Online vs offline workshops. Interview with Jeroen Molenaar.

Jeroen Molenaar

Perfect. Thanks for having me. And it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Jeroen Molenaar

We didn't do much online. And my opinion about online workshops or trainings was that they're not very beneficial, or just as effective as offline. And funny enough, around February-March in 2020, we hired a new colleague, and she was totally specialized in the concept of more hybrid trainings where you combine the in-classroom experience with the online experience.

So with a little bit of luck, obviously, we went into the pandemic, where all of a sudden, we needed to change our trainings to online. And since she had a lot of experience with all kinds of tooling and different way of framing exercises, and interactivity, we were able to quite quickly transform. I think it took us two weeks, until we had all the trainings that were important, to be able to go online.

So yeah, that's how we say, a little bit of luck in an accident. That's where we took off, and we now have a reasonable package that we could at least also deliver online.

Jeroen Molenaar

Yeah, well, the thing is that we are Epic Agility, we sell Agility, we help companies to adapt to change way more easily, to make mistakes earlier, to try things. So for that matter, we were able to adapt ourselves quite quickly also.

I really have to give the kudos to the whole team, not only the new colleague with the online experience, but the whole team, that we could change that quickly. And don't get me wrong, it worked towards three trainings for two-day sessions. So it was six day of training. Still, it's ridiculously quick to develop and change your training. We tried a lot, and we made a lot of mistakes. In the beginning, we had a couple of people that still came to our trainings, especially in the Netherlands.

But in the Netherlands, we now see that it dries out a little bit. The online trainings are not as pleasant and not as effective as the in-person trainings. It has mainly to do, I guess, with the fact that we sell a human connection, or that the Agile way of working, Agile coaching, Scrum mastership has everything to do with creating the human and personal connection, that's just way harder to do online. But in India, we still do everything online until now.

Jeroen Molenaar

Well, yes. The two-day training packages that we deliver are very much in-person training packages. The trainers like to work with people more, the people that come to our offices like to work with people more. It's the same as you can put a live album on Spotify and listen to beautiful live music being played. But it is a very, very, very different experience from being in a concert hall yourself. And that's the same with our trainings. But that doesn't mean that there are big changes in the training world.

And again, I'll compare it to music: it is beautiful to be able to listen to music on Spotify, whether it's a recording or a live album. So what we are definitely aiming at to have a bigger impact on the working world is to combine the two. How can we have micro-learnings in the online environment? How can we inspire? Because that's usually what happens in a two-day training. Inspire people to change the working world a little bit. And if they are inspired in the two-day training, how can we keep this learning curve going? That’s where online micro workshops, online environments to connect with other people in a social media kind of style, that's where they come in very effective.- type: guest

So my strategy for 2022 is actually to reach way more people with the combination of smaller online micro-learning injections, you could call them, I guess, combined with two or three-day in-person trainings, where it's all about human connection. That's what I see for the Netherlands. And for India, it's still to be worked out how that will go. But also there I see power for in-person trainings again, combined with this micro-learning platform of very practical learnings usually.

Jeroen Molenaar

Exactly. We were considering it already a little bit. And another very good addition, for example, is what we've seen they call MOOCs, which is massive open online course. Those things are also very good, in addition to the normal trainings.

But you're totally correct that what I mean is replacing the current two-day training with an online version, I don't think that's going to be the future. The future will be a combination of the two. And a massive open online course can be also like a day or a part of the day.

But really to keep that learning vibe going, it's important to see and speak to the people in real life, combined with smaller learning packages and even more massive learning packages, like the MOOCs.

If anything, in our eyes, it’s way broader for online training workshops and so on. And it sped up, it went way faster than anticipated obviously. And also a lot of tool development went way faster, because I wasn't aware, for example of tools like Miro and Mural, which helps you collaborate in whiteboards like workshops format, but online.

So those things also were developed way quicker and, therefore, are a very good addition for collaboration, also in the coaching, by the way.

