Claire's IT Training and Solutions blog

Following a frustrating day yesterday, I thought I would share my experience, so that you can see things from a trainer’s perspective – and hopefully avoid being the cause of similar problems. Oh, and Tech alert – I shall be going into a certain amount of detail about Excel. You don’t need to understand it (call me for training…) but read through anyway, because it wasn’t the technical side of things that was the issue.

***

I have been training PC users for many years, and specialise in Excel. Yesterday, I delivered an Advanced Excel course on an NHS site that I have visited many times before. Eight delegates attended – all, I presumed, keen to get to grips with the technically challenging aspects of the program.

Well, most of them may have been. But three delegates in particular ruined the course for the others. I am used to seeing a certain range of expertise on this course, but I had two delegates whose previous knowledge was extremely limited. They occasionally work on spreadsheets designed by other people, typing in some numbers. They knew a bit of formatting to make it look pretty, and perhaps sometimes use the AutoSum button to provide column or row totals. For some reason, they thought this qualified them to attend the Advanced course (though a perfectly decent Intermediate course is available within the organisation). By choosing the wrong course, they held it up for everybody else while I had to walk them through each step. This happens sometimes and it is deeply frustrating for me and for the delegates who were actually capable of following the advanced topics.

The third problem delegate was, however, a whole new experience for me. He was self-taught – to a moderately decent standard, actually – but was not at all receptive to new ideas. I started the day with a gentle look at the VLOOKUP function, aimed at getting my less advanced users on board with functions. [Tech bit: VLOOKUP is one of the most commonly used functions in Excel: it displays a looked-up value from a table. You might use it to look up an ID in your list of customers, and give you their email address. You can use it in multiple places, so that when you type that ID in one cell, all the looked-up values fill instantly with the correct details]. Well, this person was having none of it. “I’ve never seen the point of VLOOKUP – it’s just a gimmick”. He told me that he manually filters his data to find the result he wants, then copies the required information across. Every single time. For every single piece of data. And no matter how much I (or several of the other delegates) tried to persuade him otherwise, he insisted that he knew better. He continued in this way for the rest of the course: every single topic was “I don’t see the point of this”, “Why would I want to use that?” – and aggressively too, not in a spirit of enquiry. He was proud of the fact that, when he encounters a problem in Excel, he finds a way to bodge an answer using his current skills, rather than attempting to learn how to solve the problem efficiently by actually extending his knowledge.

If you are thinking about booking a training course, do please be honest with yourself about your real level of ability. Sometimes it’s better to do a course below the level you think you need, just to make sure you are up to speed, before leaping into the unknown. Oh, and please come prepared to LEARN NEW STUFF!

It’s been a very long time since my last post, so I thought I would add a quick update. Most of my training work comes from one training company, with a second supplying occasional days. The main company has been inundated with work, as two very large organisations simultaneously decided to upgrade all their computers to Windows 10 and Office 2016/365. Originally, the planned roll-outs were months apart, but one organisation experienced delays and problems with supply of the necessary hardware, so in the end these two major projects coincided.

As well as these two projects, my training company also had to consider their other customers who still needed training. All available trainers were “called up” to assist. Many of these already work full-time, so although they could be moved around between jobs, they couldn’t actually take on more days. As a part-timer, I saw my one or two days a week jump to three and four, and only just missed my first five-day week in years when a client cancelled. (I do try and keep at least one day free, preferably midweek, to visit my aging father, and I have a dog to consider as well.) I have worked on both roll-outs and for a variety of end clients, training Office and Excel at all levels.

The last couple of months have really given me a boost and I hope to keep a steady two or three days a week of organisational training, with the remaining time reserved for my own clients and projects – and of course dear old Dad!

I am currently mid-contract, training members of a finance department in using Microsoft Excel – a course tailored to their requirements. I have been booked for five training days spread over February and March. Each time, the level of the delegates determines the level at which I pitch my course: there’s no point in covering advanced material if the group isn’t up to it, and equally I don’t want to hold back the more advanced delegates. So as well as tailoring for content overall, I tailor “on the fly” for the abilities of the group.

