Flipping the top-down approach to training can work — but be prepared for challenges
As technology becomes a bigger part of the learning curve, younger, less experienced team members might be better positioned to learn new tasks and to train others — a reversal of the traditional top-down model of on-the-job training
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If you’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, then you’ve gotten a peek into the complex hierarchies that rule a hospital. Over 17 seasons, the show’s eponymous heroine, Meredith Grey, ascends from a lowly intern to chief of general surgery, learning from the presiding residents and older surgeons along the way. There’s rarely doubt about who is in charge, who has more expertise, or who should be supervising and training other staff.
Grey’s fictional journey illustrates the complicated dynamics of a health care setting, whether it’s a local clinic or a bustling city hospital. Doctors, nurses, other clinicians, and administrators are part of a system where tenure, expertise, and training dictate the chain of command. Those hierarchies can help teams provide care efficiently, but what happens when those traditional roles are disrupted?
“These status barriers are tricky,” says Sara Singer, a professor of organizational behavior (by courtesy) at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. And, she says, they can get in the way of medical professionals learning new skills, particularly when junior employees are asked to show more senior coworkers how to use a new technology. But, as Singer and her coauthors reveal in a recent paper, upending these complex hierarchies can be a useful training strategy — and the fix for the disruption it causes can be surprisingly simple.
As technology becomes a bigger part of the learning curve, younger, less experienced team members might be better positioned to learn new tasks and to train others — a reversal of the traditional top-down model of on-the-job training. Young, digitally native medical assistants may learn a new electronic records system faster than their older counterparts. Similarly, surgical residents may learn the nuances of tools like the da Vinci surgical robot faster than older, more experienced doctors. So when a hospital is introducing a new system, administrators may decide to tap younger, less powerful team members to learn the new technology and train others on how to use it. While this strategy might make the most sense from a learning perspective, it can make older employees feel slighted and make it harder for teams to learn.
This piece originally appeared in Stanford Business Insights from Stanford Graduate School of Business. To receive business ideas and insights from Stanford GSB click here: (To sign up: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/about/emails)