Jeroen Molenaar

Yeah, we have that same or similar approach. We have an online environment, we call it epicagility.online. We bring people in there. We're not making use out of that tool for the most power that we can get out of there. So my approach with 2022 is to make that community way more powerful, and way more effective for that matter.

And also for us, like I was saying, these micro-learnings are things that we need to develop still. And I truly believe in these micro-learnings being combined in the trainings.

Another thing that I really am curious about in development is VR, for example. So things that we definitely also will start to develop is little virtual reality trainings. And to give you a little bit of a sneak peek into what we're doing is, for example, feedback is something very important for an Agile coach, to team members, for example, but it's very scary to deliver feedback for some people. And the funny thing is, what we found out in this in-person training, if you do role playing in an in-person training, people will start to be in their performance mode. So they want to show that they know things, that they dare things, that they can do things already, like giving feedback, but being in a performance mode gets you out of your learning mode.

And what we are finding out right now with a partner that we are exploring partnership with, is that people will be in their learning mode, if you put these VR glasses on your head, you will be in that world and you feel very safe in that world. Learning mode is way more easily reached in that way. So things that we are going to explore is sending VR glasses. You buy, for example, training, you do a two or three day in-person training, and you have a year of access to our online platform, and you get sent rental or maybe in the package, we have to figure that out, VR glasses, so that you can also do these VR learnings. And the funny thing is, you can do it over and over and over and over again. And that's also the power of skills like feedback, you have to practice that. The more you practice it, the more it gets ingrained in your normal behavior and easier to do in real life.

I really see a combination with all these things, where we have an online platform, where the community strengthens each other, instead of one trainer being the authority. I really see these micro-learnings like simple injections in the meanwhile and keeping in touch with the people. And in addition to that VR learnings.

Maybe 2022 is too quick, but definitely we will start working on this whole hybrid package of learning experiences, I will call them.

Jeroen Molenaar

That's a very interesting question, because we haven't really made that decision yet. We now have epicagility.online, and everybody goes in there. But the thing is that we are not using the most power. We create a single training with the single amount of people of that training in there still. If you do it that way, people will only live in their small community of 20-30 people that were in the training.

But if we make that bigger, that’s people are in the larger community, connecting to their role. For example, they are a product owner, and they can connect with all other product owners trained by us, or the advanced product owners or the certified Agile leaders, or the certified Agile coaches, or the Certified Scrum Masters. And you connect with that group or multiple groups, if you've done multiple training tracks, then you can get way more power out of this community. So it's more a choice of how we until now used the technique, which is preventing us from creating that community.

But I would love to go to a way that we created one big community, and then we will run into decisions. Are we going to be a Dutch community and an English community? And the one important thing there is the language. It's a choice of language. If people start to speak Dutch and English in one community, that's not going to be nice for especially the non-Dutch speakers, because they understand only bits of it. I think language is the barrier or the decision maker in there for the future.

Cultural wise, I’d really like to learn as much from each other. Especially what we did with the whole online working is we globalized work even more if it wasn’t already. As an Agile coach, you should definitely be able to understand different cultures and how to coach in those environments.

The short answer is we haven't made the choice yet. But it has to do with a big technology change that we still have to go through in creating one training community from single training packages, if that makes sense.

Jeroen Molenaar

Yeah, totally true. And that's why I really think that it should be a combination between in-person, then you have that connection. And also for us to keep giving small little things in that community, because if you expect a community to self-organize from the start, we’ve tried that, that's not going to happen.

There needs to be a reason to come back and to be there, and indeed, if it gets too noisy, the people that you actually want there, are going to walk away. So maybe it's a good idea to have an Indian community, a Dutch community later, or an English-speaking and Dutch-speaking to make it a little bit broader again, but those things we haven't figured out yet.

First we need to actually go through more community than training-based collaboration on that platform.

Jeroen Molenaar

Something like Agile, right?

Jeroen Molenaar

I hope so. Feel free to reach out and to come to the community in the future. I’m happy to come back when we evolve a little bit more with our community.

Jeroen Molenaar

Thank you very much, Sergey.