Lots of my clients call me up to ask that I train their staffs in various skills. The concerns usually sound like, “These guys need to learn to communicate” or “They just can’t seem to get things done” or “Our customers always seem upset with us.”
It’s flattering that a client trusts me enough to ask that I help fix important problems, but usually, I have to point them away from the pure training solution. Of course, I hate to turn down their money, but I can’t let them fall into what I call the training trap.
People often fall into the training trap just after realizing that they have a problem. They have an epiphany of understanding that something’s wrong with their group, and presume that to solve the problem, the group needs to learn something. This is a common assumption for all people, but it’s especially prevalent among technologists for whom learning is the tool of choice for problem solving.
The training trap is the misapprehension that just teaching a group about some skill or process is enough to fix behavioral or performance problems. The training trap is not entirely a bad thing. It’s often true that learning may help. But teaching and learning are not the same thing. Locking a group in a room with no interest in a subject, motivation to learn or understanding of why it may be important rarely results in effective organizational change.
Training can be an important part of a strategy for transforming a group, but alone, it’s rarely more than just a respite from the difficulties. The staff gets out of the office for a time, but after returning, the learning is lost, or never has the desired effect. The information may have been interesting, entertaining or intriguing, but without linking it into a broader strategy for change, the time and money are usually wasted.
So next time you realize that your group has a problem, don’t forget that training is just one tool for change and avoid the trap of assuming that it’s the only one.
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Paul Glen is an IT management consultant and the author of the award-
winning book “Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead People Who Deliver
Technology” (Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer,2003). He regularly speaks for
corporations and national associations across North America. For more
information go to: http://www.paulglen.com. He can be reached at
info@paulglen.com.
