L.O.G. 180 Check In The Box Training

All right, good morning, Greg.

Good morning, sir. Happy Friday. Remember, everyone deployed absolutely on Friday. And so, I always do that on Friday. I'm wearing my red thong today.

Honestly, yes, I can attest to it. In fact, I can testify to that. So, today's topic, it started a discussion from an article from, actually, it was like Military.com or anything like this, but it's about online training and e-learning stuff, and some of the issues within the military. But for anyone listening, this stuff is everywhere. Think about any new hire at some place. My wife works for a Fortune 100 company. She has to do online stuff all the time, and she hates it. She clicks through, and she sits on the couch and watches reality shows while she does it and goes through this stuff. So, this is obviously in every industry, everywhere, different types of online learning, sort of protocols they have to do.

But I pointed this out to you because it was telling. I knew this was eventually going to happen, but now, as they say, senior leaders in the Army are saying the quiet part out loud. Basically, what happened was people were complaining about all this annual training they have to do, different stuff that's all done online. And the Sergeant Major, the current Sergeant Major of the Army, literally said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Set priorities for your organization and fight for it." Basically, he's talking to different senior leaders that are complaining that it's eating up too much time, and he just said, "Don't do it."

And then they went to General McConville, the Army's Chief of Staff. He told soldiers at a conference, saying, "I was a division commander for three years, and I never did this stuff." He continued, his quote was, "People actually do this stuff? You don't have time. And frankly, this is when senior leaders need to come in."

Okay, so first of all, a number of issues with that, right? You had me writing already, just so you know. I've taken like a paragraph of notes so far, just for the fact that you have leadership. Okay, so basically, everyone's now saying out loud, "Hey, no one wants to do this. It's a waste of time, blah, blah, blah, this, that, new thing," to the point where the senior leadership of the United States Army says, "Don't do it," or, "Wait, who's got time for that crap?"

Okay, well, first of all, you're the ones that made everyone do this, right? The senior leadership was something to say had to do it. But obviously, they knew when they were saying, "You have to do this," that it was going to waste time and it wasn't good. So, it's probably coming from a, most of these things come from the CYA (cover your ass) standpoint of liability, or what everyone calls "check in the box" training because, "Hey, did you do that? Good. You're qualified on that. Hey, did you do this?" So there's a lot we can get into on this one because we speak about this stuff both directly and indirectly on several episodes.

But I wanted to throw to you, Greg, we talk about this a lot in class, and we've hit on it during different shows, but there's a difference between education and training. And so, some things fall into the bucket of education, some things fall in the bucket of training, and then sometimes there's like a mix in there, right, of education and training during something. So, I want to throw to you to kind of give that explanation. There's a lot of, let's go with the street definition. Street definitions to me are always the best because they're less profound, but they're easy to recall.

So, training is the process of learning something with a goal of being able to perform a skill or change your behavior. That's it. Education, a person learns facts or concepts or theories. In training, you learn how to apply those facts and concepts and theories. So, the big difference is, in one, you have this big picture view of the topic where you're supposed to glean certain information, but in the other one, it's, "Here, do this," right? So, you're rehearsing and practicing the newly minted skill, and as you go out, somebody certifies, somebody says, "Yes, you've attained the ability."

We bash certification mills, we'll talk about that, I'm sure. You also, and I just wrote it down, talked about online and e-learning. You threw those words out there. Those aren't necessarily bad things. No, and you said "check in the box." So, I'll give you Greg's read on "check in the box" training. "Check in the box" compliance training means you're going to end up with minimum results for something that you need maximum results on, efficiency from, efficacy from. Why is that important? Because you're saying, "I will accept the minimum standard on these specific knowledge, skills, attitudes, aptitudes, abilities." So, they're going to be relegated to a one-size-fits-all compliance "check in the box" one-pager.

I mean, how is that, first of all, it's the same types of questions over and over. The material is rarely updated, so it's dated or it's ridiculous. I remember whenever someone got the contract and created the program. Now it's five years later, it's obsolete. I remember having to take, I won't bash Savannah, Georgia, or anything on the East Coast, we'll keep that under our hood, but to go on base to speak to their senior leaders, I had to take this "check in the box" thing about counterterrorism, antiterrorism. Remember that one? Okay. So, the problem was, I wrote most of the material that was in it! And so, I tell the guy, "Don't you think it's ironic that I'm the author of this, and I have to take it?" And he said, "Just fucking do it!" Which is hilarious, because that's the answer.

So, it's non-impactful, non-engaging, intended fully for you to speed through it. And I know you hate some of the analogies I give because they're laborious, but I've got to go back to my CPR versus Heimlich. CPR has been around since probably 1700, where different manifestations all the way till now, are keep updating. And now you can get a goddamn AED (Automated External Defibrillator) delivered via a drone even in an ongoing emergency! Think of that, Brian. Think of the adaptation from 1700 until today. So, what do we know? Good ideas stick around.

But let's talk about the 1971-ish Heimlich. Heimlich comes up with a thing, and that's a person. It's a guy, it's a dude, right? And like out of entrepreneur, and Heimlich comes up with the idea, and it sticks, and everybody knows, and you do it one time, and you remember it forever. Why? Why do I heavily weight those? Because both are absolutely important, but Heimlich maneuver you can put on a card in a restaurant, and a person can go, "Key points," go, "Do it." Step away. It's been since 1700, and we're still updating into. So, what is an AED? An AED says, "Okay, shut up for a minute. Have everybody be quiet. Kneel down next to the person." Brian, what it does is it takes all of that out of the loop and it creates training and education in the moment. Why? Because it's hard. Why? Because you have to rehearse it. Why? Because you couldn't do it virtually. Can you imagine somewhere right now there's somebody in the American Red Cross cringing because they're saying, "Well, we have virtual CPR courses."

How do you do that? Yeah, I mean, they do. They literally will have that online. You got to go watch the dummy. Yeah.

