutes Timothy had learned how to steam milk.

A key to effectively using technology, then, is to remember that people learn best from people, not from manuals or DVDs. So, for each major software program that is used in your office - Word, Excel, a browser, an e-mail program - the best approach to effective use is to put a trainer in your office. You may be able to identify and/or develop someone on the staff who is highly competent, capable of teaching and willing to teach.

If not, pay a trainer to visit. It's the fastest way for your people to learn what they need to know.

The organizations who offer day-long courses in software programs want you to send your staff to them for training. Better, just send your in-house trainer to the course. Your thinking would be that while Betty or Jack might learn, in a daylong course in Word, for example, 43 techniques that don't apply to your office environment, perhaps they'll also learn 11 useful shortcuts or methods worth passing along.

Here's another lesson about technology: Don't be the company that actually pays to develop and give away a DVD.

If you consider making one, carefully analyze whether your reasoning is sound. Even if a company anticipates selling 250,000 washing machines, does a DVD really provide added-value? Maybe a short manual is better. It could begin like this: 1. Read the labels on the clothes. If the label says Dry Clean only, do that. 2. Sort clothes into whites and colors. And so on.

In short, maybe it's better to spend the money on an extremely short manual than on a DVD.

Suppose, however, you have 22 customers who have actually asked, multiple times, for a DVD or something that shows them how to use your system. Even then, maybe a DVD's a really bad idea.

Maybe a really great idea is to send one of your customer service representatives out to each customer's office to show them how to use the system. And while they're visiting, ask your people to learn so much about your customers that you can serve them better and increase orders.

Now, back to that cappuccino machine. Just in case you envisioned countless happy people patting a brand-new cappuccino maker on its shiny black behind and congratulating themselves on sharing their collective experience or watching the DVD together and having fun learning how to use a new gizmo, here's what really happened: We all eyed the cappuccino maker, thought deeply about the complex drinks we were hankering for, and promptly sent a couple of people out on a run to Starbucks.

So keep your expectations realistic about the technology you ask office people to learn, and, to paraphrase Texans, "Remember the cappuccino maker."

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