A few months ago, I was at a board meeting for the University of Oregon Alumni Association and one of my fellow board members said; “My mother told me long ago that if you want people to know what you care about - tell them.  If you want them to remember what you care about, tell them over and over and over and over again.”  It struck a chord with me, because for a while I was reluctant to repeat myself, hesitant to tell the same story and felt guilty about belaboring certain points.  When April and I first rolled out our mission and values after purchasing Footers from my father in 2010, we shared with everyone what they were and then we went back to business as usual.  A few months later we were frustrated and surprised that no one remembered them.  It was an ah-ha moment for me that we can’t expect people to remember something after only hearing it once, especially when it’s mixed in with other points you are hoping to get across.

This week we had our annual “Spring Training” event at Footers Catering.  It has become a great way to kick off our busy summer season with our entire team.  Each year we design an educational program that focuses on takeaways that will help everyone to be on the same page and then we celebrate together with food, drinks, games and a fun theme.  While we look at this as a training event, it would be silly for us to expect everyone in attendance to remember everything we covered during the two hours of presentations.  It’s been proven that after one hour, people retain less than half the information presented and the information we do retain can decay or fade over time if we don’t access it enough.  With that in mind, we try to apply lessons we’ve learned about communication to strengthen the retention of information presented at the training.

For effective communication to take place the original message should be clear and concise.  When it’s mixed with too many thoughts or ideas, the most important parts get lost.  We had twelve presentations - each were less than ten minutes and had different team members presenting the information.  We also had a follow along worksheet with two questions for each presentation that centered around the two most important takeaways.  Attendees had to fill out the worksheets because you are more likely to remember something when you write it down.  

We encouraged presenters to focus on what was essential and why it mattered.  Instead of just telling our team to pack decor in blue totes with bubble wrap at the end of the night, we explained that the bubble wrap prevents breakage and keeping decor separate in the blue totes keeps it clean for the next event and easier for the warehouse because it stays organized.  When people understand the “why” they are more likely to retain the information. 

The purpose of this event goes beyond just training our team.  For those that taught the presentations, they were able to share their expertise and are now seen as a go to for those topics.  Plus for some of them, they had to get out of their comfort zone to get on stage in front of over 100 people.  Bringing our team together strengthens relationships and allows new team members to get to know seasoned team members.  Finally we made it a point to repeat a few of the key points throughout the night.  This event is the “kick-off” to training not a one and done thing.  It’s something we can build on and throughout the year the key points will be reinforced on events over and over and over again.