Training Distributed Teams w/Liz Cichowski
Episode Overview
Welcome back to another episode of "Making Better"! Today, we have a special guest, Liz Cichowski, joining us to discuss the intriguing world of training distributed teams. Liz shares her wealth of knowledge as she talks about her experience working in various industries and her expertise in training and development.
In this episode, Liz takes us on a journey, starting with her surprising path from retail to consulting for major retailers like Petco, Target, and Best Buy. She recounts her experiences in the training and development field, including the challenges she faced when COVID hit and how she managed to adapt.
Liz also dives into the importance of effective management training, emphasizing the need to prioritize coaching and feedback over disciplinary actions. She sheds light on the disconnect between job requirements and available candidates, revealing how companies often neglect investing in rigorous training and thus limit their hiring pool.
We also explore the role of Learning and Development (L&D) teams within organizations, discussing the benefits of embedding them within operations to ensure effective training and understanding of current customer experiences. Liz unveils an exciting platform called Work Vivo, which is set to revolutionize work-related social media and celebration of successes within organizations.
Additionally, we touch upon the significance of data and metrics in driving behavior change and demonstrating the impact of learning and development initiatives. Liz shares her insights on the challenges of acquiring resources and implementing effective learning management systems.
Join us on this enlightening episode as Liz Cichowski provides valuable insights into training distributed teams and making better professionals. Let's dive in and start making better together!
About Liz Cichowski
Liz has been in learning and development since it was called training and that training was delivered on CD-ROMs. She’s worked for a range of companies from family owned businesses to members of the Fortune 500 and helped them train retailers, automotive manufacturers, quick-serve restaurants, and more. She has a wealth of knowledge!
Full Transcript
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Liz Cichowski [00:00:00]:
Very often leadership wants to track everything. So again, if you can show results so let's say I can. Like at Perch we have installer level one, two and three. If I can show that my guys are going from level one to two quicker and the training is on a web server somewhere and we're not tracking it yep. Then I can make a case for, no, we don't need to track it. Who cares how many people took the training if they're getting promoted faster because they're skilling up faster?
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:24]:
Welcome to Making Better, a podcast from Better Everyday Studios devoted to helping small learning teams have a big impact. Today we are talking to Liz Chakowski, LND manager at Perch. Liz has been in learning and development since it was called Training and that training was delivered on CDROMs. She's worked for a range of companies from family owned businesses to members of the Fortune 500 and helped them train retailers, automotive manufacturers, quick serve restaurants and more. She has a wealth of knowledge. So let's jump in. Well, Liz. Welcome to the making. Better podcast. How are you doing today?
Liz Cichowski [00:01:00]:
I'm excellent. How are you?
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:02]:
Awesome. I'm doing great. I'm so excited. We are both in Southern California area, so the weather has turned. Not that anybody is going to shed any tears for California weather, but I'm enjoying life for sure. So excited to have you here today. So to kick things off, I gave a little bit of an intro for you early on, but I'd love to just get a quick understanding from you in your words, kind of what has your journey into and through learning and development looked like?
Liz Cichowski [00:01:30]:
Sure. Well, I, like many young people out of college, had no idea what I wanted to do. I was a theater major, so worked in retail and moved out to California from New Jersey and saw an ad in the paper. Yeah, I'm old help wanted ad in the paper and it was for a training and development company, but you had to have retail experience, which I had. So went and worked there and my first client was Lazy Boy Furniture. So I'm like 23 years old, building training for this huge company with no experience whatsoever. And that was like the best place I've ever worked because I got exposed to clients like Petco and Target and Best Buy, all the big retailers, anything from a large to a family owned jewelry store in Canada to a liquor store. It was amazing. And went to work for some other consulting firms in Southern California servicing the big automotive manufacturers. A lot of them are based out here in Torrance and SoCal and then worked for Qualcomm, which is a very large company, also in San Diego for a while on a very large L D team and got a call one day from my retail consulting firm. They wanted me back because they were still doing DVDs and workbooks and they got a huge client, and it's like, what's elearning? What is this stuff you're talking about? Reusable learning objects? What does that mean? And I'm like, they brought me back, and I worked there for a while, and then they sold part of the company. I opened up my own company for a while and then COVID hit. So all the business went away?
