Change in the Training World – Part One

The Truth About Change
I recently read an article titled “Bill Gates After Microsoft.” In it was a fascinating statement about “change” in the context of doing things that have never been done before. I must paraphrase, but essentially it was “When you decide to try the untried you must accept the fact that you’ll not always know where you’re going – that you may have no idea what the exact outcome of your efforts may be. You will often be very uncomfortable. But that’s normal. Big changes that make big advances are usually like that. After all, even Lewis and Clark were lost most of the time.”
The last sentence spoke volumes to me. My first thought was that we live in very different times. But then I realized the fundamental idea is the same: making a major change is often not easy because we can feel lost and alone. If Lewis and Clark had not accepted that premise, we’d have never heard of them. They’d have stayed home.
Change in Training
Change is the obvious remedy when something isn’t working or could work better. Change is also an obvious remedy when some external influence (our national economy, for example) makes it either more difficult to do something or makes it imperative that we do things more efficiently and effectively.
How does that relate to training?
Training retention is thought by many training professionals to be 20% at best and 2% at worst. I don’t know what the correct number is, but I know what you know – it could be a lot better than it is. So changing something is an obvious course of action.
Budgets in many companies are tightening considerably in our present economy. Cuts in training are favorites of executives. So we have to do the same (or more) with fewer resources. We have to demonstrate higher training efficiencies and effectiveness. Again, changing something is obvious.
Next time: Why is it not happening as much as it should?