It's Not Just More Of The Same!   

From all over the world I am hearing the same message--we have to get more results from our training/learning investments.  In the down economy every dollar counts and our customers (be they internal or external) are challenging the training profession to get more performance results from training.

While the desire to improve training results is not new, I am sensing a tipping point for our profession.  The pressure I am hearing from management is at a level I have never heard in my almost 30 years in the profession.  What I am hearing are managers that are simply fed up with training that doesn't produce results.

We (the training/learning profession) have to be very honest with ourselves.  We are pretty good at getting people to learn.  We know a lot about learning and our knowledge base about learning methods is pretty good. But, our track record on getting performance results from training is NOT good. We have been far too complacent about allowing poor learning transfer rates to persist.

Fortunately our knowledge base about learning transfer is also good--it's the adoption in practice that is lacking. When resources are plentiful it's easy to get away with ignoring best practices in learning transfer. In tight times like we are in now, learning transfer is not optional.

Smart training organizations are getting very serious about improving results, which means they are getting very serious about fixing their learning transfer problem.  They are adopting best practices and looking at the most innovative products to economically fix their transfer problems. 

Smart training organizations are realizing that the only solution is to change the way they have been doing business.  More of the same just won't deliver the results in many cases.  The end results will be cuts in training resources if results aren't delivered.

Is your training organization one of the smart ones?