Bring Training to Life with Avatars

I loved this article. I provide IS and project management support to the Sales & Marketing department of a major Mid-West non-profit HMO. I have a strong background in BPM and Marketing from years of consulting experience with the Big Three automobile manufacturers, and one of the most consistently difficult aspects of my job has been conveying critically important - and lethally dull - information to the people I'm charged with servicing.

I spent four years trying to get into the healthcare industry, and am very happy to have the job that I do. However, this organization is even more difficult to communicate with than the automobile manufacturers were on their worst days.

For me personally, it's a perfect storm of organizational disfunction: I work for an insurance company in the healthcare vertical supporting their Sales & Marketing group. There is no less organized, less technically-challenged, less non-process oriented group of people to work with under the sun. There's also fewer jobs more rewarding, or customers more grateful than the men and women I work with day-to-day.

I've found that the approach presented here works wonders with my customers. While I've not rolled-out an avatar per se, I go out of my way to make all my PowerPoint presentations fully animated with audio, animation, even multimedia if I can shoehorn something halfway relevant into it. Fun and/or timely themes also work well when the corporate culture bends enough to let you exploit it. During a recent series of presentations and workshops on BPM concepts for my customers, I wrote training material that made use of a soap opera schtick with images from the official "Desperate Housewives" site. Even my process documentation is hyperlinked, Web-enabled, and full of day-glow colors.

It's not about selling the sizzle instead of the steak, it's about selling the sizzle AND the steak; kudos to Tom for pointing that out in a well-written piece.