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TRAINING GEMS OF WISDOM

by Elton K. Hammond P.Eng.

SHARPEN YOUR SAW!

A man was sent out with a dull saw to cut down a large tree quickly!  Upon being questioned after an hour about why it was taking so long to cut the tree down, he replied that the saw was dull.  "Why don't you sharpen it?", he was asked.  "I don't have time because I'm in a hurry to cut down the tree!!"  Good training is taking time to sharpen the dull saw!!  Many software features today can reduce the cost and time to do a task by up to a 1000 to 1 ratio!  It is impossible to benefit from these highly productive features IF you are unaware of them or how to use them. During our 16+ years in the training business it has been truly enlightening to see how many long time (10+ yrs.) CAD users have not even heard of powerful time saving features because they feel so pressured to "get the job done quickly" or don't have time and curiosity to pursue new ideas and features.

NO TIME TO DO IT OVER?

If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when will you find time to do it a second time?  Good training will teach you the right way to do the job so it does not have to be redone or can be redone very quickly. (e.g. AutoCAD's associative dimensions vs. non-associative and Layout plotting vs. Model Space plotting, Inventor's animation features, geometric constraints, etc..)

THREE COMPONENTS FOR DESIGN PRODUCTIVITY

• Hardware - computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.

• Software - AutoCAD, Inventor, Photoshop, etc.

• Operator - Designer, Architect, Engineer, Interior Designer, industrial designer, etc.  Weakest Link or Strongest Link?

It has always amazed me how employers will rush out to purchase great hardware and software like AutoCAD or Inventor and the latest Pentium 4 computer and then dump it on an employee's desk to try learning it by themselves.  Even some very large and well respected corporations have and continue to do this even today!  Unfortunately we are all able to purchase the same excellent software and hardware if we choose, thus not allowing us to gain any advantage with these two items.  The most important productivity ingredient in this trio by far is the OPERATOR!  Yet close to 80% of software users are self taught instead of getting a serious productivity boost from professional training that is known to give a real advantage.  If corporations and designers hope to gain a serious competitive advantage, how do they plan to do it with their most important link being left behind as the weakest link?  Many of today's features in various CAD packages are capable of productivity gains from 2x to 1000x over traditional methods.  You can NOT enjoy this improvement if you haven't even heard of the feature.

ARE YOU VERY WISE?

• A foolish person never learns from their own mistakes.

• A wise person does learn from their own mistakes.

• A VERY WISE person learns from other people's mistakes!

DOES YOUR DOCTOR HAVE A UNIVERSITY DEGREE!

Was your family doctor self-taught?  When did you last fly with a self-taught airline pilot?  Do you want to drive on bridges designed by self-taught engineers?  Many employers falsely think that they are going to send one person on our courses who will then return to train the rest of the office!  This always results in major time loss and exceptional dilution of knowledge and experience.  Good training is a highly sophisticated process that needs to be done by patient, experienced professionals with a very polished set of curriculum to maximize the learning results.  Our highly successful training results have proven this for over 16 years now!  EKHO does free training seminars on a monthly basis and includes the EKHO Challenge, a fun learning exercise that shows three different approaches to training; Teach yourself, Teach your Colleagues and Learn from a Professional.  We allow 5 minutes for each of 3 similar exercises to be completed.  Typical successful completions for the self taught  and teach your colleagues is 0.  Typical for the instructor led exercise is 100% success, giving an accurate representation of real life scenarios also.  Professional training at EKHO will pay for itself many times over for many years to come.  You get up to speed much quicker and stay at a higher level of performance than your untrained colleagues trying to do it by themselves.

MOTIVATION COUNTS!

Motivation is everything in the learning process, as with life in general.  As an experienced instructor and employer, I would always prefer a struggling, but highly motivated student over an exceptionally bright student lacking in motivation or purpose.  The motivated student will win out in the long term every time!!  Simply a reflection of the way life works also!

• You should not worry about the infinite knowledge curve of new information that is flooding over us from many sources today like the Internet, newspapers, magazines, research, new software, etc..  Not even the brightest and most motivated person can progress at this pace.  You just have to worry about staying ahead of your peers.  Your peer group has highly paid people and very poorly paid people, normally in proportion to their knowledge and skills acquired through all types of effective training.  You will be worth a lot more money than others in your peer group if you have a lot more useful, applicable knowledge that produces more results faster than others.  Staying ahead of the average person in your peer group is not that difficult because most people are too busy with their everyday lives to keep up or attend professional training.

GOOD DESIGN FLOWS FROM GOOD TRAINING!