You got to pump the chest. You got to do all that kind of grab your life-size mannequin, blow up, whatever, at home. I'm just saying. But the idea, Brian, is that there's certain things that I can't fathom being relegated to "check in the box" training. So, you and I have seen it. So, one last point: why do they call them contractors? You know me back from the early days of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. I object to being called a contractor, and they go, "No, you don't understand. It's because there's a contract because the military can't do it all." So, they contract you. You sign a military contract. Does that make those so you're technically a contract to a contractor? But, I was like, "Now I'm a consultant."

So, all I'm telling you is that contract players were hired to write the minimally acceptable standards, yes, to economize and be efficacious. And we accepted it. And we accepted it whole cloth. We accepted the whole thing. And now, all of a sudden, leaders are looking back and going, "Nah, not so much." Am I lying?

Yeah, well, it feels like. So, and yeah, so these are all relevant points, especially the "check in the box" stuff, because there is some stuff that you only need a little bit of education on. There's some stuff you have to have training on, and then a lot of things, especially if it's a complex skill, you want to have both, ideally. So, I mean, it could be even just like, weightlifting. You can't read a book and then get better at weightlifting. You have to go do it. You have to show them, show you the proper movement, the proper technique. But then if you learn the reason why it's done that way through education, yes, you increase your sort of, it becomes an experiential learning experience, right? So, meaning a learning environment, I should say. And you actually understand those concepts better because you know the reason behind them, right? If I just do something, most people can work a radio if you teach them how to work a radio. But if you don't understand that HF (High Frequency) frequencies bounce off the sixth layer of the ionosphere and this is why you have to, you're probably not going to be able to build a field expedient HF antenna. You have to understand.

But add to that. Add to the depth of that because you're onto something huge. So, look, now let's talk radio, and what happens is radio, when you're talking on it, degrades to everybody talking. So, you have to teach concepts like signal brevity. And why? Because there's only so much bandwidth. Why? Because in an emergency, it's going to be tied up. Why? So, those are part education, but you won't know until you're in the shit why those are so important. So, that's the blend between education.

So, yeah, so I look at training in general, even if you want to distill the street term down, as training: here's how you do something. Education: more like here's why it's done like that.

That's perfect.

Right? So, it's like, and the why. Now, the idea is we have, obviously, for a long time now, people have been using different types of electronic means of education and different courses and stuff. So, there's value there if done correctly. But what seems to happen is everyone goes, "Oh, we can just chunk this up into some modules, and they can learn it that way." Well, and this is why I want to point out in that same article, which I'll post in the episode details if you're listening, it's not a very long article, but one of the things that they said in this, "However, when it comes to some of the material covered in online classes, subject matter experts might not always be available to units for in-person training and certification, which is true. And, of course, the courses do provide a way for the Army to emphasize certain areas like ethics that can be important across a service member's career."

So, that was when I was like, "You've got to be kidding me," because, especially when you're talking about a military or any organization that prides itself on their values, their ethics, their way of doing things, that's big in the Marine Corps. I still have my Honor, Courage, and Commitment card I got in boot camp in 2003. So, I still have that faded piece of thing because it was drilled into me there, "This is important." But if that's the bedrock principles from which your organization operates from, to me, that's the most important thing. And that's not something you want to pass up. And what I'm getting at is we often use this stuff wrong, or take the wrong lessons and put it in there.

So, meaning, if I have to go learn how to shoot a rifle when you're in the military. Okay. So, that's training, you need training in that. Now, the education about the muzzle velocity of every single different weapon system, what the terminal ballistics are, all that stuff, that's education. And that stuff is great to learn in those environments, those e-learning things, because it's not as, it's not not as important as, like, it's more important for me to learn how to choose and set up an appropriate support by fire position with a belt-fed machine gun than it is to know the muzzle velocity of every Soviet-bloc weapon system.

That's right. My always thing was, like, I know you're kind of the same way where people, like, "Well, that's not an AK-47, it's an AK-74." So, I'm like, "Okay, but I know that that person can kill me from farther than that pistol you're holding right now."

Exactly. That's what I need to know. All that education, bullets come out very fast. We like to dumb it down to the basics.

Right. Yeah, yeah.

And so, I think we often choose the wrong things to put in that stuff. And once that process starts, it's so easy. "Oh, we'll just have everyone do this." But then, yeah, everyone has worked for one shitty attitude towards it. "I'll just go through that real quick. Just click through and get it done." It's like, "Well, if I'm not actually learning anything from it, why am I even doing it?"

And so that's somebody somewhere. Someone somewhere, some attorney, said, "Hey, we need a CYA (cover your ass). We need to cover our ass. They haven't signed this and go through this because then we can throw that up there even if they don't know the skill, even if they haven't mastered the skill, we can show that we expose them to it." That's what it is, it's exposure, isn't it? It's exposure to learning, it's exposure to education. Look, there's an incredible episode. Go to The Big Bang Theory. I like it because there's certain points in The Big Bang Theory where you can follow ridiculous logic. Yeah, one of my shows. And Sheldon learns to swim because he's deathly afraid of water online. So, he learns to swim from an app. And they're good. "How's that going?" Do you like where this is going? I just let you think of all the Gilligan and Gilligan-esque, remember Gilligan's Island? You guys are probably too young, but they paint a line down between Gilligan and the Skipper. They're living in the same hut. And what high jinks are they going to get into this week? It's a repetition, it's just like that. It's just like Hollywood writing scripts for shows. It's the same basic thing all over.

So, I come to you and I go, "Hey, listen, Brian, it doesn't matter what the skill is. If it's shooting, it's talking." "We fall into, here we have four questions, situational judgment test at the end. You check the right thing. And if 90% of your personnel go through it, you received an A rating." Well, listen, how do you rate what they've learned? They don't. What they're saying is they're saying you complied. And compliance testing is ridiculously low standard. So, a company right now that's listening to us and saying, "Yeah, but you guys do the same thing." No, we don't. What we did is we searched for years to come up with the e-learning King, John Tommaso, and the experts with their LMS (Learning Management System). I'm not really good with acronyms anymore because I got so many in my mind. But John's patented learning management system that puts things together. And Brian, those are tough tests. So, you got to take a module, you got to pay attention, you're engaged the entire time. So, that's both learning through training and education.