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:15]:
All the business went away.
Liz Cichowski [00:03:17]:
No more.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:18]:
Yeah.
Liz Cichowski [00:03:19]:
So now I'm with a company called Perch, which is a luxury retailer in SoCal. We sell $10,000 faucets.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:28]:
You got to take it proudly.
Liz Cichowski [00:03:29]:
Gold plated faucets to the rich. There you go. It's actually a fascinating company, but right now I head up an LND team of four individuals, and we've got around 500 employees.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:41]:
Okay, awesome. So that's awesome. I got to dive deeper into kind of that current spot. Then with your current company, what are some of the big challenges? You got a decent team for a mid sized company and super high end brands, super high end products. What are some of the particulars around learning and development in that kind of environment with this really high end product?
Liz Cichowski [00:04:08]:
Well, we have installers, we have showrooms, and we have project coordinators. So it's not all showroom stuff, but in particular with the showrooms, the business historically catered to designers and contractors and builders. And recently, our leadership team, Smartly, is going after homeowners because that's how you're going to expand market share. So the challenge with that is our sales consultants are used to servicing customers who make an appointment, who are regularly bringing business in. They're not used to walk in traffic.
Matt Gjertsen [00:04:42]:
Yeah. So it used to be the customers were highly knowledgeable, came in a lot of times, and now it's a totally different customer.
Liz Cichowski [00:04:50]:
Totally different. And it's a mandate that we're going to go after the homeowner segment of the world. So what do you do with that? You have to do culture change, and that's hard. So what we did was we started and this isn't a traditional training and development thing we started mystery shopping the stores. So a secret shopper comes in okay. And has a scenario. You know what, I need a new refrigerator, but I'm also looking at water filtration, and I want to remodel my kitchen, and we see whether they get properly serviced. And then we also have a customer experience training program that teaches the sales consultants what we want right to look like. So there's no excuse where they can go, oh, I wasn't trained because they have training. And so initially, the reaction was very negative. Yeah. Why are you doing this?
Matt Gjertsen [00:05:43]:
You're shining the light.
Liz Cichowski [00:05:44]:
You're upending my world. Even leadership was like, oh, my gosh, we didn't know our baby was so ugly. And since this is from about a year ago and now people actually look forward to it because they're getting 100% on their shops and they're congratulating each other and actually we are getting a platform called Work Vivo pretty soon, which is like Facebook for work. I'm really looking forward to that because that way they can high five each other on the platform. So that was kind of a journey. But what I found with any kind of learning and development initiative you've got to have metrics or data, whether it's a shop or we're looking at sales increases or with our installers, do we have a lot of callbacks? That is what's going to get that behavior change is actually showing results. And also if you need resources from leadership, like let's say I wanted a new learning management system, I can't ask for that unless I'm showing results already. Yeah, kind of a catch 22 because without a good learning management system, nobody takes the training.
Matt Gjertsen [00:06:53]:
But until people are taking the training, you can't show so and speaking of.
Liz Cichowski [00:07:01]:
That, another interesting thing I found or challenge is very often leadership wants to track everything. Speaking of an LMS, they want to track everything. But if your LMS isn't easy to get to if you're an installer and you're on an iPhone, they won't do it. So then the question becomes do we really have to track it? So again, if you can show results so let's say I can, like at perch we have installer level one, two and three. If I can show that my guys are going from level one to two quicker and the training is on a web server somewhere and we're not tracking it, then I can make a case for no, we don't need to track it. Who cares how many people took the training if they're getting promoted faster because they're skilling up faster?
Matt Gjertsen [00:07:50]:
That's a really interesting point because I think so often L and D teams, we kind of fall back on completion rates and participation just because what else do we do? It's hard to tie it directly to any kind of outcome or we don't know the outcome. But that's such a great example of how if you do take the time to identify that outcome, it so dramatically simplifies everything else in your endeavor. Maybe you don't need to track all that other stuff. Because if you can make the case that it's your stuff, if it's your work that's helping that happen, then what else matters?
