Peter Winick argues that multi-day workshops waste time and money. People retain skills better through micro-learning modules they pull when they need them, like a video on negotiating before a specific deal. Success requires knowing your audience's exact pain points and meeting them where they actually consume content, not where you assume they are.
People learn better in small doses doled out over time. We know that. But why are companies sending people to 5-day workshops? Ah, it doesn't make any sense, right? We know that most folks would prefer to learn in a pull method versus a push method. So push is I sit you down, I say, all right, Brad, we're going to teach you negotiation skills, and I open the fire hose and I trap you in a chair for 2 days and I teach you every possible scenario on negotiation skills, and 3 days later you've forgotten 90% of it. Pull is tomorrow I need to negotiate, um, a big, uh, data breach security contract with a technology company that's global, that's dealing with regulatory and compliance issues. Uh-oh, really specific. Let me go online. Oh, there's 5 modules that talk just about that. Now I'm really interested. So we would have to design and create the thought leadership that addresses the avatar, addresses the pain point, and the answer to everything is, and you need more Lightspeed.
So ultimately, identify an avatar, identify their pain points.
And then create a ton of content in every format— video, audio, graphics. We need to figure out where they're hanging out. I'm not convinced those people are hanging out on Pinterest, but I would want to do my research. They're probably on LinkedIn, they're probably on YouTube, they may be on Facebook. There's probably academic— like, where are they hanging out? Where are they getting their information from, right? It's not People magazine, it's not Cosmo, right? There's journals that they're reading, there's events they're going to.