This week, I gave my third session. As I was setting out my course materials, I realised that I had managed to leave my course notes at home. However, I do train this material frequently so I just swallowed hard and hoped I would be OK “flying blind”.

I was fortunate in that all the delegates in this group were at much the same level: not as advanced as some, but all with a good grasp of basic principles and keen to get more knowledge. Starting with a blank “scratchpad” spreadsheet, I introduced some basic refresher material to get them going gently (and to establish the level), then I moved into some more complex prepared exercises. Because I had no notes, I found myself much freer, and able to digress as questions arose. Everybody soon engaged fully with the course material and the banter between them showed that they were comfortable in asking questions – nobody felt embarrassed to be showing their “ignorance”. The day passed with much laughter from the delegates, as well as useful and interesting input and ideas being exchanged. In the end we got onto some considerably advanced material, and they all really showed that they were comfortable with the new knowledge they had acquired over the day.

At the end of the course, everybody was appreciative and happy, but one girl came up to me, shook me warmly by the hand and said, “that’s the best training course I’ve ever been on – I think you’re absolutely amazing”! Of course, the success of the day was largely down to the way the group had worked together, but I think this was aided by the fact that I was working in a much more flexible manner due to my lack of notes.

I think those notes will soon be heading for the recycling bin!

Recently, I have been training on behalf of a major training organisation at locations in the City and more locally in Essex. I have had a great time – challenging courses and high-flying clients. BUT there have been some issues of communication that have made it hard to deliver the professional standards that this training organisation requires from me and promises the client.

I have written at length about the City job, where a lack of communication made things quite difficult for me – see my blog Compare and Contrast… Two training days

This week, I trained a local client for this same training organisation. This time, I received a very vague outline “Morning session to consolidate existing knowledge of Excel 2010; afternoon for more advanced topics”. I went equipped with my laptop and all my exercises on a USB stick, ready to “wing it”. On arrival, I checked the paperwork that had been sent to the client – and lo and behold, there was a perfectly useful course specification, tailored to the client’s requirements.

On both occasions, I was able to deliver good quality training in spite of the communication issues, but I felt that I would have come across as more professional and confident if I hadn’t had to spend the first few minutes of each day trying to work out what I would actually be doing.

Is it so difficult to forward an email?!

Last week, I delivered an Introductory Excel course at a company in Maldon. I am also booked to go back there in the last week of June to deliver the Advanced course. While I was setting up, one of the delegates for the Advanced course popped in to discuss her requirements. Where possible, I do like to tailor my course material so that it is relevant to the delegates, making it more memorable, and with three weeks’ notice it seemed like a good idea to pinpoint anything they particularly wanted.

Part of the Advanced course looks at programming macros. My current exercise looks at the problems inherent in maintaining a bank balance workbook with a running total balance. However, in this firm, they have a particular need to do data file manipulation. Reports come into their system from an external database, and then need considerable manipulation to convert them into something that Excel can analyse. My delegate takes a whole afternoon to process this report, every week, as it runs to hundreds of rows, sometimes thousands.

I asked for a sample “before and after” set, anonymised with “Client 1”, “Client 2” etc replacing real names. I received the files (via my training agency) the same evening. I have now had a look at the spreadsheet and found that the processing is, as I had hoped, a fairly straightforward job, though very repetitive – an ideal candidate for a macro.

I shall be able to guide the delegates in creating a macro to delete an un-needed column, then locate the first data record, copy data into blank cells, and delete rows containing header information (which is repeated for each record in the source data). We will need to tweak the macro to deal with records containing different numbers of rows, and find out what happens when we reach the bottom, and deal with that. We will need a Do While… or Do Until… loop to handle the repetition, perhaps with a message box to say when the records have been processed. We can finish with a bit of further tidying up at the end, then move on to using pivot tables and charts for analysis, also in the course outline.

