How to Build Smarter Teams for a Smarter Industry

Technology keeps outrunning the people expected to manage it, and Michael Grant believes training is the only way to catch up.

The co-founder of Smart Building Bootcamp knows that businesses transform when their teams do, and teams transform through continual education-not a single course squeezed into a single day. "Everything's about training," Grant said. Looking back to where the industry stood in 2015, he noted that the pace of advancement has only accelerated since.

Grant built the program over three years with his business partner, and he has joined forces with ISSA to bring practical, ongoing education to the cleaning, facility solutions, and restoration market. Working alongside ISSA's team, the partnership aims to level set knowledge across an industry where the vocabulary itself keeps shifting. Grant pointed to "hoteling," a workplace term few people recognized a few years ago, as proof that even definitions are evolving.

Why one-day training rarely sticks

Grant has little patience for what he called the "sheep dip" approach, the Australian habit of throwing someone into a course for a day and expecting them to apply it the next morning. People lose roughly 80% of that knowledge, he said. His answer is modular learning delivered in bite-sized chunks. A course he built for Accenture runs nearly 40 slides, but learners move through it in segments of three, five, and eight minutes rather than sitting through one long lecture.

That structure reflects how attention works now. Grant, a father of three, joked that his youngest has the attention span of a gnat, and training has to meet people where their time and focus actually are. Subscribers get access for a full year, so they can return to any course whenever a question comes up on the job.

Applying AI, not building it

Most things today center on artificial intelligence, and Grant drew a clear line. Teams do not need to understand how to train data or build something like ChatGPT, he said. What they need is an understanding of how to apply AI in their day-to-day roles. The same logic applies to data-driven decision-making, occupancy planning, technology-led cleaning, labor shortages, tenant-experience apps, and sustainability mandates.

Grant also argued that too many people are asked to make multimillion-dollar technology decisions with no formal training, unsure which vendors to trust or how much insurance a project requires. Removing that "dark art," he said, means a more educated industry where no one gets taken advantage of.

Why ISSA chose the partnership

For ISSA, the appeal is independence. Smart Building Bootcamp sells no hardware and represents no vendor, so its courses are unbiased. The training is CPD certified, builds a shared language by stripping out jargon and acronyms, and grows every month as new courses are added. Because those credits support members at any career stage, Grant framed the program as a community of learning rather than a one-off transaction.

Newcomers can start for free. A 10-week introductory course is available by scanning a QR code, with additional free videos and courses on the website, and ISSA members receive a discount on paid programs. "Education, education," Grant said. "That's what it's about."

Learn more about Smart Building Bootcamp here.