Well, that took us years to search that out. And that's also when you find it within a given context to do a specific task, like that one that we work with those guys on. Obviously, you record yourself, and you have to interact. That's very different than reading through and answering some questions.

So, you're forced to interact. So, the forced interaction is one thing.

Yeah. But I see that, because I see that stuff with my wife where she has to do it. She's like, "Oh, then I have to do this," and it forces you not to record yourself talking or something like that. Like the one you were talking about where it's, "Okay, what would you do in the situation?" And you have to do it, and I'm like, it's not, it's not meeting any credit. It's not there. It's not quite there yet, but you can see someone's trying to address that issue, and it's just not, it's not making it there. It's not working.

And so, obviously, the crazy part is the senior leadership, too, in the Army coming out and saying, "Well, this is sort of a waste of time." It's like, "Well, why did you do it in the first place?" And this is one of the big problems with it, with e-learning in general, because, like I said, you can do certain elements in there. So, you can, so just stop trying to do things that you need to learn in person online. Just don't do it. Just do the things that you have to do that can be done. And that's the way I look at it. But because of our reliance on this stuff, it's only getting worse. I mean, I've seen people, there's the clowns on YouTube teaching CQB (Close Quarters Battle) and shooting through a fucking video on YouTube, and they're just trying to sell you shit and get you to buy their T-shirts.

Exactly.

And it works. You're sitting here, like, one of the most complicated things for an individual and a small unit to learn and do. You're gonna watch a video and get better at it on YouTube? Go fuck yourself! That's bullshit. Those people are clowns. And that's the sad part is then everyone starts to mimic that and keep it going, and then it becomes part of the culture, and everyone says, "Oh, can we just do a video thing of this?" It's like, "No!"

Oh, yeah, we get those arguments sometimes. So, I'll take you back to early kinetic Iraq. Those three words together, anybody that knows what I'm talking about will be there. And the biggest complaint of the Marine squad leader during that time to me, an outside source, it's me on a completely different topic, was, "We hate this training," because they never had Combat Hunter before. They never had any of the stuff we're doing. And remember, Combat Hunter came as a package that was Point Man training and this and that that ultimately fell off land nav, things that hadn't been there a while. And squad leader said, "I need time with my squad. There's no training time that I have with my squad before I'm going into combat because my dance card is full all the way up to, what did they call Mojave Viper?" "The last real episode that I'm embedded." And then what did they do with incredible training like Combat Hunter, Brian? They said, "Okay, well, this is your last three-day weekend before you leave for the Gulf. We're gonna do it here." "And give you because it's essential."

So, what happens is training is always nebulous. Training is hard because there's so many things that you want to get in there. And some genius said, "Well, if we could just relegate this stuff..." If you're relegating it to "check in the box," does that make it non-essential? That's your argument, isn't it? That's what I can do it here. Do I really need to do it? Let me go one step further. Certain elements of marksmanship can be done virtually without you ever being on a range or pulling a trigger on a real gun. Certain elements of surveillance optics, no, biology can be relegated there. Okay. As a pre to the course, right? A prequel to save and enhance your time and your value, right? But once we start saying something was okay here, like counterterrorism, antiterrorism, you know, what is the one for mobile operations, when you're dealing in hostile territory? I can't remember the term for that. One of the eight side courses. But, then all of a sudden, that shows up in that "check in the box" too because we just don't have the time. So, are you telling me that I can take those and they're just as valid as in-person? Because if you are, then I'm going to save a lot of money and a lot of time, and that's where I'm going to invest it. And I think that's what the Sergeant Major called bullshit on. I guarantee somebody raised their hand in the class and said, "Today, Sergeant Major, we'd love to follow your guidelines, but we're too busy tied up with this online training horse crap!"

Right, right, yes. And he said, "Then don't do it." I bet that's how I know. I really feel it's outlined. No, that's what I was feeling. I've, you know, you've been in those different situations before we had a singular come in, and, especially when you had during, you know, when combat operations had a much higher tempo than they are today. Like, yeah, you'd have a lead commander go, "Fuck it, I'd rather have you out on range at night shooting under Nods (Night Observation Devices) than sitting in front of a fucking computer, because that's more important right now." But the idea what you just talked about is a great example of how to use it effectively. "Okay, here's some of the things you need to understand before you go out there tomorrow." Okay, perfect. And then once you go out there and learn that, you do the training course, you can come back and go, "All right, here's some of the elements you need to know going forward," right?

And you brought up even the antiterrorism force protection stuff, too, that crap is just so click-through. But it's good for small, specific tasks, like meaning, "Hey, you're going to sit here for 15 minutes and understand why you don't ever stick a thumb drive into a government computer." And then at the end you go, "Okay, cool." But what did I learn? I learned, "Don't ever stick a thumb drive in a government computer." Got it. That's a very simple thing to learn. Do I need to build in some of the reps and take 15 minutes to do that? Yes, because I need to understand the importance of what I'm learning and why it's so important, because once you go through that, you're like, "Oh, Jesus, this is awful. I can't believe we ever used to do this stuff." But then you don't ever have to go back to that.

So, if it's defined within a simple context or a simple task, or even a skill or a thinking point to learn it, I think it can be very effective because you don't need to pay someone to come in and get everyone in a room to go over a presentation on why you don't stick a thumb drive into a government computer, right? That's something simple. But, just like you said, what starts to happen? "Well, if we can cover over that in a module, Greg, why don't we just cover all this stuff in a module, too?"

You're exactly right. All the time it gives us, what are people doing when they're doing that stuff? They're eating, they're cleaning, they're something else. They're focusing on something else going through some video, not even paying attention, watching it, and doing that, right?

We've been on a call before, and someone's like, "Oh, yeah, you got to make sure you do that because you guys got your stuff renewed, and you got to click through them." And as we're on the call, I'm starting it and logging in and going through, like, "Okay, because I'm going to do this French certificate." "Yes, you got it." And going, "Yes, yes, check in the box. Yes." So, and I'm glad that that conversation happened with those senior leaders because now it's, you can't, now it's out in the open. Now it's a discussion point. Now someone can say, "Hey, if Sergeant Major of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff said, 'Don't do it,' now those lower-level commanders can go, 'Hey, I don't care, we're going to the field. We're not, don't worry about that stuff.'" But this affects every industry because this is the way things are going more and more. Precisely focused on the military, but this is a much bigger topic. I want to use it as sort of the anchor point of this discussion because it's a great way to look at how things are going in the future.