Developing the macro took me about an hour. Once created, it takes about 20 seconds to run: it would be a lot quicker if I turned off screen refresh, but I wanted to watch!

Normally, I would charge consultancy rates for macro creation, but this is such a common requirement that, in this case, I feel justified in calling it course development. It will come in very handy as an advanced macro exercise.

This week, I was engaged to work on Wednesday and Thursday for a very prestigious end client based in Canary Wharf. It was a mixed brief, as they are training up staff at all levels, and the modules included brief taster sessions on Windows 7 and Office 2010, as well as half days on PowerPoint and Excel (Excel at Intermediate and Advanced level). I was booked for the two days this week and a further two days in a few weeks’ time, presenting these sessions to groups of 10-12 delegates at a time

Due to other commitments, I had a very tight time window for course preparation, really just Tuesday, the day before my first day. Up until the end of the previous week, all I had been told was that I would be doing Windows/Office taster sessions on the Wednesday, but not what they wanted on Thursday. I am highly experienced in Excel and train it often, so would only need brief preparation for that, but I train PowerPoint less often so would need to brush up my course presentation and tweak it to their outline, so that was my plan for Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I was informed that the Wednesday training had been altered so that, while I would still be doing the Windows/Office tasters in the morning, they would require a half-day PowerPoint in the afternoon. Also (at last!) that the Thursday sessions would be Excel Intermediate in the morning, with PowerPoint again in the afternoon. So I spent the day gathering my files and notes for the tasters and the PowerPoint, and making sure that I had checked it all against the client’s course outline and covered all topics. I had to create some new exercises in PowerPoint, so it was quite a busy day.

My other problem was getting there. I seldom work in that part of London, so hadn’t yet worked out the optimal route. I considered driving in to Stratford, but chickened out at the last minute on Wednesday morning, instead driving in to my usual station to get a train in and use a mixture of tube, overground and DLR to get to Canary Wharf. As it turned out, my choices were pretty poor and, although I had left in plenty of time, I used up pretty much all my leeway getting there, so arrived just barely on time, only to be held up in reception while they sorted out who was going to admit me to the building.

Upstairs (27th floor – fantastic view of iconic buildings) I was shown to the training room. Here, I was informed that the PowerPoint session in the afternoon would not run according to the (introductory level) outline, but instead would be at a higher level and “tailored to the delegates’ requirements”. Evidently the client had provided a new outline, but somewhere along the chain this had not been passed to me, so I would need to “wing it”. This happens (very) occasionally, but it’s a horrible situation for a trainer to be in.

I then needed IT so set up the AV gear and create shared folders for my course files, but there really wasn’t sufficient time to do the folders by then, so my first taster session was largely a demo, rather than being fully hands-on, though it was well received and the delegates tried things out using blank documents or their own files. The second taster went much better, though, as the delegates were able to experiment using the files I had provided for the purpose.

The afternoon followed on swiftly from the morning. Because they were mixing taster sessions (late lunch break) with a half day session (earlier lunch break), there wasn’t time for me to get anything to eat – I just had to go straight from one thing to the next. But the afternoon PowerPoint session went very well in spite of my worries, and showed that my preparation had been worthwhile. I was able to use my introductory exercise, but went into more depth on the topics around structuring presentations, using master slides, and generally following up on delegates’ questions with practical demonstrations and extensions that I had to make up on the spot.

When the day was ended, I travelled home and arrived famished, having not had anything all day except for a biscuit and two cups of coffee. Fortunately, my husband had cooked a lovely meal which was virtually ready when I got back! After dinner, I just had to gather together the files for Thursday’s Excel session as I hadn’t had time the previous day.

Thursday was altogether a different story. I travelled to a different station and was able to get to Stratford direct (though I did have to stand all the way) and then the DLR to Canary Wharf (though I did have to stand all the way). In spite of leaving somewhat later in the morning, I arrived a good hour earlier, and had a leisurely breakfast before going to the client’s premises. Another wait at reception, but once admitted to the building, I knew where I was going and everything was set up already from the day before, so all I had to do was copy my Excel files over. I even had time to add a few new slides to my Excel presentation!

