How to Conduct a Successful Design Training

Recently, a friend invited me to provide paid training for his company’s design team.

I looked back at my previous design presentations and considered designers’ needs for sharing from the empathy angle. I outlined a plan for my friend: one theme per week, for a total of 8 sessions.

Diff’s design career journey & introductions
Designers’ skill dimensions and professional ethics
Design communication: how should designers express their needs?
How do designers review their own and others’ designs?
How should designers present their works?
How to interview or be interviewed?
How to manage a design team?
How should designers improve themselves?

My friend’s key feedback was: he wanted this to be more than just a sharing session; it needed to result in actionable changes. As he put it, “We know a lot, but we accomplish very little.”

It dawned on me that this “need” is different from most of my past design presentations. This is training, not just sharing.

What’s the biggest difference between sharing and training? Sharing is almost entirely input-focused; listeners just “listen.” But training, effective training, requires output and tangible results. The most crucial and challenging objective of training is to achieve awareness and behavior change through action.

I needed to consult someone on how to “make it actionable.” I reached out to an old colleague and friend, Ningjun, whose startup—Jian Du Classroom—teaches people how to apply knowledge in practice. (Note: this is not an ad.)

After our discussion, Ningjun recommended a book: Manager’s Guide to Turning Training into Business Results. He suggested I read it quickly. So, I paid for it on Kindle and read it in two hours after dinner. Here, I want to share my understanding of “training” after reading this book.

Training Must Address Business Needs

Sometimes business owners or managers meet an expert or industry figure and naturally invite them to “train our team.” However, the actual training purpose isn’t always clear. Training should be entirely aligned with business needs, practical, and actionable. Additionally, through mechanisms like frequent and timely performance feedback and reward/punishment systems, companies should help employees identify their shortcomings and motivate them to improve.

There are three ideal times for training:

New employee onboarding: quickly understand the business;
New project launch: train for new skills and awareness needed for the project; (my own addition, not in the book)
New position training: develop comprehensive abilities required for higher roles;

First, Ask: What Are Your Business Goals?

My friend is the founder of his company, so he naturally understands his business goals. But in slightly larger companies, the HR department may initiate training, making their understanding of the business goals very crucial.

Higher business goals and higher employee capabilities complement each other. If as a manager you feel unsure about employee capabilities, then you must reassess your business goals. With clear business goals, you can determine if everyone’s performance and qualities align with your objectives.

Do Team/Employee Performance Support Business Goals?

You can assess whether the team’s or employees’ current performance supports the business goals by researching with both internal and external clients, considering “current strengths” and “current weaknesses.”

Performance Falling Short? Consider 4 Factors, Not Just Employee Quality;

Performance is influenced by these four factors (4W):

World: uncontrollable external factors, such as pandemics, regulations, competitors’ actions;
Workplace: internal environment—organizational structure, hiring & salary systems, company culture, management style;
Work: whether work arrangements, processes, tools, and systems are smooth;
Worker: employee cognition, skills, work attitude, teamwork;

Often, companies blame poor performance on “our people aren’t good enough” or “someone specific isn’t good enough.” But “poor people” may only play a minor role. Why hire them in the first place? 😄

Evaluate and Confirm Employee Improvement Needed

For a company founder or manager, training should be approached with the same seriousness as business or investment matters. Why is training important? Because the growth in employee cognition and capabilities leads to business and company growth. As someone involved in Liulishuo’s early days, I’m very aware of this importance.

Training’s costs and consequences aren’t just financial. Repeated irrelevant training wastes time and gradually erodes employee desire and trust in training, ultimately hurting the company’s learning and growth culture.

Conclusion: Training Is a Complex System

Training consists of 3 main modules: training needs, courses, follow-up & evaluation

1. Training Needs

Align with business goals and use company culture, incentives (survival of the fittest), and frequent performance feedback to inspire and motivate employees to improve;
Successful training begins with thorough needs assessment; (In hindsight, taking on my friend’s training request was fearless in my ignorance, and now I’m a bit nervous about it 😄)
Management must recognize training’s importance and emphasize it in all settings;

2. Courses

Course design, course delivery, and course interaction;

3. Follow-up & Evaluation

Monitor whether employees actively engage, change attitudes, behaviors, and apply training results in practical work, with corresponding company incentives;
Managers, especially basic-level ones, need to promote training application: 1:1 communication, group sharing, etc.;
Management and training departments should periodically evaluate training’s impact on business;

4 Common Reasons for Training Failure

Useless Training: Lacking analysis of business goals and performance, trying to solve issues that “training can’t solve” with training;
Wrong Audience: Training audience should be precise in terms of expertise and capability levels; otherwise, it’s wasting some people’s time (though business owners often invite more people just because they’re there);
Poor Execution: Failing to execute on training plans, course design, delivery, and overloading with short-term information are common errors;
Lack of Follow-up: The greatest factor in training success or failure.

Core Illustration of the Book: 6Ds

D1: Define the Business Outcomes: start with “why”; clarify business rationale and expected outcomes;
D2: Design the Complete Learning Experience: before, during, and after instruction;
D3: Deliver for Application: use strategies to enable job application;
D4: Drive Learning Transfer: provide support and accountability for using new skills and knowledge;
D5: Deploy Performance Support: give learners the aids, coaching, apps, and support to succeed;
D6: Document Results: measure, evaluate, and report results for continuous improvement.

Overall, this book is very practical (with principles and handbooks) and I recommend it to managers at all levels (and those preparing for management roles).

Preparing this training is quite a challenge for me, but I’m finding it interesting. Maybe this is my new direction.