Ditch Train the Trainer

In this increasingly competitive global economy, companies are always looking for the most efficient use of resources.  Understandable for sure.  But, sometimes I think companies have difficulty recognizing where to draw the line.  Employees are always being asked to do more with less.  But at some point, it's just less.

One area where this 'more with less' concept rears it's ugly head time and time again is training.  The Train the Trainer model has become more and more popular.  What's not to love?  It supposedly saves both time and money.  I'm not buying it.  Here's three reasons why.

• Highlights of the highlights.  When the original trainer was trained, did they receive the comprehensive, full-blown, exhaustive, cover-all-scenarios training?  If so, great.  But, since the whole idea with this model is to save costs, I'm going to guess not.  So your trainer probably got the highlights version in their session.  Now they will give you their highlights.  So you may only be receiving a fraction of the possible information you'll need to perform your job.  Feeling like an expert yet?  
• Filtered information.  So what's important and what's not?  Ask ten people this question and you may get ten different answers.  So what's important to your trainer and are they the same things that are important to you?  You'll never know.
• No follow up.  With the Train the Trainer model, it's likely that most trainers will not be dedicated trainers.  It will just be a minor portion of their total responsibilities.  So what happens when you try to apply what you learned and have numerous follow up questions?  Unless you have a comprehensive manual for reference (unlikely in a Train the Trainer scenario), most questions will go unanswered.  Once the training session is over, no one will have time for you.  You should have written everything down in the training session.  Yeah right.