The Trouble with Trivia

Gotta say it. Not out loud where anyone might hear me, but down deep inside me. I am a genius! I am amazing! I am awesome – I mean absolutely and totally awesome!

Yeah. I know. Sounds like I’m just all about me. Not giving anyone else credit at all.

Sure, I had a team, and they were great. Totally great. They helped me. A lot. I give them plenty of credit. My team. My very own, helpful, skilled, talented team.

But I was leader. I was in charge. I was the center of it all. I was – and I am – amazing!

I created the absolute best ever training session. OK, sure, we’ve done plenty of training sessions. Updates. Refresher events.

And we have always worked hard. Me and my team. We are good – really, really good. We update compliance messages. And we are the best training team ever.

But I – OK, we – were way better this time – better than ever before.

Our attendees loved us. I mean, they totally loved the event, the updates and training, the projects and presentation.

Everyone had fun. Yes, fun. They all played the games we used. They laughed out loud. It was great.

I’m trying not to go overboard here. Not to get too excited, too thrilled at our triumph, our victory. But the attendees loved us. Loved our trivia refresher event. Loved the fun and laughter.

We were a smash hit. I don’t think anyone ever – anyone. Ever. Has presented a great training program. Ever. Everyone thanked us. Everyone laughed at our jokes. Everyone said we should come more often.

All of us – my whole team – could see how good we were. It was a major accomplishment for my whole team.

Only thing left to do is go over the evaluation sheets to gather reactions and reviews.

Wait. Here they are. The evals will show how great our program was. Just look at this. Rave reviews for us all. Everyone loved our trivia games. They loved our whole event.

So, why does my team seem so subdued? So quiet? So – so disappointed?

As I looked closer, I saw it. There it was. Clear as the sun in the sky.

The training event was great. Plenty of joking and laughing. Plenty of fun and enthusiasm. Plenty of praise for our trivia games.

But. And it’s a humongous but. Not one single participant got the review questions right. Not one single person at our event learned anything – anything at all about changes in compliance rules and regulations.

The whole entire purpose of the event was to update everyone on changes in compliance rules and regs – but nobody got anything real, solid, useful, or current out of our trivia event.

They all had so much fun playing trivia games that none of us – not one of us – suspected that no one would learn anything lasting about changes in compliance. Wow, my boss is not going to be happy.

Reminds me of that old TV commercial where everyone loved the “dancing babies,” but no one recalled the product advertised. Sigh.

Uh, oh. The boss just called.  Wait, she isn’t angry. She said I was really smart, insisting that we test our training out first, before rolling it out company-wide. She really liked the way everyone engaged in the contest, but we need to design it better, so the learning part works.

She was right, come to think of it – I was pretty smart. Test it out first. Now, I’ll get that team together to finish work on the training, so our folks actually learn something – while enjoying the fun parts.  

© 2024 K. Leet

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These are stories (usually fictional, but not always), based on insights and experiences from the world of compliance & ethics.