Because usually the stuff that happens out in society sort of tends to happen in the military first, and they can come up with solutions faster versus a private company doing stuff. But the idea is, all these organizations are doing it, and COVID increased it even more. "Well, do you have something that's virtual?" It's like, "Yeah." But you're no longer going to get the value out of it. You're no longer going to get the same end state. So, had you done it this way, and we don't want to invest the time because we want to try to do more. And what we're saying is, "No, don't try to do something through a medium for which it's not designed for."

Yeah, you're exactly right. You're exactly right because that portal isn't efficient for all applications. So, simple. So, let me come at it a different way. Combat Hunter was a hit. And so, I was always on the road. I was always following a unit into combat, going out with them on patrol, showing them how to use that just to get them warmed up and started. Why? Because we needed a feedback loop. The feedback loop coming back to the units that were about to go through the training then said, "Hey, these guys on the ground are saying there's value added, so now we'll invest in it." You get how that works, right? So, if people, if you don't get how that works, if you don't have an insurgency, if you don't have people searching for the training, they won't willingly go to the training. You have fraudulent oxygen thieves that will go to any training because they don't want to work on the road. You have others that like it because they get the TDY (Temporary Duty) and the pay that's associated. But if somebody from combat comes back and says, "Hey, listen, the most valuable training course I took before I deployed was Combat Hunter," then other people will jump on.

So, now, one of the things we did during that period, Brian, you remember this well. Some of the posers that are all over LinkedIn don't. But the idea is that not only were we going in with the military through the USMC (United States Marine Corps), but we were embedded with U.S. Army sniper teams. Why? Because that was the closest that the Army could get to taking Combat Hunter. It was exclusive. Nobody had that at that time. It wasn't even on both coasts. It wasn't even an East Coast thing yet, although we were trying to set up those teams. So, you got the general in charge of the Army at that time for deploying troops was Odierno, big bald guy, died a couple of years back. Great guy, great, great leader. And Odierno said, "Okay, so what's this?" Now, a general under him who was a two-star then said, "Hey, best thing I've ever seen in combat. My troops are using it right now. We're having a big value added from it." Brown ultimately becomes a GEO (General Officer) at Benning. So, what's he take with him, Brian? He takes those skills with him in his pocket that he knew, that he loved. So, he took Combat Hunter and he goes, "We want our own." Well, what's the Army's version called? ASAT. Now, is it different? Yeah, it's different. Other principles? Different? No, math, gravity, those things don't change.

So, then all of a sudden, comes in McMaster years later. And McMaster, another great leader. Folks, do your research. McMaster and I were like a hammer and a nail. We're constantly going at it. Why? Because McMaster was looking as a Ford visionary, and he goes, "Get rid of all these role players, get rid of these Middle Eastern villages, get rid of all this shit! We have to be prepared for amphibious landing and maneuver warfare!" So, do you see how it changes, Brian? What I'm saying by that, came full circle on that later on after he got out, but he did, he had to eat his own words, didn't he? But the idea, Brian, is that the good idea fairy is alive and well, and every person that's ready to be a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) or a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in your organization has a pocket full of friends and good ideas that they want to field. And then somebody says, "Yeah, but not so fast, we only have 24 hours in a day." So then you come up with, "Well, how can I economize?" Yes. And somebody goes, "Well, you remember that shit like Lee Field?" What was Lee Field used for when we took it at Benning? It was a TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided missile). "Well, we're never going to have tank warfare, so get rid of that. We don't even need the TOW or the Dragon anymore." And what are we finding out right now in Ukraine? We can't data mine fast enough to determine which lessons are more valid than others.

So, I look at it too, because we get asked for this type of service a lot, right? "Well, can we do something online? Can we do?" And we've come up with decent hybrid sort of models before. Yes, I agree. At a base minimum, it was like a live webinar, right? So, where we'll do a presentation on a specific topic and then open it up to Q&A (Questions & Answers). So, yes, it's education with a little bit, if they do their homework and they can go back and then we can discuss how it worked out for them. So, they're going to apply that stuff. But a lot of people don't understand, even instead it's like, "Well, if you're going to relegate it to this sort of online thing, what are you really trying to get out of it?" You have to manage your expectations. So, meaning, you can't then have someone go through that online portal and then when something happens and they don't act in a manner in which you expected them to, that you didn't train them to that level. You can't say, "Go through this." You can't claim that.

Well, I think it goes back, I go back to the thumb drive example. If they stick a thumb drive in a computer, you can, after going through that, because, dude, that's the most simple thing to understand, and it's binary. It's either do it or don't do it.

Yeah, I totally agree. So, and I see always this shift, and things are changing and getting better in terms of what you can do now, right, over this stuff. Like, there's better, like, you can kind of have an interactive sort of lecture where, I'm in front of a green screen, and we're going over stuff. And so, it's definitely more captivating, and it's definitely transferring knowledge more effectively than 10 years ago, right? Totally agree. But, as long as it's in a very, very limited scope in specific context, definitely okay with some of it. But once, what happens is, you get that mission creep, right? And then everyone starts doing another thing and another thing, and let's do this, and let's put it all on there. And then, don't even make it specific to us, because this is what every business does out there, and that's why it's so bad. They'll be like, "Hey, we got this little course that people are interested. Well, let's just build it and put it online, and then anyone can take it, and we'll just make it general enough." It's like, if you're that user end, and you're looking at something, a course that you want to take online, for whatever it is, I would vet that and be very careful about it, because a lot of that stuff is junk.

It's a great, it is junk. It's a great business model.

Yeah.

