OK, let’s just put it plainly. What training needs, what this industry really cries out for, is Brad Pitt.
Maybe I should explain.
By now you may (or may not) have had the chance to see Pitt’s newest movie, Moneyball, based on the rather amazing best-seller by Billy Beane, general manager for the Oakland Athletics baseball team. Of course, movies about baseball are pretty common, but movies about statistics, probabilities and ROI are a little rarer.
(Seriously, how can the hero’s final time at bat, with bases loaded and his long-lost son watching in the stands possibly be more exciting than calculators and crunching numbers?)
I won’t get into any commentary on the film … I haven’t seen it … but I’ve had the pleasure of hearing the keynote-speech version of this story. I know just enough, in other words, to want to take that ball and run with it (pardon the obvious imagery).
The shell of the Oakland A’s story is that Beane had enough foresight to realize the obvious: baseball is a game of mathematics. If batter A faces pitcher B with C players in X position, there’s a Y percent chance of Z number of runs. So utilizing data like on-base percentage and hitting averages, Beane and his managers fielded an entire team that cost less money than some baseball players do, but who also presented an increased probability of success.
How captivating is this story? Consider this: Hollywood made a movie about math where the hero’s team didn’t go all the way. When’s the last time you saw Hollywood celebrate a good idea that didn’t completely work?
So pitching the ball back into the training camp, I’m back where I started: Training needs a Brad Pitt. Or a Billy Beane, to be more accurate. We need a hero.
In truth, we have a lot of heroes who are looking at training from new angles and new perspectives, people who are leading the way down various paths designed to create more efficient, more effective corporate education. That spirit is always deserving of celebration.
Can the Moneyball model work for training? Can you look at an organizational gap or need, and apply a mathematical model to onboarding? If learning leader A needs talent B to complete project C in X time, is there a Y chance of achieving Z outcomes?
In theory, yes. The learning professional’s resume could be presented and viewed as a statistics summary, with dollars saved and goals achieved taking the place of stats like RBI and ERA. Reverse-engineer whatever “success” means to your organization and you’ll plot a roadmap to victory. Match the right talent to the right needs, and you’re filling your roster with the power sluggers and versatile fielders you need.
So if you accept that you can apply a scientific model to training, should you? The Oakland A’s found their competitive advantage was short-lived, as the success of their system was so widely reported, the competition simply co-opted the plan.
That’s a concern for training, of course … intellectual property is to be zealously defended. But it’s also a conundrum for training, which like all education is built on a foundation of shared knowledge and accessibility. If you have a good idea, are you serving your business best by keeping it close, or by handing it over to the wisdom of crowds?
Think about it. In the case of the A’s, competitive teams simply took the same ball and ran with it, giving the Oakland team a need to do the same thing better … again. But successes in training aren’t typically mimicked, their adapted and built on. So a Brad Pitt in training is best-advised to share his (or her) success, because someone’s going to take that brilliance and build on it. This is how the industry as a whole advances, and happily we bring our organizations with us as we move forward.
So who’s your Brad Pitt or Billy Beane or otherwise named training hero? Is he or she warming up, or swinging for the fence, or maybe already running a victory lap around the bases?
Maybe it’s you.
Play ball!
