By Simon Bere
THE BIG GLOBAL TRAINING FRAUD: HOW AND WHY ORGANISATIONS CONTINUE TO LOSE BILLIONS OF UNITED STATES DOLLARS IN DOOMED TRAINING
Unpacking the Training-Based Root Causes of Performance and Results Mediocrity in Most Organisations.
Some corporate things, in fact most corporate things, don’t change much. In the 1950’s a PHD student did a PHD research on the performance of training and his research revealed a yawning gap between the money and time invested in training and the impact of such training on organisational results. The student, to be more precise, established that as much as more 75% of corporate and organisational training goes to waste; it fails to deliver. And he even stated the reasons why such a huge disaster in training exists.
I have conducted a lot more research on the issue of training within the context of personal, business and organisational performance and results and my finding suggest that little, if anything has changed in as far as the impact of training is concerned. In fact, some latter day researchers on the subject point an even gloomier picture than Dr Kirkpatricks and assert than as much as more than 95% of the effort and financial resources put to training and “development” are going into a herculean inferno. This disaster is more so in areas that are so vital and critical to the performance of companies and organisations; areas such as leadership, management, marketing, strategy and strategic thinking and training itself. Do you own research and you will find that the training industry is a United States Billion Dollar Industry. In America alone, the training industry is estimated at around 400 billion United States Dollars annually. Now imagine 85% of this huge figure going up in flames.
Being a trained trainer, training solutions developer and being active in the performance and results management space, I can relate with the above findings since I experience the same challenges in my training work. While the reasons cited by other researchers for poor performance of training are valid such as failure to ensure that “trainees” immediately apply what they learn in the work place and the often lack of interest in training by the trainees, the problem is actually bigger than that. I will reveal hear where the huge scandal lies. And to many this is not a deliberate scandal, most of the workers in the training industry have been sold dummies and they have accepted the dummies hypnotically and have not questioned anything. I know even after saying this, many who are reading this article will treat is as entertainment and remain doing exactly what they have been doing in training in the same way they have been doing it.
This is even despite being warned that there is a high probability that almost all their money they are putting into training is going to waste.
This is despite the now proverbial warning by the great problem solver, Albert Einstein that;
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Now we are fortunate if we do the same things over and over again and have the same positive results. And, sadly for leaders, top decision makers and senior managers, companies and organisations are not like mobile phones where we have touch buttons and just press this button and press that button and things happen the way we want as long as the phone is functional and is charged. Companies and businesses, unlike machines, operate in constantly changing environments, many of which environments are new and have different dynamics that need different approaches. This means that even when doing the same things over and over again is producing desired results; consider it temporary because sooner or latter, doing the same things that are working today will suddenly become doing things that will bring down the organisation when we enter a different environment.
History is replete with companies and businesses that came down not because of strategic errors of commission but strategic errors of omission. Back to the biggest training fraud.
THE WORLD IS CONFUSING TRAINING AND TEACHING
Before we go to the bombshell, lets talk about this endemic disease in our organisations around the world. The whole world seem to be in the confusion or terms including the confusion between teaching and training. The word training is, by many, used interchangeably with learning and teaching.
Most of these departments called training departments are not training departments but learning departments
Most of these so called training courses and programs are not training courses and programs at all; they are learning programs.
Most of these people called trainers are not trainers at all but teachers and worse still information dispensing human machines.
Most of these so called training certificates are not certificates of competence but certificates of competition of a learning course or program
What do I mean by all this? Here is the thing
Teaching ×Learning= Knowledge=Knowing=Articulation
Training=Skills or Capability or Improvement=Doing
Knowing is not Doing
Telephone: 263-77-444-74-38
Email: simonsbere@gmail.com
LinkedIn: Simon Bere
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