Yes, it's horrible for the consumer. You don't get what you think you're going to get out of it. You're literally saying, "I have a four, six, whatever year degree with undergraduate and all of this other training, but I can turn around and teach you that skill in an hour on a video-based thing." Am I lying? Training, are you stupid? And it bothers me about this is that seemingly smart people fall into the trap. So, we've lost business, you and I, because our mantra is, "We'd rather do it right or not do it." So, what you're asking us to do is something we're not interested in. It's not palatable because what you're asking us to do is relegated to, "Brian and I record a couple of things, we say a few words on the screen, and then you hit play, and you go, 'Okay, here's your certificate!'" And that's not training, and it certainly falls short of what I would consider education.

Well, no, and I know if someone would say, "Well, but you guys do this," it's like, "Yes, again, within a specific context, and we, we manage everyone's expectations." We're very clear up front, saying, "Okay, we will do this, however, this does not cover everything you think you're going to get out of it. Here's what you want."

And the end state. And the end state is an in-person training course.

Right? That's always, yeah, yeah.

Every single one of them. Every single one of the things that we do virtually for folks, like, we have a thing called the five pack, so we talk about leadership skills and how to build communication within your organization, what silos feel like, and human behavior. So, yes, we can do certain parts of those in webinar, but at the end, where we're all together. So, here, there are people out there, and I'll poke you right in the eye if you're listening to this, that say, "Okay, well, kinesics (body language)." So, kinesics, that's something we could do virtually. No, you can't! Because kinesics are context relevant, which means that you have to be in this situation. So, if you're not doing a podcast training and then a secure practical application, then you're not doing it. Because, like you say, "Yeah, but there's books out there." The Peace family, who are great, by the way, the doctor and his wife, also a doctor, do an incredible job of basic white belt understanding of human emotions and what they feel and look like. But they do them during line drawings and photo capture, and then they say, "Hey, go to this, and you'll actually see this look." That's cool. You can't equate everything without being able to have a trained expert across me. Brian, why? Why do films cost $100,000 a minute? Well, it costs a million dollars a minute for major films because you have coaches, and you have dialogue coaching, you have stand-ins for the light, and then a person goes, "Now, cut. Do that again. Cut. Do that again," over and over. It takes months to make a film. So, if you're telling me that I can just go to Kinesics for Dummies, and Para Language for Dummies (vocal communication beyond words), and be just as good as a trained expert, you're out of your mind! So, that's why the first third of your life is spent in school. Am I wrong? I mean, why can't we just virtually phone it in for second through ninth grade? I think we all learned that doesn't work. And grades plummet, and people fail, and it doesn't. And what happens inside the schools? The schools got angrier, and angrier. And guess what? More violent. Is that a fact? Yes.

And that stuff always affects people on the lower socioeconomic spectrum way worse than it does everyone else. So, they're first, they're getting first and worse, they're getting screwed even more. But, I think there's some things out there that are getting better at this. And so, the interaction part is a big one. So, you talk briefly about, you brought up that the company we kind of worked with sometimes that, where it's interactive. But again, that was developed by your buddy, Marty Cohen, who's an MD (Medical Doctor) and a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy), right? He's an actual medical doctor and a psychologist. So, he's a doctor and a doctor.

But he's a doctor, exactly.

But again, what did he, but he's a genius. And the same thing, he got it. He went, "Well, within this specific context," I know it started a lot with the banking industry and working with tellers and communication stuff, but it was all that practice, rehearsal. So, he had the education, "Here's what you do. Here's what you have to say. Here's why." And now do it. And you have to literally record yourself because now you can do that on your computer and your phone, saying it back, which you get immediate feedback of yourself doing it. You go, "Wow, I sound like a dick!" So, that's, I love that stuff because it's effective, but it works within a narrow, narrow bandwidth. And as long as you stay within that narrow bandwidth, I think you're good.

I think that you can do all of this stuff. Use them as training accelerators. Use it as ancillary. "Oh, hey, we talked about this stuff, or we did this training course on this. Hey, I'm gonna have you learn this. Now you're going to go through this course. It's a case study on one of the topics we discussed." Now, you get all that background information that helps you understand those situations. It helps you understand the training you just went through. It's literally the same thing as learning to fire a rifle. And once you start learning that background history and stuff, you go, "Oh, now I get it." And now you can actually, it helps you sort of contextualize some of the information, and it helps you basically really learn other systems faster. Meaning, I get the education and the framework behind this, so now when I go to learn the next thing that's similar, I can draw on that same experience, even though the other skill was slightly different. And the history behind it, the reason why I was different, I understand that learning this new thing now, Greg, there's probably a history and reason why behind it as well.

So, does your brain pick up on that? Absolutely. Your brain now plays "Where's Waldo" with new and incoming information that's structured similarly because it creates a pattern. It recognizes the pattern and wants to repeat it because why? Because it brings you more money, greater satisfaction. If you don't have a purpose and a reason from the adult learning model where people actually see the value of the training that they're getting, if you're telling me, "I have to do the training to keep my job," that's not enough. You have to say, "I have to," like when we use taglines like, "It'll make you smarter and faster and stronger and harder to kill." We make it sticky because certain people want it for different reasons. And somebody's saying that, "Hey, this is going to increase my longevity." You know that strength training coach that you bought for me for my 60th birthday said, "Why do you want to do this?" And I said, "I don't want to die on stage teaching." I mean, I used to have to take a seat, do you remember those days, and catch back up to get back. I don't have to do that anymore. So, my endurance was born for me out of being so, what do you call that, where I love myself so much? I'm such a narcissistic dick that I didn't want to die while I was in front of people teaching. But listen, if that's your motivation, that's fine.

And I'm telling you, motivation matters when it comes to learning skills. Because, why do people do continuing education? "Because I have to have a degree to get a better job." Well, what have we found out about that? That's not necessarily true. And we also know a whole bunch of people that have degrees. Right now, we're fighting that. People say, "Well, Greg, you don't have a PhD." Yeah, but I've been doing this for 50 years. So, there's a, there's sort of an equation in, especially since those PhDs are coming to me for my opinion, I think it's okay, right? But my point being, Brian, that what we've done is we've dumbed down the whole industry by accepting lower standards when it comes to "check in the box" training because it can't apply to everything. Like, for example, I'm doing Babbel to increase my Spanish based on our frequent trips to Latin America. So, I was really good at street Spanish, "A quest to say Boca Bao." But that has no goddamn pertinent relevance when we were walking through the airport and trying to get the hot sauce for our eggs. Right?