Good design is just a lot of good planning with a LOT of careful thought to anticipate future problems and then communicating those thoughts clearly to everyone else on the production and design team.  Using software like AutoCAD and Inventor allows a designer to be more creative, thoughtful and productive in getting out effective communications in the form of professional models and drawings that eliminate costly on the job mistakes.  Designing in 3D for example gives a designer the opportunity to eliminate most of the traditional errors that occur with simple 2D models due to the lack of information, by letting the designer visualize and inspect their work before committing it to production.  Remember CAD software is first and foremost a communication tool.  Good designers MUST be good communicators.

DESIGN ERRORS COST, TRAINING FIXES! 

Design errors cost very little to eliminate IF caught at design time.  However, let a design error or omission creep into the actual construction of a multi-million dollar building or a production run of 100,000 parts and the cost to correct the problem can skyrocket.  So using good design tools like 3D AutoCAD or Inventor can pay for itself many times over and the benefits of having well trained CAD designers who know how to do good quality control at design time can pay huge dividends for years.

MISTAKES ARE A PART OF THE LEARNING PROCESS

During the learning and training process it is vital that a student makes mistakes and gets feedback on how to correct the mistakes.  Being afraid to make mistakes is a sure sign of a slow learning process.  There are only 2 ways to avoid mistakes, DO NOTHING or BE impossibly PERFECT!  I prefer to see a student make 5 mistakes in 5 minutes than sit and do nothing for 5 minutes.  They will now know 5 things that don't work and probably attempt number 6 will result in success and a lot of gratification PLUS truly remembering how a new tool really works!!  Fear of experimenting can often be the biggest handicap to learning for a novice.

FUN LEARNING DEMO!

For anyone or any group that wants to see a fun and powerful effective demo created by The EKHO Institute to demonstrate the value of professional training vs. learning by yourself just phone us to set up a FREE test drive session. ( http://www.ekho.com/Free_Seminars.htm )

SEE, HEAR, DO and REMEMBER!

An old Confucius saying tells us that we remember 10% of what we see, 10% of what we hear, but 80% of what we see, hear and do.  That is why EKHO's hands on training has been so effective over the past 16 years, because we provide curriculum and training methods to allow everyone to experience (e.g. DO ) all the techniques for themselves after seeing and hearing a short, effective demonstration on what students are expected to learn.

THE LITTLE THINGS COUNT TOO!

• We have been producing and selling EKHO Strips for about 16 years now.  These little keyboard menu strips for various software packages like Word, Excel, Windows, AutoCAD, etc. each have approximately 200 highly useful and productive tips, tricks and shortcuts to help users out while sitting in front of their keyboards.  I have always used these myself but need some help to remember many of them.  When used regularly these keyboard shortcuts can result in large accumulated time savings over the course of a month and years.  Each keyboard shortcut used may only save 5 to 10 seconds over the mouse, BUT when used thousands of times per month it really adds up to big time savings.  See our comparison chart about why this happens!!  In recent years newly trained Windows and computer users have come to think that the mouse is the only input device.  It is invaluable in many cases, but it is NOT always the most efficient or quickest for all tasks.

• During numerous trade show promotions for our EKHO Strips, where we have held little fun quizzes to test experienced computer users knowledge of these basic shortcuts and functions we have been truly amazed to discover the incredibly low level of knowledge on these great time savers.  This seems to indicate that most people have a lot of room for productivity gains by using some very basic tools that are an inherent part of all software.  Our current 10 titles of EKHO Strips represent approximately 2000 shortcuts and productivity tips that have very large potential IF they are put to work!

• When EKHO Strips and the information they provide are used as intended it would not be unreasonable to enjoy time savings of as much as 144 hours per year and see a payback of 360x the cost of the EKHO Strips!!  Knowledge is powerful IF put to use!!

WHAT WE DON'T KNOW THAT WE DON'T KNOW! 

• For many years I used to be quite mystified at why almost everyone with even a small amount of experience overstates their skill level with software like AutoCAD and operating systems like Windows.  After much pondering and experience I have come to realize it is not due to any intention to mislead, but comes from the fact that most people honestly do not know what they don't know.  If  we divide all the knowledge in the world into three categories:

  • What we Know (our job, our hobby, our high school math, etc.)

  • What we Know we Don't Know (other professions, hobbies we don't do, etc.)

  • What we Don't Know that we Don't Know (we are all oblivious to most of the world's knowledge! :-)  )

• I have come to realize it is impossible for any of us to assess ourselves against this third category and thus people don't realize what their deficiencies are with today's complex and dizzying array of software features.  Thus comes the honest overstatement of people's skills that begins to uncover itself as we proceed through one of our many highly polished training classes.

• See "Forget the Gap" article

• See "Cost Fix a Design Error" article

• See "What we don't know that we don't know" article.

• See "Windows Quiz" test.

• See "AutoCAD Quiz" test.

Elton Keith Hammond P.Eng.

President, The EKHO Institute