Should You Retire Your Training?

[upbeat music] Many nonprofits have built a training toolbox, and this training toolbox is built based on years of requests.

Every time something gets requested, it gets built, it gets added to the toolbox, right? And then it just lives in your LMS forever and ever.

And so when should you retire something? That becomes the question.

You have all of these things.

Are they even worth it? So let's imagine this.

You've got a wrench in your toolbox, right? A request form is completed, and they say, "You know what? We need customer service training," and it gets built.

Does this sound familiar? So the wrench, the customer service training, goes into your toolbox.

Maybe an email comes in and someone says, "You know what? We need a time management training." And so you build it.

And so the hammer for the time management training goes into your toolbox.

Maybe you bump into someone in the hallway and they say, "Can you create a workshop to help us run more effective meetings? Like, they're just not going well, and I feel like we could do this better.

Can you run a workshop for us?" And so you create a workshop, and your screwdriver, or your effective meeting workshop, goes into your toolbox.

Maybe you have a new leader join, and the n- new leader walks in and says, "You know what? This is a little bit challenging.

I think we're gonna need a workshop on difficult conversations." And so you build a difficult conversations workshop, and that workshop goes into the toolbox.

So you end up with a bunch of tools in your toolbox.

You have a menu of training options.

But you may not have the right tool for the job.

Instead of a never-ending menu, you want a curated list of options.

But to get there, you might need to retire some of your training.

And so I'm gonna share five questions to consider as you make this decision.

The first question: Does this training further your mission? So think about where your organization is headed, not just where it's been, okay? Does this training help you achieve your organization's strategic priorities? If the training were gone tomorrow, would your mission suffer? So you wanna make sure that if you're offering something, it's aligned to where your organization is headed, and it's going to advance your mission.

So if it aligns with your mission and your strategic priorities, and removing it would impact your ability to deliver on your mission, well, you're probably gonna wanna keep it.

And if it doesn't do those things, you may wanna retire it.

So that's my first question.

Does it further your mission? The second question is, does it build organizational capacity? So think about the capabilities of your staff.

Does it build, uh, capabilities that staff are going to use repeatedly? Are they the capabilities they need right now or in the future? Does it strengthen your leadership pipeline? Does it make managers more effective? Does it help your staff help the organization scale, right? If you're building organizational capacity by developing your leaders, that's a training you might want to keep.