Irene was so proud. She pulled me toward her office, anxious to show me the new training manual she was using out in the service bay.

Busting tires, rather, mounting tires on heavy equipment is hot, sweaty, dirty, thankless work. Done wrong, a number of things can happen and all of them are bad. Irene worked in the training department, hardly a hands-on position, yet, she was expected to create an effective training program.

Her solution. Buy six disposable cameras and have the crew shoot their own pictures of how things should be done and how they should not be done. In all, they shot close to 150 pictures and selected 80 for their training “manual.” The crew gathered around a large table and put the photos in sequence, scrawled captions on 3×5 cards and mounted everything on stiff paper. Irene had the whole collection bound into a 3-ring binder and painted the crew’s name across the cover.

I borrowed the book, with Irene’s permission, and headed for the service bay. As soon as I came through the door, a team member spotted the “manual” under my arm. I motioned an invitation and four of the crew came over. For the next ten minutes, they explained how they had put the book together, which parts were the best and which pictures they had taken.

When was the last time your team got that excited over a training manual? Total cost $160. -TF