Liz Cichowski [00:08:24]:
Exactly. Yeah, so you don't have to track everything.
Matt Gjertsen [00:08:28]:
Yeah, on that kind of note of because I think a lot of teams, especially companies that have a large distributed workforce like you've seen, they run into those challenges of getting learning to that distributed workforce. So it sounds like one of the ways that you got around that without having to pay some exorbitant fee for an LMS for users that hardly ever that don't need to go into that training or something, or all the training. What are some of the ways that you found successful at getting learning to a distributed team?
Liz Cichowski [00:09:01]:
Sure, so for our installers, and we actually didn't initiate this, the business initiated it. But they take pictures of the job site to show that the work was done, the $40,000 refrigerator was delivered, and that no damage was done to the property. So the business bought iPads for the trucks. And the reason they did that was because iPads could take better pictures. So now, instead of having to use their little phones, which are literally I will show you how big our work phones are. They're teeny.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:37]:
Yeah. Okay.
Liz Cichowski [00:09:38]:
This is a real iPhone and this is my work.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:41]:
Those are the ones that I like. I always want a smaller phone. I hate that the world has gone to these iPad minis for phones.
Liz Cichowski [00:09:50]:
Now they're able to get to their training on iPad.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:53]:
Okay.
Liz Cichowski [00:09:54]:
It makes it easier.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:55]:
Yeah.
Liz Cichowski [00:09:56]:
I haven't convinced leadership to get off the LMS yet, but it is something that we are actively working on just to make it easier for the guys to get to what they need quickly. Because the leadership will let them sit for an hour on Monday and do training at the warehouse before they go out. But once they're on a truck, it's like, I can't remember how to install this built in 3000 pound refrigerator. I just need to be able to go and look. I don't want to log into an LMS. I don't want to go there.
Matt Gjertsen [00:10:30]:
You don't want to log into an LMS. You don't want to have the lesson you need embedded in a giant course that you have to search. Yeah.
Liz Cichowski [00:10:37]:
Yeah. So that's something we're planning on doing, is just putting the videos up somewhere where they can access them quickly.
Matt Gjertsen [00:10:42]:
Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Great. Going back a little bit, because before you've worked here, you spent a lot of time working with a lot of different companies of all different sizes and all different industries. I'm always really interested in this idea of how learning teams are organized because it feels like every company comes to a different solution. What are some different ways that you've seen and then if there's any that have been more successful or less successful.
Liz Cichowski [00:11:14]:
Yeah, this one's near and dear to my heart. So a lot of clients that I worked with over the years, their entire LND organization reports into HR. Now, I'm not saying that having some of L D report into HR is a bad thing because certainly new hire orientation, culture, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, all that stuff really belongs in the HR space. But when you're doing team specific so, for example, I'm trying to train my retail stores how to do a better customer experience and how to have product knowledge. It is much better whether they report into HR or they report into the retail operation to have that team embedded in the retail operation. And typically, if they're reporting to HR, that doesn't happen. So they need to walk the job site be out in the stores. Understand, you can't train people in a retail store if you're up in some ivory tower and you've never worked there and you don't know what the customer experience currently is like and how it needs to improve. So whether it's a small organization or a big company, the best teams I've seen are when people who are doing job specific training have a specific stakeholder. So if you've got installers and retail, your installer trainer people should be embedded with that team. So that's kind of the way that I've seen it work best.
Matt Gjertsen [00:12:48]:
Yeah, that totally makes sense. I think I've always felt that the ultimate answer always has to be some kind of matrixed organization where either you're formally reporting to HR and informally reporting out to the business leader or you're formally reporting to the business leader and you're informally reporting to HR. It's got to be one or the other because there's just as many. I'll ask you this question. Have you ever seen it where because of that need to have training out in the business that it facilitates the creation of silos and you have this sales training team and the customer support training team and they almost become at ODS with one another?
Liz Cichowski [00:13:30]:
I haven't seen that happen.
Matt Gjertsen [00:13:32]:
Okay, that's great.
