Bottom-Up Training

This activity, Reverse Engineering, is a great way for learners to start with the outcome and work backwards to discover the process, principle, or concept for themselves.

This works equally well in live virtual and face-to-face training.

Activity Flow

• Ask learners to form pairs or small teams.
• Give learners the final ‘product’ of your content eg a completed business process, a solved problem, a model diagram, or a finished report.
• Say, “Here’s the end result. Your challenge is to reverse engineer it to work out how it got there.  Work together to identify the steps, rules, or principles that would create this outcome.  As a starting point, look for patterns and discuss why each step might lead to the next.”
• Allow 7-9 minutes.
• Ask the first pair/team to share their discoveries.
• Ask the whole group to listen to the next pair/team as they share, noting any differences in approaches or reasoning.
• Ask the group to share any differences they heard.
• Ask if any other pairs/teams had any differences than those already identified.
• Give learners the official process, model or concept.
• Ask the whole group to identify where their exploration aligns with or differs from the standard.
• Say, “Still in your pairs/teams, now that you’ve uncovered the process yourselves, how might this [process, model, report structure etc] help you in your everyday work?
• Allow 3-4 minutes.
• Ask a teams to share their ideas to the whole group.

Final Thoughts

• Works for leadership, compliance, strategy, technical topics etc.
• Outcome can be simple or complex depending on learner experience.
• If your training is virtual, use a Whiteboard or collaborative doc so groups can draw their steps.

This Ready To Go activity, Headline News, is an opening that gets learners to project into the future using a newspaper heading and article.  They can then work backwards to achieve the results they are hoping for.

Works equally well for face-to-face and live virtual training.

Here’s the face-to-face version.  For live virtual training, simply use breakout rooms.

Activity Flow

• Ask learners to form teams of 4 or 5 learners.
• Give each team a flip chart sheet and some marker pens.
• Say, "Imagine that it's the end of your workshop. It's been a great day packed with exactly what you were hoping for. I'd like each team to create a newspaper headline that encapsulates how excited you're feeling and why."
• Allow 4-5 minutes for teams to generate their headline.
• Ask teams to now generate the story that goes with their headline. Suggest that they are very detailed in their article mentioning all the ideas and techniques that they got from their workshop that has led to their headline.
• Allow 9-10 minutes for teams to write their article.
• Have each team read out their headline and story.
• Say, "Now I'd like each team to delve into their story and pull-out all the ideas and techniques that are mentioned that led to their workshop being such a success for them".
• From the list of all the ideas and techniques they have noted, the team should select 3 and turn these into objectives that they need to achieve by the end of their workshop.
• Ask teams to add each of their objectives to a separate post-it note then stick their 3 post-it notes to their newspaper article.

Learners have just created their objectives.  They can return to these again at the end of their workshop to ensure that they have all that they need to achieve their objectives.

This ties in well with the idea of Bottom-Up training ie having learners think of the outcome and then working backwards to achieve it.

This activity, What Would Make This Fail?, is a great way for learners to uncover the behaviours, principles, or skills needed to succeed.

This works equally well in live virtual and face-to-face training.

Activity Flow

• Ask learners to work in small teams (or breakout rooms virtually).
• Introduce the module topic eg:
  - Communication module - clear and concise messaging
  - Leadership module eg coaching
  - Process module eg problem-solving workflows
• Say, “Imagine someone applied this topic badly. What would the absolute worst-case outcome look like? List everything that could go wrong.”  eg
  - Communication module - misunderstandings, conflict, missed deadlines
  - Leadership module - low morale, lack of direction, poor decisions
  - Process module - errors, rework, delays
• Ask learners to work in their teams and list the behaviours, habits, or missing skills that would lead to each failure. Say, “For each failure you listed, what behaviour, habit, or missing knowledge would cause it?”
• Allow 7-8 minutes
• Ask teams to turn each cause into its opposite, generating the principles, skills, or behaviours needed to avoid failure eg
  - Unclear instructions - Give clear, specific instructions.
  - Ignoring data - use data to guide decisions.
  - No preparation - Prepare key points in advance
• Allow 7-8 minutes
• Ask teams to choose one success factor and apply it in a short scenario. Say, “Choose one of your success factors. I’ll give you a quick scenario where you can put it into action.” Eg
  - Communication - respond to a tricky email.
  - Leadership - coach a colleague through a challenge.
  - Process - complete one step of a workflow correctly.
  - Compliance - spot and correct an error in a form
• Allow 7-8 minutes
• Ask learners as a whole group…
  - What did you notice when you applied this principle?
  - How did it change the outcome?
  nb - This reflection links experience to principle and primes them for you to overlay the theory or model.
• Offer content (this can be done as part of the debrief or following the debrief.

Why it works

• Generic – it can be used for almost any module.
• Bottom-Up - learners generate principles before formal content.
• Practical - Includes a skill application, so they experience success factors.

This activity, 'From Small Wins to Big Picture' helps learners discover the key principles, behaviours, or skills by starting with a single small, manageable step and gradually building up to the full skill or process.

Works equally well in face-to-face or live virtual training.

Activity Flow

• Form pairs or small teams.
• Introduce the module topic along with a single step task eg for …
• - Communication – writing a single clear email sentence.
• - Management – having a 2-minute coaching conversation.
• - Process – completing one step of a workflow.
• Say, I’d like you to try this task in your teams, without further input from me – for now.
• Allow 5-7 minutes.
• Bring the whole group back together.
• Ask teams to share, “What do you notice? What worked? What didn’t?
• Introduce the next step or component of the skill/process.
• Learners try it.
• Reflect again.
• Repeat until learners have completed the full skill or process.
• Ask learners to join all the small steps together to form the big picture ie the full process or skill.
• Add any formal models, frameworks, or content, linking it to the principles learners discovered for themselves.