Discover why the 'one-and-done' workshop approach might be holding back your organization's change initiatives. Drawing from real client experiences and research on spaced practice, Patrick Kayton reveals why sustained activation programs are crucial for successful GenAI adoption and meaningful workplace transformation. 

Last week a client shared a realization that keeps coming back to my mind because it exposes what so many change managers lament about their work. She said, "I think we run great events. And I think we create good learning. But I often wonder if we change the way people actually work." 

After this 'aha' moment she is now one of the few who can avoid a terrible trap that catches many change managers: the illusion of the inspiring workshop. The idea that when you want people to change, you simply need to bring them together for two hours and wow them with an amazing speaker. And they'll be so deeply changed they will not be able to return to work and do things the same way they did before.  

A few days ago, I saw the founder of a well-funded tech company falling into this trap. He had put out a call on X for anyone who could deliver a 90-minute workshop to train his team to use ChatGPT. I have no idea who stepped up, nor how inspiring their 90 minutes might have been. But when we at Cognician design programs for GenAI adoption, we don't rely on one-and-done events. Our goal is not to teach people about GenAI. Our goal is activation. So, we take advantage of the power of spaced practice.  

A lot has been written about spaced practice in learning, but consider just one example. In a study conducted by Bloom and Shuell in 1981, high school students were tasked with learning French vocabulary. The researchers divided the students into two groups. One group studied the vocabulary for 30 minutes in a single session. The other group studied for 10 minutes a day over three days. When tested immediately after learning, both groups performed equally well. However, when they were tested again four days later, the groups' performance was vastly different. The spaced practice group remembered 35% more vocabulary than the massed practice group. 

Workplace learning is no different. And this analogy is particularly strong when it comes to GenAI. Like language, GenAI is applied; you use it. And when you use it, you become better at using it. But you can't expect to get the best opportunities to use it at the moment designated for a workshop. The opportunities to use it are spread out over time in the flow of work. So, if you're designing a learning program to boost GenAI adoption, you should enable participants to put their skills into practice. Continually. 

Workshops are good at helping to open the minds of an audience to new possibilities. They're good at establishing the 'why' behind a new way of working. They're good at sharing the vision for what good looks like in change management. But they're really very poor at getting people to change their behavior over time. To activate a real change in behavior, you need spaced practice.  

You get more from spaced practice than improved working memory. In fact, you even benefit more than application over time. You also get the advantage of spaced data collection. Because each time a participant in your program takes an action, it's an opportunity to collect data about the impact of the action. And you can collect data about the ways in which the participant is changing. 

During the conversation in which my client shared her realization, one of her colleagues shared an experience of her own. I had just demonstrated a Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption program in which we achieved a 475% increase in Copilot usage across 4,000 people in four weeks. She said, "I wish I'd had something like this a year ago, because I had to figure this all out on my own." That is, she wished she'd had something to help her, step by step, to try out different Copilot prompts over time. That would have improved her efficiency and helped her to focus more of her time on high-value work. What she didn't wish for was another workshop.