Yeah, the eggs. Yep.

But I want my sunny-side up eggs! That went horribly wrong. So, the idea is that I'm doing continuing education in a manner, Babbel, rehearsal, repeat, just like Cohen's model, that I know that's going to be sticky and I'm going to remember later on. I'm investing the time. So, if you can make the training relevant, if you can make it where I can take it in margins, and, for example, after a certain training, my squad leader or my immediate supervisor takes a knee with me and goes, "Hey, let's talk about that whole stick in the thumb drive into the computer thing." I like that. Yes. But let me show you where it goes wrong.

You and I know a group of people. So, we're doing training in small bites. Why? Because we got to keep the energy level high and put three or four sugar cubes into this minute to make it palatable for them to go out on the range and really be invested in the training we're doing. So, what we picked is the Seven Step Terrorist Planning Cycle. Kind of know the author on that one. And what we picked is a couple of very short examples of each one of the things in each of the seven steps. And a guy purporting himself as a subject matter expert comes up and says, "Yeah, we want to do that same thing, but we want to do it for September 11th!" That's like, "We can't!" And they go, "You can, because I told you!" It's like, one, you're not my boss. And two, "We can't!" And they go, "Why can't you?" "It would take us a weekend to give all the little tidbits of information that created September 11th. We'd have to go back 40 years then. 20 years then." Brian, I'd much rather talk about the case of Elliot Roger. I'd much rather talk about the case of Adam Lanza. I'd much rather come in, hit you in the face with a "holy crap, look at this one Lynchpin where you could have stopped all of this violence!" So, that training can't equate the same thing.

Think of the online force protection training that you've taken. What is at the bottom? They say, "If you want to know more about these, read these nine things." How many people have opened one of them? I'm saying training has to be exciting and engaging. "Check in the box" training isn't it. It also has to be followed up on by a subject matter expert that ties the relevance in to the training.

So, what you're kind of hitting on is, we often choose and look at the wrong things to analyze. Meaning, let's say you've got something happens in your company, in your organization, you go, "Oh, man, we got to do an after-action. We got to figure out what went wrong here." And we sort of, we don't realize it, but we have this very subjective way on what we pick as the cause of the issue, of, "Here's where things went wrong, if we would have known this." And we're like, "Well, hang on, this person was demonstrating their intent. They were showing what they were going to do the entire time. This thing that came up and caused it could have been 17 other things." It's like, "The, oh, well, his the girlfriend broke up with him, and that's why he went on the shooting gallery." It's like, "No, no, no, no, no. That was a contributing factor in it, but from that one event, you don't choose to go do this. There has to be many others." Now, all the training is about that.

But Greg, because I know what it's like to have a girl break up with you, or break up with me. Like, you said, "It's happened." So, you really personalized that thing. Yeah.

So, but since I know what that feels like, I can relate to that. So, it makes sense. So, I can go, "Oh, okay, yeah, it must have been that they're hurt, and then they have this issue, so they went off." It's like, "Well, hang on, there's all of these other contributing factors." And we talk about that in a lot of different cases that we do. But I'm saying, from that point, is a lot of times where this training comes from.

This honor. Exactly, right? So, it's already sort of off-kilter. It's already off, not focused on what it needs to be focused on. And it may be great for that topic, but it doesn't apply to the topic at hand. Okay, so are you a classic movie buff? Have you watched Steve Martin's The Jerk? If you haven't, make sure that you run it. I don't even know if they do the movies anymore. Okay. So, there's a part where the guy just randomly goes through the phone book, points to a thing, and comes up with Nathan Johnson and said, "That's the guy I'm killing today." So, he goes up on a hill in California. Nathan Johnson's working, Steve Martin, at a gas station. And the guy's starting to shoot at him, and Steve Martin's looking around, and the bullets are hitting the oil cans that are at the gas station display, the 10W-30 sitting outside. And he goes, "Holy shit, this guy's got something against oil cans!" So, now Steve Martin's trying to hide the oil tanks so the sniper can't shoot him. So, what we're talking about, folks, protract that out. The logic is then tomorrow, "Oil cans! Are they a target? Are you near an oil can right now? Four steps to oil can safety!" What we're talking about is you can't take a convoluted incident like that.

Look, that's a perfect example, by the way, of how we look at it. Yes, it is. And I'd love to get that video.

Okay. I don't know how to do that. But listen, if you leave your car unlocked, you've got a higher likelihood of getting it stolen from you, broken into, people taking your shit. If you have a fence around your property, you're less likely to have a burglary. If you have a fence and lights and a sign that says alarm. So, we know those things work, Brian. So, those aren't the issues that we have to go after. But when you say all the time, and I've heard you say it a thousand times this year alone, "What are the teeth behind, 'When you see something, say something?' What am I supposed to see?" Not so much, are they? So, here, we're talking about a variety. And I'm right back to my CPR, and I'm like, "What's the universal sign for choking?" This. "What do you do?" You get behind the person.

So, here's my question then. If I'm listening to this podcast, how do I know how to identify, how can I tell what online course or program or topic works in this format, and how do I know what does and what doesn't?

So, that's reasonable development. And that's assessment. And I agree with that. And I'll ask you to table that for five seconds and consider this: if all of the online training, "check in the box" training, you're doing doesn't lead to an event where you're all getting together as employees and doing a tabletop exercise and rehearsing what you just learned, then it's a failure. Because all of that other stuff goes nowhere. So, it relies on you being your teacher. And how good are we at that?

Okay, no, no, I love that. So, after making that statement, would you agree? So, then, if I know, "All right, I've got my company, and they have to go through this online stuff that they already purchased and did." Can I then after they do that, now, knowing this, literally listening to this, go, "Bring them in and go, 'All right, hey, let's talk about that.' Would that sort of, exactly?"

Okay, yes. Now, "What does that mean to you? So, what does, 'Listen, you're the facility security manager. Give me an instance where you found that you missed something, and what were the outcomes of that?'" Oh, that's good. Tom and Bill. "So, you remember when that person from UPS came in?" Those types of words. Because I think that resurrects the failures of training.

