As I think back over my years of training and product management, it strikes me that both as a trainer, and as I product manager, my greatest successes have been when I had to think outside the box to devise a solution. Oftentimes it is using something for a whole new purpose. Other times, it requires coming up with something completely new, or finding a new way to explain a concept you have already covered.
In my early days as a blind rehabilitation specialist teaching computers, I would often ask my trainees what the biggest obstacle was that they thought utilizing the computer would solve. Often, I would get general answers like being able to write letters or notes, but once in a while, I got something that made me think deeper about the issue.
One of my trainees was and artist. He turned pottery, and was very good at it. The problem he presented was, “I have to have someone write out my glaze recipes in large print, but then I take them into the lab and things get on them to where I can’t read them anymore. I’d like a way to produce them myself.”
The simple solution would be to have him type each of his recipes into Word with each recipe being on a separate page and of course formatted in large print. While that would do the job, it meant he would have to find the right page to print each time, and he may not enter each recipe laid out the same.
As I thought about his request in the evening, the solution came to mind, mailmerge. Yes, I know, he didn’t need names and addresses; the normal fields we find in mailmerge. However, mailmerge is really just putting database objects into form fields in Word. In the next few days, we designed the template with field names of Recipe Name, Cone Size, Ingredient 1, Ingredient 2 … Ingredient 5, and Instruction 1, Instruction 2 … Instruction 5. He then entered in something like 40 recipes for ceramic glazes. He was thrilled with the solution, and could now independently enter new recipes and print any recipe at will.
This is one solution, for one person, although, I have used it a few more times over the years. As trainers, we can teach off a script, but I have always found that people respond much better to a trainer who addresses their concerns and comes up with solutions that match the need and the person’s way of thinking.