Training Industry Blog

I’ve been reading reports again, and I’m ready to make a prediction. You’re sitting there right now thinking about change. How to manage it, how to cope with it, how to create it.

Read More

The oft-quoted Yogi Berra once quipped, “If you don’t know where you are going, you could wind up someplace else.” Vision is about knowing where you are going and how you will get there. In organizational change, vision is about articulating the purpose of the project so that others know why they are following and can take the initiative and improve the path. A clear, well-developed vision serves a change leader in two important ways. It gives direction and focus to employees (so they are inclined to move from the status quo), and it defines the scope of the initiative (so you don’t wind up somewhere else).

Read More

Let’s be clear: The training industry is full of hard-working people whose basic job is to make other hard-working people excel, succeed and contribute. It may be a stretch to call it a calling, but we’re still in an industry with its collective eye on a very appealing prize: Success and advancement.

Read More

Most training is accomplished on the job; in department stores, banks, and other non-retail establishments. Jane, a more senior employee, shows John how to perform a task, shares a few words of wisdom, and later watches John do it himself. It makes perfect sense, but there are several pitfalls with OJT.

Read More

Innovation may seem like a new buzzword, but it’s a concept as old as the discovery of fire … it’s a process to more efficiently and effectively reach a desired outcome. In upcoming webinars, in books, in articles and at water coolers all around the world, business and training leaders are taking innovative approaches to managing innovation. So here’s a hard question, at least for many people: When’s the last time you were innovative?

Read More

A covenant can generally be defined as an agreement that yields a relationship of commitment between two parties. Such a commitment once existed between physicians and society. Physicians, by sacrificing their 20’s (and in some cases, a good portion of their 30’s) and dedicating themselves to become proficient in the healing arts, would be granted by society a better than average living, an independent career and a place of respect in their community. This agreement, steadfast for years, has recently been abrogated by society; in the 1990’s with the advent of managed care and most recently, with the Affordable Care Act. So while physicians must still sacrifice their youth to learn the healing arts, society has capped their salaries, diminished their status in society and curtailed their independence.

Read More

One of the most frequently asked questions of training analysts is ‘how big is the training market?’ The truth of the matter is no one really knows for sure, although we are able to make good rational estimates based on sound research and economic analysis. Why is the data hard to get to? Because corporations (buyers of services) are weary of reporting actual expenditures for training. And in some cases, many large companies don’t accurately know how much they spend on training as expenses get buried in non-training related line items.

Read More

Your efforts to promote collaboration could be killing innovation. Collaboration is the hot word today, which means leaders and teams are expected to know how to do this. So we train people on how to honor everyone’s strengths, how to include different perspectives in decision-making and how to celebrate team milestones. We push people to say “we” instead of “me.”

Read More

“These are the times that try men’s souls!” This famous quote hundreds of years old by Thomas Paine at the time of the American Revolution could equally apply to the difficulties faced by so many around the world today. And, it is exactly this unfavorable situation, which proves the point that most people are, in fact, externally shaped by the forces in our environment - economic, social, political, military, religious, and other circumstances. One of these counterproductive patterns that is increasingly obvious in my own and others’ daily lives is the multiplying lack of collaboration between individuals, groups, and entities. We see it, hear it, experience it, and are at least indirectly negatively impacted by such unrest that spans our settings - interpersonal relationships, work life tensions, labor-management strife, and political rigidity. But though we are all likely to agree about these realities ...

Read More