The Excel half-day went very well. It was just intermediate level, so I could pretty much deliver it in my sleep, but as always some interesting questions and points came up. And in the afternoon, I repeated the PowerPoint exercise of the day before – this time as originally planned, concentrating on the beginner-level topics.

A swift and comfortable journey home – and I even got to sit down!

The first day of training at a new location is always harder, when you don’t know the way or quite what to expect when you get there. This time, it was made much worse by my poor travel decisions the first day, and by my very limited preparation time. The client made it even more difficult by getting information to me so late, and the last straw was the communication breakdown that kept me in the dark about the final, last-minute changes. In the end I feel pretty proud of the fact that I was able to deliver high-quality training to some two dozen delegates on that Wednesday and keep everybody happy.

I have had a course in my diary for a couple of weeks: one of my “soft skills” ones, Business and Report Writing. As the date of the course approached, I contacted the manager of the training organisation in the normal way to check whether there was anything special I should know about the course in advance. I also wanted to confirm that the client would have the necessary facilities on site: a projector and computer for my slideshow being the main requirements.

When the manager got back to me, I was somewhat shocked. The course outline as supplied to the client organisation was considerably different from the one I had worked with previously, and I was told that there would be a projector but no computer. Also, as I would be working through a third party organisation, all my material would have to be branded with their corporate identity. Finally, the majority of the delegates would not have English as a first language!

As the course was to be held on the client site in an industrial estate in an outer area of London, I was not happy about taking my laptop. I would have to lug it into and across London, then catch a train out to the nearest station and walk over a mile to the location. I was already burdened, as I had a social appointment in London that evening and so needed to bring a bag containing my “posh togs”. I rang the manager in some consternation and told her of my difficulties, and that I feared that the changes in the course might lead to me not being able to deliver good quality training.

She reassured me that the outline wasn’t as different as it looked – really, it was more a change in emphasis than in content. I hadn’t taken the time to work this out for myself as it was quite short notice and I had only really glanced at the different wording. She said that she would tell them I absolutely couldn’t take a laptop in myself, and they would need to find one somewhere. She had already arranged for a late start time to allow for the difficult journey. Finally, she told me that she was perfectly confident that I would deliver a good day’s training, as she knows the quality of my work.

Somewhat mollified, I began making my preparations for the course. I branded my material and sent it in for printing and delivery to the client, and tweaked some of my exercises, adding one aimed specifically at people who did not learn English as their mother tongue.

I delivered the course yesterday. The travel there and back wasn’t much fun, and even with the adjusted start time I was very nearly late due to train delays. But I made it – just – and everything else went fine. There was a laptop hooked up to the projector for my slideshow, and my handouts had been delivered. The course delegates were hard-working and enthusiastic and all spoke pretty good English – much better than my French! They still had problems with some aspects of our very complex language, though, and appreciated my language-specific exercises.

I received very good feedback from the course delegates, and was able to send my manager some very positive course appraisals this morning.

And I had a brilliant evening too!

This morning I was having a leisurely start to the day (I was in the bath, actually) when the phone rang. “Where are you?” I was supposed to be in Basildon, delivering an Excel Intermediate course. I had accepted the booking last month, but somehow failed to enter it into my diary, and I had completely forgotten about it. This is a trainer’s worst nightmare – even worse than the one where you’re completely naked and trying to deliver a course but haven’t been told what it is! I have let down my agency, the client and the delegates. Absolutely horrible.

The agent has spoken to the end client, and they agreed that it would be better to cancel the course, rather than have me arrive totally flustered and two hours late. Presumably they will reschedule, but I somehow doubt that I’ll be offered the replacement.

All I can do is apologise profusely and put steps in place to ensure that this never happens again.