I had a conversation with a colleague today about how important it is to be able to use virtual tools to collaborate or be more efficient. His position (which I agree with) was that if you don't understand the mindset of a particular process, digitising it will be that much harder.

For example, if you don't really understand the basics of good customer relationship management and sales pipelines then trying to use software for this will be more difficult.

As you know, my belief is that if your physical meetings suck, then your virtual meetings will suck.  If your training is death by PowerPoint delivered by droll, dry experts, then any attempts to move this to a virtual setting will only result in the same... and typically twice as bad.

Ultimately you need to address the basics:

• Building a relationship with the participants so that you are creating a desire to participate
• Starting with the why of the session - and not why you think it's important but why it's important to your audience
• Chunking and sequencing to allow for the media. If content delivered face to face takes 90 mins then delivering virtually will take 45 mins.  Always allow for twice the time for the same content. 

Principles of good design apply irrespective of the media.  

What's your experience of virtual versus physical either as trainer or participant?

#makingworkwork

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p.s. If you would like to know more about the principles of good design for training, come along to my Engaging Training workshop in Melbourne in February.  Details can be found by clicking here