Liz Cichowski [00:13:32]:
Yeah. But I've typically worked at companies with very strong leadership where everybody's rowing in the same direction. Like we all have the same goal. Where you get siloed is where people don't have clarity on where the company is going. Sure. So for example, if you have a very strong senior leadership team and they're doing those regular town halls, if it's a small company, it could be in the building, or if it's a big company, it's online, but everybody knows, okay, here's where we're going. What questions do you have? And then what are the problems that you're having? And then at the next town hall, we fix it. That kind of prevents those silos because everybody's getting the same information.
Matt Gjertsen [00:14:12]:
That makes sense. Yeah, that totally makes sense. It is such a perfect example of just like so many problems that people come to training for aren't actually training problems. There's something else going on. It makes sense that a lot of training problems aren't even training. Like the problems that we have. The root cause isn't the training. It's like something else. It's some kind of cultural thing. And try as anyone might, you can't create a learning culture that's like divorced from your company culture.
Liz Cichowski [00:14:41]:
It's just not going to yeah, that or we don't have standards. So if you don't have standards to train to, training is not going to help. Right. It's like, okay, if you can walk into I'm sorry I go to retail so much, but that's been my life for the past 25 years. If I go into a retail store and no one's saying hello, but leadership isn't saying no, you have to greet customers. Training isn't going to make them greet customers.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:13]:
Yes.
Liz Cichowski [00:15:14]:
Right.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:16]:
100%. It's still the incentives there. So how often do you see that outside of kind of like the incentives? Do you often see that it comes down to a documentation challenge? You don't know what does right look like?
Liz Cichowski [00:15:34]:
Absolutely. So when I own my own company, I did a large project for a company up in Canada called Rogers Communications, and they're the same thing as Verizon, but they're up there. And one of the things we did as part of that project was create SOPs standard operating procedures.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:57]:
Absolutely.
Liz Cichowski [00:15:58]:
Because without that, the manager has nothing to stand on. I mean, as a manager in a company, if you don't have a policy to address what happened okay, I'll give you an example. What if two people create a sale? How does the commission split go? And if it's just up to it creates all kinds of battling and controversy, and all you needed was a policy, and it puts the manager in a horrible position because then the manager has to make the decision, and suddenly everybody hates the manager. Well, it's not the manager's fault. It's the company's fault for not having a policy. So yeah. SOPs are really important.
Matt Gjertsen [00:16:39]:
Yeah. So whether it's that example or other examples, how do you often see it? Is it kind of an identification of, hey, we can't do training because there's not an SOP. You need to go write an SOP or is it like, we're going to help you write an SOP. Okay.
Liz Cichowski [00:16:55]:
Yeah. We wind up even though it's really not L and D's job to do that. If my experience has been unless L and D helps, it either doesn't happen or it's so poorly written that there's all kinds of holes in it. It doesn't include the why is the biggest thing I've seen. They just say, do this, do this, do this, but it doesn't explain why you need to do it that way, or it doesn't consider the impact on the other teams. So they're only looking at their own team, but it doesn't look at, okay, if I'm in a warehouse and this is our policy, how does it affect how the guys load up the installation trucks in the morning? Yeah, I find that typically LND, unfortunately, has to get involved in that process because as instructional designers or whatever you want to call us, we think that way. We think that holistic. Like, what does somebody need to know in order to be able to do something? They need the why, they need the what, and then they need the specific how step by step, and a lot of operators don't think that way.
Matt Gjertsen [00:18:03]:
It's so interesting, though, because it becomes so second nature to us. I find that I'm like, how do you not think this way? Almost? It's interesting.
Liz Cichowski [00:18:13]:
Exactly.
Matt Gjertsen [00:18:15]:
So if you're a new training person or you're in a new company, that's getting called in to help with this stuff. And you find yourself in this situation where it's like they say they need training but they don't have a process. I need to help them write, SOPs I know for myself that feels really intimidating. It's like I'm not a technical writer. What advice would you give to somebody to kind of get started in writing an SOP. Or if nothing else, what have you done to kind of help facilitate that within a team?
