self-directed training

Yesterday, Andy Miller and I delivered onboarding training to a group of new partners at Objective Management Group (OMG).  Andy reached the slide that said “Lunch” at the end of the day, and I spent most of the morning displaying only slide #2 which could have been covered in 10 minutes.  The spontaneous, robust discussion that broke out was not planned, but most importantly, it was not discouraged.  To the contrary, it was strongly encouraged.  The group learned more from that spontaneous two-hour discussion than they ever would have learned from the sterile slides.  Are slides bad?