1. Content: Wali Zahid
Futurist, business leadership, C-Level coach, CEO. Skill City
walizahid.com | skillcity.pk
Graphics/Design: Mehreen Shafique
Expert Training & Facilitation, JAZZ
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Eight pitfalls of corporate
training programs in Pakistan
and what to do about them?

2. ONE
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SIX Equating trivia with skill
Similar trivial activities in the name of teaching you skills like
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Communication skills
to the extent that these activities became the folk stories of training
fraternity
 Regular trainees attending different courses probably will undergo
a similar activity by different trainers on different topics within the
same year
 Dividing line between:
 Trivia
 Training activity
 Training and
 Entertaining
is blurred
Skill is a hardcore but mundane thing and requires endless hours of
deliberate practice. When we make this skill trivial and apparently fun,
it loses its core.
Hence, our organizations do not produce inspiring people managers
or skilled executioners who help ordinary organizations to produce
world-class products like an iPhone or a Toyota Corolla.
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Physical activities vs cognitive learning
This is related to earlier point but needs a separate mention.
 Most learning happens at cognitive/conceptual level
 We need energy to learn a new skill
 When energy is drained by high-energy physical activities
in training courses all you get is:
 blank looks at the end of training day,
 a hangover, and
 a flurry of photo-sharing and tagging on Facebook
 This is more acute when we organize out-bound or resort-
based residential training and go to extensive lengths to
create that team bonding.
 Bonding may occur, but not the skill or teamwork that you
require every day in mundane workplace conditions.
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Use of emotive appeal
Another curse we see is use of overly emotive appeal,
particularly during motivational training or speaking
sessions. No doubt that we respond to emotive appeal more
than we respond to rational appeal.
But that doesn’t mean that trainer overly uses emotive
content in order to motivate you. Questionable stories,
poetic verses, quotations from notable people are used to
arouse participants.
This is such a waste of time and money. Your employees are
aroused by a trainer with a gift of gab and armed with
quotes, poetry, one-liners, they come back to work the next
day and it’s the same boring routine again.
You can save this money and employee time by asking
people to watch a 5-minute motivational clip on YouTube
(they upload something new every day!) during work hours.
Same effect.
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Lower level vs higher level at Bloom scale
Most of our training programs are lower-level providing
baseline knowledge. As per Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning,
there are six levels of learning:
1 Knowledge
2 Comprehension
3 Application
4 Analysis
5 Synthesis
6 Evaluation
If you analyze 100 training courses from various providers -
poor to some great names - 9 out of 10 will be in Levels 1 or
2. The tenth may be Level 3 Application course.
Now, economies do not produce value-added goods if their
trainings are Level 1-3. The training programs and their
learning outcomes need to be Level-3-upward.
In order to create world-class products or processes you need
your employees to use analysis and evaluation competences
and create new breakthroughs (synthesis level).

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Obsolete knowledge and old models
 Using training models that were made in the 1980’s or
1990’s
• Generation Y - 24/7 connected to smartphones and
Wi-Fi will not even remember the list of important
14 points a minute after they walk out of that venue
gate
 Not using newer effective models
 Every year, some bright academic or trainer comes up
with a newer model which captures the same essence,
but with more relevance to Gen Y which can be picked up
and replaced with your old model
 Another related negligence is using obsolete data
 Not adopting the simple tips such as presentation skills
TED changed everything. So, if you are still using a model
speaker with jacket and tie, who with a straight chest-out
posture and using an animated 6×6 PowerPoint, dazzles
zombie audience, you are living in 1990s.
Similarly, the email of 1990s, 2000s and 2020s are
altogether different in their style, tone and wording.

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Still, content-based and trainer-led
Training programs are still content-based as opposed to
process-based learning experiences. Also, they are trainer-led
as opposed to learner-centred.
In the Google era, knowledge is cheap and fast. With a touch of
a button, you can get a precise action list or dataset that can
help you in your job. Other than employee time, no cost is
involved.
On the contrary, training is a very expensive activity - trainer
fee, venue expenses, meals, learner time, learner absence from
work, learner travel & accommodation, etc. So, if you get the
same information from a training course as clicking a website,
in any cost-benefit analysis training programs will not stand
the ground.
So, what can a training programs do that a Google search
can’t?
The active learning process. The process of arriving at
context-specific solutions by the learners themselves where
trainer role is merely of a facilitator, like an engineer on call.
If this process is collaborative and facilitated well, peer
learning happens and lasting peer relationships are formed.

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Lack of contextual goals
I have seen very little evidence that trainers either know where
Pakistan economy is heading (e.g. 15th largest in 2050) or
communicate this to their trainees.
In the absence of contextual landscape:
 How can an employee be motivated to perform at optimal level?
 Why would they get a kick?
 Not just country economy data, do you bring industry or market
context into your training?
Do you tell them:
• What are they doing right in Indonesia (No. 4 economy in 2050
by GDP PPP)?
• How do workforce conditions differ in India or in similar
geographies like Pakistan?
• Or within the country market, why is one pharma MNC having
50% growth while everyone else is just having a single-digit
growth?
Context would also filter out some of the often-used models like
SMART goal-setting method, because that’s for the innocent.
Companies in a hyper growing economy like Pakistan might need
to follow Jim Collins’ BHAGs method or Nike’s ‘Crush Addidas’
mantra.

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The uneducated client
The client in Pakistan - even the best amongst us - is hardly an
educated consumer or a demanding customer. Even when they
say they are quality-conscious and very demanding, they are not.
Trainers are usually given or requested a course title that they
want him or her to deliver to their organization rather than
coming up with the LNA (learning needs analysis).
Which means it’s the same leadership course which is getting
delivered to a hyper-growth FMCG MNC and a struggling local
enterprise or a decayed public-sector organization. In order NOT
to do that, we must dig information about their specific
leadership challenges.
Another thing that borders criminal negligence is the client’s
finding comfort in feel-good positive workshop evaluations over
serious learning outcomes during training. Both may not be the
same. In fact, training is an anxiety-inducing activity.
Real learning means people becoming uncomfortable with status
quo, with themselves, their current practices. Sometimes that
may mean temporary loss of self-confidence. Which is
acceptable.

10. What to do?

11. reverse the eight
pitfalls
Easy, isn’t it?
Just

12. STEP
3
STEP
2
STEP
1
Develop
skill-
specific
training
activities
Don’t drain
their
energies
that no
room left
for
cognitive
learning
Use a mix
of rational
and
emotive
appeals
STEP
4
Ask your
training
provider to
deliver Bloom
level 3
upwards
learning
outcomes s

13. STEP
7
STEP
6
STEP
5
Update your
training
models and
training
content
Make it
learner-
centred and
an active
learning
process
Provide
contextual
landscape
STEP
8
Become an
educated and
demanding
training
consumer

14. Please click here to
access full article or visit
walizahid.com

15. 01 02
Content:
Wali Zahid
CEO, Skill City
Futurist, business leadership,
C-Level coach
Graphics/Design:
Mehreen Shafique
Expert Training & Facilitation,
JAZZ
Content developer, Trainer

16. Thank
you