Liz Cichowski [00:18:45]:
So taking the time to sit back and observe what's actually going on. So if you're the business unit, give me someone who does it really well. The way that it works, let me shadow them and then let me interview them. Then give me somebody who doesn't do it really well so I can see the impact of that on other teams.
Matt Gjertsen [00:19:11]:
Super interesting. I like that.
Liz Cichowski [00:19:13]:
And then document it, and then you have to socialize it so you get in a meeting with the stakeholders and be like, look, is this it? But then test it. Let's say you've got 25 people on a team. Give it to five people, let them do it that way, and make sure it works before you publish it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:19:35]:
I'm thinking, I don't know if you've seen this video that popped up a couple of years ago of a dad, had his five year old write directions of how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and there's just these giant leaps in logic, and he's like, rubbing the bread around on the table and stuff.
Liz Cichowski [00:19:53]:
That's funny.
Matt Gjertsen [00:19:55]:
Yeah, it's so great. But it's true. Even when companies do have SOPs, so often, they kind of look like that. And it's one of the benefits, I feel like, for having an outside group like L and D come in to help with the creation of that stuff. Because the people in the organization, there's one set of them that know the leaps, so they don't see them because they know the information. But then there's another group of people who are usually new people who don't know the leaps, but they're afraid to raise their hand and ask about it, whereas we don't care. I always like to say, my job is to be the dumb person in the room. That's my job. So I can ask those questions. That doesn't make any sense. I don't understand what you just said there.
Liz Cichowski [00:20:37]:
Well, you brought up a really good point, is a lot of times people I've been in situations where people are like, well, you're not an expert on blah, blah, blah, blah. How are you going to train on it? I'm like, I'm the perfect person to train on it because I don't know anything. So if I understand it, your new people will understand it as well. And you've automatically you've just expanded your hiring pool by huge amount because you can hire somebody with no experience and teach them. You can hire somebody with great people skills or whatever it is, that great organizational skills, but they don't have to come from the industry. And all of a sudden you can just hire so many poor people.
Matt Gjertsen [00:21:15]:
Yeah. And I think that right there is such an indicator when you look at resumes that are asking for such a specific experience, it really is an indication of, in my mind, almost kind of like the average state of training across all companies and industries. So I came from the military. The military is training. Right. Like, that's what the military is. And so as a result, I was used to a world where they didn't care what job you did. It was all about bigger picture, like leadership ability or communication ability. And you were constantly getting moved from one job to the other, and you had never done anything like it before. And I was shocked when I left of, like, middle manager at a power plant. Like, they want somebody with 15 years of experience at a power plant or whatever. It's like there's like five people that can fill that role. And I had never even really thought of it until you're just mentioning now that disconnect really does come down to how rigorous is the training? Because if you don't have the training, then you have to artificially limit your hiring pool.
Liz Cichowski [00:22:23]:
Yeah. And I mean, even if you don't have a big training team, there's ways you can take somebody who's a super producer at a specific job and have them make YouTube videos. You don't need an l D department. It doesn't have to be it's. There's always a way to do it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:22:44]:
Totally. I think that's really I mean, the number one place I still know, probably YouTube today is the number one learning platform in the world.
Liz Cichowski [00:22:52]:
Absolutely.
Matt Gjertsen [00:22:52]:
It's just where everybody goes kind of on that note, do you have any thoughts on hadn't planned on thinking about this. But what makes that good? Because everybody knows everybody's seen a bat. It's not just go grab the top producer, put them in front of a camera, say, Go. At least 50% of that is probably not going to be that great. What do you look for that's going to make it good?
Liz Cichowski [00:23:14]:
I'll give you a great example. So we recently did this with so cabinet hardware are like the poles and things on your cabinets. And we sell, like, gold plated. We just sell ridiculously expensive leather poles and things like that. So we're building out door hardware product knowledge, and there's not a lot of information out there. So I've got a guy named Eddie, who's my SME, who's a door hardware salesperson, and he's amazing, but he's all over the place. So I interviewed him. It's as simple as interviewing him with specific questions. And the other thing is, if people are nervous on camera, if they're looking at the person interviewing them and not at the camera, automatically all that nervousness goes away. We're just having a conversation. So highly recommend interviewing, making sure the lighting is good. A basic lighting kit does not cost a lot of money. If it's dark, you're not going to be able to see the person. And then things like background noise and things like that. But interviewing somebody gives it automatically gives it structure without that individual having to do a lot of work. Because you don't want your SMEs to have to work.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:26]:
Yeah, no, 100%. And I think that's a big one. And that is a brand new skill that I think we can add to the list of things that things in learning and development is kind of those interview skills or podcast host. That's really what it comes down to is being a good podcast host like you. Yeah. Awesome. Well, anything else you wanted to make sure to cover today? You've had a ton of experience.
