Simply changing an approach – like training teams together instead of individually – can really reap results, says Iain Mackinnon

“Glasgow’s miles better” was the catchy slogan adopted some 20 or so years ago by the city’s Lord Provost, cheered on by a huge smiley face on a gasometer on the southern approaches to the city. Journalists assumed this was the latest stage in the city’s longstanding rivalry with Edinburgh, but the Lord Provost was more modest. He said it meant Glasgow was “miles better than we used to be”.

Any honest consultant should recall that story when they wrestle with whether or not to apply the label ‘good practice’ to something they’ve seen. I’m sure I’m not alone in being nudged to use such a label by a client who was after praise rather than insight (much less objectivity), but whose rather ordinary practice was simply better than it used to be.

So, it was a great pleasure recently to hear of an approach that was so clearly ‘good practice’ that no such questions arose. My company has been evaluating a pilot in the health sector which involved mixed groups of professionals undertaking a brief computer-based training course and then applying what they’d learned.

So far, so ordinary. What was interesting and, to my mind, self-evidently so sensible, was that the manager I interviewed had her whole team do the training together; then they discussed it together, and there and then agreed what they would do differently.

The training was computer-based, so the norm would be that individual members of staff did it when they had a moment, and perhaps at home, given that most worked all day with patients. This manager’s insight was that her colleagues would learn more if they talked about it together, at the very moment they worked through the package. And so they did, breaking off now and then to say to each other things like, “I don’t agree with the answer to question 8. What do you think?” (For my money, it doesn’t matter whether or not they agree with the answer to question 8: what matters is they’re engaged – and learning).

When everyone had finished, they talked it through and agreed an action plan to implement the changes they wanted to introduce. Because it was immediate, it worked. Had everyone spread their computer learning across a couple of weeks and then gathered when they could fit in a meeting, so much would have been lost.

The approach was simple and it worked. Good practice, I’d say.