Maybe They Are Better Than We Think 

I was sitting on an airplane recently after spending two days engaging with the airline industry. Despite my frustrations, I had time to step back and admire how this very complex industry manages to keep planes and people moving rather safely.

One of the things I notice is how well trained the employees seem to be. As much as I hate it when they "go by the book" in implementing a policy, I am at the same time impressed that they are transferring their learning.

Of course the advantage they have is that much of their learning has life and death implications--literally. Because the stakes are so high the industry has apparently learned to transfer learning much better than in many other industries.

So I wonder why? I wonder how we can infuse the same sense of urgency for learning transfer in other types of learning? Don't all organizations have mission-critical training with high stakes if it fails? In my experience, yes--but I don't see them infusing the same sense of urgency.

It looks simple to me--if the training you are doing is mission critical, then you MUST insure learning transfer. And if its not mission critical, why are you doing it? Stop the "nice to have but not critical training" and use the resources to get real results from mission-critical training and you will be way ahead.