Their learning goals were much more narrowly focused, and while nobody actually cried (that I saw), I suspect that I was boring many of them nearly to tears. Mostly, when this happens, people tune out more than the most boring bits – they start to totally lose their grip on the wet soap of learning. Minds drift, and the relevant bits that follow after are lost in the fog of “what am I doing here, really?” and “When will he shut the hell up?”
Net result, if you had asked someone what the session was about, they might have said, “It was something to do with SR&ED tax credits”. Hardly the kind of learning designed to transform and energize an organization in support of a SR&ED program.
Though I was passionate and persistent, over time I learned that SR&ED awareness training needs to be delivered frequently, in many different ways and in specifically focused, small packages of task-specific learning.
Mostly, people want to learn what it is I need them to do. To do… not to know. Therefore, while I do not neglect the “why” in the training sessions I deliver, I try to place a lot more emphasis on the what, the how, and the when of the SR&ED tasks that directly affect their working lives. These are busy, busy people. Vendor Managers have contracts and relationships to manage. Lawyers are lawyers, after all, and financial types have all of those numbers to deal with. Project Managers have projects to run, and engineers, well… you know: everybody has their own, very real, very demanding work to do. They might be willing to help support me in what I’m doing, but they’re definitely not signing up to do what I do.
This has meant, in effect, that the “Everything You Might Ever Want Know About SR&ED” approach was reduced to the “Only What You Need to Know About SR&ED Right Now” approach.
That helps. A lot.
Bruce Madole