Liz Cichowski [00:24:55]:
I actually did make notes.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:57]:
Awesome. Oh, perfect. Yeah.
Liz Cichowski [00:24:59]:
What else do you got? I wanted to cover is a lot of companies focus on the individual job training of the individual jobs in the company, and they don't focus on their managers. And what happens is if you don't teach someone how to manage, none of that training works. It's a waste of money because very few people are going to go through a training program and change their behavior. It just doesn't happen. I don't care how good it is and how compelling people change their behavior when they have a good manager who cares about them, who makes the work meaningful, who creates a motivating environment, who clearly explains what the company's standards are and gives you metrics for performance. So, you know, if you're doing a good job and that makes you want to come back to work because nobody wants to go to work and suck. So that management training of how to be an effective manager, how to set standards, how to reward people, how to create an environment that's motivating all that stuff. If you don't do that, nothing else matters. And I've seen a ton I'm like literally a lot of companies do not invest in management training, which is so.
Matt Gjertsen [00:26:11]:
Interesting because the advice that I always give, it's like if you're just starting a new L D team or your company's building or whatever, what's the minimum required elements? And it's like onboarding and manager training. It's like those are the two highest ROI things you could ever do. Yeah. And just like you mentioned, if you don't have those things but have excellent other stuff, all you're doing is upgrading the new hires of other companies. Because they're just going to leave.
Liz Cichowski [00:26:40]:
Yeah, they will, because they'll get frustrated. I mean, research shows, I think isn't it like the number one reason why people leave is they have a bad manager.
Matt Gjertsen [00:26:48]:
Yeah, I think that's definitely that's the phrase, right? People join companies and leave managers.
Liz Cichowski [00:26:54]:
And we often promote our best employees to managers because they're good at the job, but they don't know how to manage people.
Matt Gjertsen [00:27:03]:
Exactly. So on that note, then you see it missed so often a lot. What's the lowest hanging fruit? Like, if somebody knows they need to start investing in their managers, what do you think is the first thing or simplest thing to do?
Liz Cichowski [00:27:22]:
So this is so funny. So people typically, they'll default to performance management or progressive discipline, which is writing somebody up and like, okay, that won't work because you're just getting rid of people. So I think interviewing and hiring and training and coaching, those four things, how do you interview to get the people in the right roles for the right reasons? And then how do you make the offer and make it attractive so they'll want to come work for you? And then how do you train to do the job? Because I don't care how good your L and D team is. The managers are the ones training the people when it comes down to it, 100%. And then coaching. So how do you give feedback to somebody so that they feel valued, so that you're noticing when they're doing a great job? And that way when they're a little off, you're just course correcting. You're not coming down with this heavy hammer and writing them up. But what I typically find is that when you ask somebody, hey, we're going to do management training, what should we do first? Let's talk about writing people up. And I'm like, oh, my God. No.
Matt Gjertsen [00:28:31]:
It's so true. When I think back on it, like, performance management is always that hot topic. It's always what people want to start with.
Liz Cichowski [00:28:38]:
That's interesting because it's easy, but it's harder to have feedback, conversations with people if you don't do it on a regular basis.
Matt Gjertsen [00:28:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Liz, thank you so much for taking the time. We've covered a lot, but hopefully we got a few nuggets and then maybe we can come back sometime and we can have you on again.
Liz Cichowski [00:29:02]:
That'd be great. I really appreciate it. Thank you. It was fun.
Matt Gjertsen [00:29:05]:
Awesome. Thank you. Bye.
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