Training Industry Blog

Faced with a problem that cannot be ignored, budget and deadline constraints often push well-meaning decision makers toward the fastest, cheapest fix. A quick fix treats the symptoms, but rarely addresses the underlying problem. This pattern is described by the “shifting the burden” systems archetype. Decision makers recognize a problem and see two possible courses of action. One is a symptomatic approach, which appears to be quicker and cheaper. The other is a fundamental approach, which requires more expenditure and time. Taking the quicker, cheaper route alleviates the symptoms, at least for a while. However, it also draws time, attention, and investment away from the fundamental solution.

Read More

Team leaders are responsible for catalyzing and aligning the energy, activities and focus of the team to achieve the common goal. If you need to appoint someone to lead a team, what qualities should you look for?

Read More

In my last several blogs, I began describing how organizations can better support current business initiatives, increase organizational responsiveness, and reduce curriculum acquisition and development costs by aligning their business needs with their instructional assets. This final step of the process is “Proposing and Implementing Recommendations”. Following are the activities that are typically performed during this step.

Read More

As the popular book (and new movie) Moneyball shows, baseball is a game of numbers with scientifically determined pathways to success. The same is true for training, even if the computations are more difficult and the stakes more important. Can training be managed with the same statistical exactness? We need a Brad Pitt to show us the way.

Read More

I'm not a fan of rap or rappers. I've got a number of issues with this genre of music, and the individuals who perform it. These issues exist on a lot of levels. As fate would have it, however, I recently received a revelation that let me know that I needed to have a better understanding of this music and the people who make it. I’m the father of a teen. As you might have already guessed, he listens to rap. The revelation occurred when my namesake was given a school assignment to write a report about who he thought was the person of the year. To my surprise he didn't choose his father or even the president of the United States as his subject. His candidate for the person of the year was Waka Flocka Flame, a rapper. Upon hearing his choice I immediately did a Google search to find out who in the world was Waka Flocka. To my dismay, the images were not ones that I hoped my son would aspire to emulate, and the lyrics of Waka's music were, in my opinion, crude at best.

Read More

You should never be told to quiet your voice, limit your creativity or suppress your spirit because, “The Company says you have to do it this way.” The company or corporation does not have a mouth. Yet the company was built on values and a brand. To be successful, there has to be a match between your personal brand and the one that represents the team, alliance or organization you work with.

Read More

It’s always a loss when someone dies, and the more that person contributed to the fabric of society, the deeper the loss is felt. When Apple founder and resident genius Steve Jobs died Wednesday, he left behind a company, a community, a worldwide legacy that will not be forgotten. But he left a lot more than that too.

Read More

The following is a guest blog by my colleague, David Spader, which I’ve decided to run at this time because of its timeliness for those companies experiencing a leadership crisis that demographic changes predict will become much more significant. David is a leadership development consultant with Spader Business Management (www.spader.com), a company with a proven track record of providing both financial and human performance guidance for a variety of industries for the past thirty years. - What happens when you don’t have a strong bench? The Indianapolis Colts just found out. Quarterback great Peyton Manning did not lead his team onto the field at the start of this season for the first time in 227 consecutive games. Apparently the coaches were caught off guard since nobody seems to ...

Read More

A Chief Medical Officer (CMO) from a large hospital asked me to speak with a hospitalist physician who had received a patient complaint from a hospital administrator. Interestingly, the administrator had recently been a patient in the hospital and felt that this same hospitalist was rushed and preoccupied when making rounds. Furthermore, the patient administrator felt the physician did not fully answer his questions. In the past, similar complaints had been received about this same physician, resulting in lower than average patient satisfaction scores. For simplicity, let’s call this physician Dr. A.

Read More