Use cases by role
Teaching this to someone in twenty minutes
What to cover, what to skip, and in what order, so they start using it today.
Long training does not work: it is forgotten before it is needed. What works is twenty minutes on that person's real work, and having them leave having actually done one thing.
The twenty-minute script
- 1
Five minutes: where their own material is
Their inbox, their files, their outstanding items. Nothing about the general structure.
- 2
Five minutes: searching for something they need often
Let them search, in their own words. It is what sticks most.
- 3
Five minutes: doing one thing end to end
Uploading one of their documents, sending a request, answering something.
- 4
And five minutes: what to do when something is off
Who to ask and where to look. It prevents silent abandonment.
Important
The fourth block is most often skipped and determines whether the person comes back. Someone who gets stuck and does not know who to ask stops using the tool without telling anyone, and that surfaces weeks later.
What NOT to cover on day one
| Not this | Why |
|---|---|
| The full folder and project structure | They will not use it today and it eats the session |
| Configuration options | They are not theirs |
| Everything the platform can do | It makes it feel complicated |
| The rare cases | They will come up, and then get solved |
Watch out
And do not do it on someone else's screen. Have them sit at their own session with their real files: half of what is learned is where their own things are, and that does not transfer by watching.
The following week
That short refresher pays off more than doubling the initial session: it lands exactly when the person has hit their own questions.
Worth knowing
If someone needs to learn much more than this to do their job, the process is probably built more elaborately than necessary. Training complexity is a good indicator of process complexity.
›What about people who resist?
Start with what annoys them, not with what interests you.
›Is a manual needed?
One page with four things and who to ask. A long manual goes unread.
›And for someone who only signs?
Two minutes: it arrives, they open it, they sign. Nothing else needed.
A real case
The situation
A company runs a two-hour session for ten people and nobody uses it afterwards.
What you do
- Switches to twenty minutes each on their real work
- Adds a ten-minute refresher after five days
What you get
Eight of the ten are using it within a month, with no further training.
The situation
The whole system is explained in twenty minutes.
What you do
- Shows one complete process end to end
What you get
Something usable is learned.
The situation
It is taught with made-up data.
What you do
- Uses a real case from their work
What you get
They recognise what they see.
The situation
It is explained and nobody touches anything.
What you do
- Lets the person do it
What you get
Learning happens by doing.
The situation
It is taught and a week later they are not using it.
What you do
- Assigns them their own case that day
What you get
Usage starts with the training.
The situation
The same explanation is repeated for every person.
What you do
- Documents the process
What you get
The second person learns on their own.
This article answers
- training a colleague on the platform
- how to explain the system to someone new
- short training session
- getting the team to learn it