Steve Adolph — SPCT, Advisor, Enterprise Movement
I wrote this with Claude as my co-writer. The intent, the opinions and the responsibility are mine.
I hear it more and more often: what is instructor-led training worth? It is a fair question, and if you buy training, you may be the one asked to answer it. The question behind it is simpler: what can your team do now that they could not do before, beyond having sat the course?
That is the question our in-house training is built around, and I think it deserves a better answer than ‘it was a good course’. You choose the value you want out of the course: shared context, a delivery that fits your team or, in what we call a Value Lab, proof your people can apply it to one of your own problems. In every case, we confirm your instructor, course and format in writing within five working days of your signed order.
Three ways to bring a course in house
Most of our published courses run for one or two days. We teach them privately, virtually or in person, in your environment and under your security rules. Here is what each path gives you beyond a public class.
1. The course as published. You gain shared context: your people talk openly about their own issues and build trust with colleagues from other teams. We deliver the course in house, unchanged. Because everyone in the room is from your organisation, participants can bring examples from your own systems into the discussion. At one global consulting firm, an in-house course I taught introduced people who had never worked together, and they went on to form study groups.
2. The course with light customisation. You gain training on the tools your people use at work, a schedule that fits when your team can step away, and, if you choose pre-work and office hours, people who arrive prepared and can ask questions after the course. We change how we deliver it: the format, the schedule, the tools and language model you use (where we confirm in writing that the course can run on them), the trainer, pre-work, office hours, and whether an exam is offered. The content is still the published course.
3. Value Lab. Your course, built around your problem, with proof your people can use it. I have sat in courses where the examples were not my world, and my first question was always: how does this help me if I cannot use it in my own work? You gain a running start, a little like an iteration 0: the preparation a team does before it starts delivering new work. We research your organisation and rebuild the examples, exercises and scenarios around your problem, in your organisation’s own terms and on your own material, including your documents and systems where you want them. Every learning outcome of the published course stays; we can add outcomes and lab time, but we never take one away. Then each participant shows they can apply what they learned to part of that problem.
The dividing line between paths 2 and 3 is how much research the change takes. Adapting delivery takes little. Rebuilding the content, and especially the exercises, around your world takes real work, and that work is what a Value Lab adds.
At a glance
| 1. As published | 2. With light customisation | 3. Value Lab | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You gain | Shared context, open discussion, wider networks | Your tools (where we confirm the course runs on them), a schedule that fits, people who arrive prepared | A team ready to start on a problem of yours |
| What changes | Nothing: we deliver it in house | How we deliver it | The content, built around your problem |
| What you can see at the end | A checklist signed by your instructor, showing where each learning outcome was taught | The same signed checklist | The same checklist, a written record of each participant’s demonstration and whether your sponsor (or peers) confirmed it, and a check with your sponsor within 60 days |
| What we need from you | Participants registered, a teaching space, access to your environment, printed materials if wanted | The same, plus your choices on how we deliver it | The same, plus a sponsor, a brief, about a day from one of your people, and up to two working weeks to build |
Who teaches it
Our trainers are practitioners first. I have spent 35 years designing and building systems in telecommunications and railway signalling, and I am a SAFe Practice Consultant Trainer. When I teach, I draw on that work, which is why I push for examples from your world.
Value Lab is new, so I have no client case for it to show you yet. What I can show you, before you commit, is how each participant’s demonstration is agreed and who confirms it.
What Value Lab asks of participants
While we build the course, we agree with your sponsor what participants should be able to do at the end. We call these can-do statements, and we draw them from the course’s own learning outcomes, plus any outcomes we add for you.
At the end, each participant shows they can apply what they learned to part of your initiative, the problem the course is built around, in the form named in the can-do statements. For the AI-Native courses, such as AI-Native Value Architect, that can be a plan presented in three minutes. Your sponsor confirms each demonstration against the can-do statements you agreed. Where participants come from different parts of the organisation, their peers confirm it instead, against a rubric with observable criteria agreed in advance, and our trainer helps the group judge consistently.
In a Value Lab, value means each participant shows they can apply what they learned to part of a problem your organisation has today. It is not a measured business result. For anyone who attended, made an attempt and has not yet been confirmed, we give the group up to one day of coaching at no additional charge, then a second demonstration, within 30 days of the first demonstrations being judged. Within 60 days of those first demonstrations being judged, we check with your sponsor and note where participants say they have used what they learned.
What we ask of you
So you can judge whether this is realistic, here is what we need. For every path, you register your participants and have them available for the full course. You also set up the place where we teach. For an in-person course, that means booking the room and arranging the AV equipment. For a virtual course, it means the online environment, the accounts participants need and the network and firewall settings that let it run. Where you want printed materials, you print them; we supply them as files.
You reply to our written confirmation within five working days; if you do not, we release the instructor and confirm again. If your tools, language model or security rules would prevent delivery, our confirmation says so. You then have five working days to choose tools or a model that can run within those rules; if none can, the order ends and you pay only for costs already incurred that cannot be recovered. One person on your side, your environment contact, gives us access to your environment, including security approvals, IDs, accounts and tooling, at least five working days before the course; if access is late, we agree a new date with you in writing. Usually a manager hands these arrangements to an engineer, and an assistant may help with registration and payment.
We want it to be easy for you to set the course up. We will tell you what it needs and help you get it ready, but registering participants and providing the teaching space stay with you.
For Value Lab, we also need:
- A sponsor who agrees the can-do statements and confirms the demonstrations within five working days. For a group from different parts of your organisation, an organiser agrees the can-do statements and the rubric, names the peer judges and makes sure they attend, but takes no part in judging; the peers confirm the demonstrations.
- One initiative, with a brief, that your participants can work on from different angles. We need the brief, any documents or data we will use and your environment access within 10 working days of signing the order.
- One of your people who works with us on the new exercises for about a day, and access to the people who understand the context.
Building a Value Lab takes up to two working weeks, counted from the day we hold your brief and access, with the people we need named, provided your sponsor agrees the can-do statements within the first eight working days. If yours would take longer, we will say so within two working days and offer you the course as published or with light customisation instead.
Where this leads
In-house training is a new way to begin working with us, and a smaller first step than a long engagement. If you later want a measured business result, that is Value in 45 Days. What a Value Lab produces can carry over: the exercises, the work on your initiative and the record of the demonstrations. Those participants already know the initiative, so they are the obvious people to lead that next step.
Start the conversation
Bring us the course you have in mind, and the initiative and sponsor if you are thinking of a Value Lab. We will give you a free 30-minute working conversation, with no slides, about which path fits and what your participants could show at the end.
