The following is an exerpt from a recent article in Training Industry Quarterly...
Over the past few years, the role of the executive in charge of training has become very much glamorized. Chief learning officer, or CLO, has become a common title that leaders of training organizations claim to be, and even aspire to be. However, industry data tells us that less than 8% of the Fortune 1000 companies actually have a C-Level executive solely responsible for learning.
What is not rare in today’s business world is the role of the training manager. Most of the largest companies today have a training department, and with it a manager of training. This is the role that makes the day-to-day activities of the training organization work. It’s the role that must know the most about instructional design, delivery and administration. And it’s the role that must understand enough about learning technologies to determine which tools are necessary, and which tools and technologies are not.
Training managers must be knowledgeable enough to interface with engineering managers, human resource managers, manufacturing managers and IT managers, making them the jack-of-all-trades when it comes to learning. And regarding performance, it’s the role that gets the least credit when things go well in training, and gets much of the blame when things don’t go so well. It’s also the role that gets tasked by executives when their organization is not performing to standard.
Training managers must determine the right measures to justify the activities for learning. They have the challenging task of ensuring that the organization is offering the right curriculums and courses; that the training programs are properly designed; and that they come in under budget. They must ensure the instructors are in the classrooms on the right day, and on time, and the classrooms are properly setup, with the materials arriving on time. And, well, the training manager is the one who makes all things work. The responsibility of all of these critical elements of running an efficient and effective training organization falls directly on the shoulders of the training manager.
If you are this person, you are my hero, and probably the unsung hero of your company. Again, this is not meant to disrespect the CLO’s contributions, or to discourage training managers away from CLO ambitions. The training manager and the CLO role are significant in the company, helping to influence the culture of incoming employees, helping them to be successful and impacting the every-day quality of work life of the employees.
To those executives who have training managers reporting to them, I hope you see the same value in their work and show them how much you appreciate what they do each day. And to the many training instructors, instructional designers, training coordinators and administrators, I hope you too will tell your training managers how much you appreciate the hard work they do to make sure you have the necessary resources to do your job.
The full version of this article was originally published in the Winter 2009 Issue of Training Industry Quarterly. If you would like to see the full article, click here. If you have an opinion about this article, I would love to hear your comments.
