The first job a new supervisor gets here at Big Brown is as a trainer of new hires. Sooner or later, usually sooner, one of those newbies becomes a supervisor and they start training the next batch of new hires. Then one of those becomes a supervisor and begins training more new hires. It all looks and sounds pretty good until you look at it a little closer. When you do, you will notice that the problem is the direction the quality of the training takes and the amount of training that actually occurs using this method.
For example: Supervisor A takes his knowledge and trains a group of new hires. They end up knowing less than he does because he either doesn’t tell them everything they need to know or he doesn’t know how to convey what it is they need to know. This can be compounded when you get a supervisor that doesn’t know what to teach or how to teach it.
Then one of his trainees becomes Supervisor B and once again becomes a trainer. He trains a bunch of new hires, all of which end up with less know-how than he does, which is less than Supervisor A. Then one of his trainees becomes Supervisor C. His trainees end up knowing less than he does, which is less than Supervisor B, which is less than Supervisor A and so on and so on. At each level of the pyramid, the training gets weaker and weaker contributing to the downward direction in the quality of each worker when using this training method.
Like I said, usually this benefits the person at the top of this type of scheme. In this setting, the person at the top is the Company or more directly the Shift Manager. He is definitely not benefiting from this. Having a less and less capable staff over time is not in any way in the management’s best interest.
Yet the shift manager does the hiring of the supervisors who do the training of the new hires of which some become supervisors, which are hired by the shift manager. This is all very circular and the part that makes up the spiraling nature of this method of training.
As you spiral down, the amount of training diminishes. This results in a smaller trip around the spiral at each level. Think of it as an ice cream cone with the big end on top and the small end on the bottom. At each level down the spiral, the amount of training know-how being imparted to new hires is less and less. This gives a conic shape to the downward spiral of this training method.
This is the process of Spiral Down Conic Training. We proudly use this method of training new people here at Big Brown.
Other names you may know this method of training by are:
- The Tidy Bowl Training Method – It may look clean, but after the swirling stops, you have effectively flushed your training quality down the toilet.
- The Training Tornado Method – It is fast moving but leaves an unpredictable path of destruction in its wake.
Does your building or company use the Spiral Down Conic Training Method?
Seems to me that training for these fools is a huge waste of time, Since these people breed like Otter Pops left in the freezer too long, there is an endless supply of nitwits that sucked at loading. Oh, but what fun it is to watch the line implode, as the latest newbie takes the helm. As has been said, anyone that can put crayon to paper has the chance to go far, in BROWN Part-time management.