Now it's training and education. Because what that does, too, is that, I think that's a great way that helps you conceptualize the lesson you just learned, right? I can apply it to my life. If I'm going through something individually online and clicking through, I'm not having an experience. I'm answering questions, and I'm learning some explicit knowledge that's, you know, baked into this program, right? But once we take that out, and we go, "Well, Greg, what do you think?" "Well, I thought about this, and, I remember one time." So, now I'm recalling information from my own life, and I'm attaching that lesson to it. So, what are the electrochemicals, neurotransmitters? So, now I'm making neural connections.

You're making it your own neural pathways. And I'm creating file folds. I'm creating experiences.

And that allows me then to conceptualize. And what I mean by that is, your brain loves doing that. It's how we learn with everything. And it wants to search for something. And an example I've used sometimes before is, once you learn how to open a door, let's say, literally, think your standard round doorknob that everyone has opened at some point in their life. Once you learn, once your brain learns that's how you open a door, you don't have to get taught how to open every single door handle on the face of the earth. "This one's a handle, you press down. This one has to pull up. This is a push bar." No, your brain understands the process and it conceptualizes, goes, "Well, I know how a door works. I know how a door handle or a mechanism is supposed to operate this thing, so I can figure it out on my own." I don't have to go, "Greg, I've never seen this door before. Can you open this?" "Well, Brian, that has a handle with a little thumb button on top, you press down." "Oh, I didn't realize that!"

So, you'll do it on your own. But simply bringing that to life. And those are the best ones, too. I like the discussion thing afterwards. "Okay, what does that mean to you?" Because one, what are you doing if you're in charge of that, or you're in need of your prescription? One, it's sort of a check on learning, "Did you actually get something?"

Precisely.

Two, you're making it real. And three, are allowing them to use that information. So, that's super low calorie. That does not take much.

No. And listen, it doesn't get done. Let's say that you've got 50 lessons a year that your folks have to take, which breaks down to basically one a month on different topics that you have to check in the box on. Other than attendance, how are you gauging the effectiveness? And if you don't have a plan where there's detailed measurement and assessment, including grab samples and quizzes of those folks, then when it stands up in court, I'm going to tear you a new asshole on his right hand because I'm going to bring those people up. And in just a few minutes, like, "What's a pre-battery weight of a SL25X (Streamlight 25X) Streamlight flashlight?" And the cop goes, "I'm not sure." "What's the maximum effective range of the .38 +P ammo in the standard Smith and Wesson Model 10?" "I'm not sure." "Okay, well, how many lumens is the bulb?" Now you asked three or four preface questions like that. And then you go, "Then, and you're a cop, and you went through an academy, you're a subject matter expert." What has a jury just done? The jury just looks and goes. Now, I'm not saying those parlor tricks are why we're saying that this training doesn't work. I'm saying that you don't want to have the radical, horrific situation occur at your business or factory and look back at me and say, "I did the minimum standard to certify my employees."

Well, you just brought up the key, one of the big things about this, the measurement assessment. So, first of all, measurement and assessment is much more complicated and complex than people realize, right? We always pick, a lot of times, we pick the worst things to measure on. But, that's a whole separate podcast. But the idea is, someone would say, "But, it's, oh, there's a quiz in there in this online thing, so we're assessing their knowledge on it." It's like, "No, what that measures is, did they retain in the last 30 minutes of them going through this enough information to answer the question correctly?" That's it. You just found that they answered the question correctly. That's pattern recognition.

You're exactly right. Absolutely agree.

That doesn't mean anything. That's the tone of the question. They don't mean that they can apply the answer to a real-life situation. That's what I'm saying. That's right. Real measurement.

Exactly right.

If you said, "Learn this lesson, now go out and do it," and I watched how you did it, and then I graded it, okay, that's measurement and assessment. But having a little quiz in there to make sure you retain that long enough to finish the fucking quiz is not accurate measurement and assessment. And that's a huge problem in general on what we choose to measure. It's not unlike what we choose is an important topic to learn to address an issue, and then we choose how to measure it, and it's not always an effective measurement tool.

Just getting the answers right on a test does not mean you understand the material. I am a perfect example of that. I was a great test taker as a kid. I could take a standardized test and do really well on it. And then when I go to class, "Hey, what the hell is your problem?" And I was like, "I understand, I can, I go, 'Oh, there's five possible answers. I'm pretty good at narrowing it down to two. And at that point, I got a 50/50 chance.'" So, that was my version.

Do you remember the one class that we were in where no matter what question that we asked, the kid yelled out the wrong answer? Yeah, funny. So, we would go, "Exactly. Sure, vacuum." Do you remember? And we always say at the end of it, "Yeah, you're onto something there." Exactly. So, what we were preparing them in the classroom for, folks, think back to your time that you met me and Brian in the classroom, me or another instructor doing my stuff, all the plagiarists that are out there. But think about sitting in the class. What we were doing, "We'll get to the classroom."

Yeah, exactly. I'm still pissed.

But listen to me, we were preparing you for when we went to the range. So, at 1,000 meters, we say, "And what does that mean?" Right? So, "What does it look like?" "Well, what do you think he's doing?" "Well, act it out here." The idea, Brian, is that without that guide or mentor to take you through the knowledge that you learned here, okay, in education and apply it to training, if you cut out that middleman, you're cutting out all of the learning that could occur. And that's why we talk about TBO and Marty Cohen and Marty Seligman and Joan Johnson and some of the greats in the industry. Because they get the connection. They get the connection. You can't just talk about it. Yes, we do classroom lecture. Okay. "Death by PowerPoint." If you use the term "Death by PowerPoint," you clearly have no fucking understanding of education and shouldn't be in a classroom. Because PowerPoints are modern-day cave paintings, quoting a great human that I love and admire. And what happens is they have a use, sort of videos. But if all your training is video and you point to the video and go, "Don't do that," that's not training at all.

So, we've covered a lot of topics, but there is a way to resurrect this "check in the box," one-size-fits-all training. Go to an expert, and they'll show you how to do it.

Well, and I think it is, is understanding the limitations of doing that. I think if you understand the capabilities and limitations of some sort of online platform, and you stay within that, you're good. That's, maybe, maybe you don't need a training program, literally. Maybe you just need to be educated on a process internal to the company. Well, you can chop that up and put that into modules. So, people go, "Oh, that's how I fill out, you know, the cover sheet on my TPS (Testing Procedure Specification) reports."

Exactly. And then after a while, I get so good at it, then I don't need it. Yeah.

Oh, that's how it just becomes reinforcement. That's how I fill out my timesheet. I wish we totally got one of those videos.

Yeah. Let's not call those guys out. Those faster, so, "Get four props a day for my timesheet." It's the "everything's okay" alarm, right? If it keeps going off, I'm not going to fucking pay attention to it. And then I'm never going to do it. As I got that nasty email, which I go, "I don't work for you. I work for a different company. Why am I filling this out?" Well, that's contract. Anyway, that's a side note.

So, you're as angry as I am. Yeah, well, that one just pisses me off because I go, "The more times you send me an email, the less likely I am to go do it," because I get used to that email, and I attribute no value to it. If you send anyone every single day, then there's no.

Four times a day. I get two before noon and two afternoon, all from different people.

And we don't work.

Friendly reminder.

Oh, my God. Anyway, that's a whole lot about pet peeves. So, I always like the takeaways of it is that it can be an incredibly powerful tool when used correctly, just like anything else. And what you're learning, and what the Army is finally discussing, is, "We've been going about this wrong. We haven't done these things correctly." So, now, and I love that they're starting it like an insurgency, and a Command Sergeant Major comes out and says, "Senior NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer)." And guess what? A general came out and gave them supporting fires and said, "Then don't do it! If you don't have time, then don't do it!"

There's some poor major, some staff officer who has to rewrite all the policies now spinning and spinning. And there's a whole bunch of contractors that have made their kids' education and braces and stuff off of creating this pablum, and now they're going, "Oh, fuck, we're not going to pay the bills this year!"

Yeah, that's, well, that's absolutely true.

So, I think that's, we hit a lot, we hit a lot of topics. I just had my bullet points I wrote down before going to make sure I always go back to make sure I got them because, hopefully, what they're really saying, what this whole article is really saying is what we've been saying: "The problem is with these certificate mills." And, "I'm going to teach you this. This is just online, login, and now you're certified in this." And are there certain things where that works for? Absolutely, for sure. But you're not certified.

You're, "I'm a dependence was certified. I certify that you attended pixels, the impixulation that I threw at your face." Okay. "And your mere attendance gets you this certificate of attendance." So, don't forget that. Don't forget that. And that's why, you know, we're not members of these professional organizations that are there. It's like being a celebrity for being a celebrity. What I'm trying to say? I'm a, what do they call that? The TV star, the reality star. No, you're not. Because I know reality. I'm living it. And you're not in my day. So, you're not a star. Go away.

Famous for being famous. Yeah, absolutely. So, I'll throw to you at the end here, Greg. Was there anyone you had in mind that you were doing?

Yeah, so, I have somebody I'd like to put right between the headlights. But, yeah, I don't say, "Let's do this, let's go to the Patreon site." Give me a minute to lay out my case and then we'll be done. Yeah, there's definitely some, I love everybody. You know that. I love everybody. Listen, just don't be a poser. And, you know what? Don't even need to go to Patreon. I'll do it for free right here. If you're going to use my material, you have my permission right now to use absolutely everything I've built or I've written. But, you know what? Throw the credit in there where it came from, genius. Because the idea is that I don't have to go through legal.

Wow. What's funny? That stuff was copied and pasted so many times that they don't even, they don't even, I don't know.

Well, your material was around before that, and it's clearly copyrighted. And it was very clear.

Like, yeah, but listen on this one. The reason I went high and right, Brian, it was right out of our syllabus. It was literally cut and pasted off of one of our course calling letters. "Hey, you're going to learn these skills." And then the person literally goes in and pasted it into the thing and said, "Hey, you're going to learn these skills." Kiss my ass. Kiss my professional ass. That's the right side.

But the idea is, I can't wait for the email. I was going, "Hey, who is Greg talking about?" Anyway.

I love everybody. Go out and learn something. I don't care what you do. Just credit the author. Story about a white whale. You say that to someone 12 years ago. I don't, but whatever. Anyway.

So, anything else? We bounce around a lot. But after that, we talked a lot about this, just the issues with some of the online training. Absolutely, you can do it. There are certain advantages to it. There are certain takeaways you can use from it within a given defined context. Understand the capabilities and limitations of what you want to get across and stay in that box, right? There is no outside the box thinking when it comes to online learning objectives.

Yeah. And if those TLO (Terminal Learning Objective) and ELO (Enabling Learning Objective) are enabled by the enabling learning objectives of your course, you're probably doing something right as long as there's a day of reckoning, the measurement and assessment and in-person training. You increase, and when we say training, training can be very simple. It doesn't even have to be something formal that you have to hire someone for that.

Like you said, increase its effectiveness by having the discussion afterwards. And before, even before, what you're doing for. It's literally five minutes. "Hey, what does that mean to you?" Okay. "Because now, why do you think we made you take this training?"

Exactly. Those type of stimulating things. Because now you're building a file folder in the brain for it. And the person is likely to make that sticky and say, "Hey, it was important enough for the boss to come down today after I took 10 modules and spent 15 minutes with me in the break room. That must be important to the culture of the organization." You've just changed everything for that day. I think it's a good plan. I really do.

Okay, well, there you go. So, if anyone has, yeah, there you go. Exactly. So far it's Friday, buddy. Still have more to do today. But, thanks everyone for listening. Obviously, always reach out to The Human Behavior Podcast@gmail.com. And then we, of course, have the Patreon site, which we've been doing more and getting stuff out and little video clips. And then, if you're listening and you're on social media, follow us. Follow The Human Behavior Podcast. Follow Arcadia Cognorati. I put out separate content on each one. So, there's more to get if you follow us on both. And then if you enjoyed the podcast, please share it with your friends. And don't forget that training changes behavior.