Real life - where the rubber meets the road

Rubber and road - and userI had what I thought was an odd discussion yesterday with a friend of mine who manages a couple of business units in a large corporate here in Australia. He was lamenting the fact that no matter how much time he allowed his staff to have away from their desks to participate in learning, their performance seemed to orbit around a mark that the business really needed to improve on. His question to me, after a good ten minutes of explaining the latest example, was simple: “What’s wrong with our training department?”

Of course, given he was on the operational side of the business, he spent most of his time with operational people (to give him credit, he spreads his attention around beyond his direct reports and makes sure the people who work in his area know him and know they can reach out to him if they feel the need) he knew the operational managers and staff were working their backsides off. He also knew he had some very savvy people in positions up and down the reporting line. So it had to be the training people that were the problem, right?

Well, partly. I had an idea what the problem seemed to be, or at least an important piece of the puzzle, not far into his story, and it’s something that plagues many businesses still, if what I see and hear is a representative snapshot. There was just an amazing gulf between the concept of “training” and the imperative of “performance.” Managers up and down the line seemed to be of the opinion that “training” was the responsibility of the “training department”, and it happened away from the job. Staff go to training and they come back all fixed up and ready to perform better. The role of managers was to monitor the performance of their people and teams and crunch the numbers - once per month, they’d chair a team meeting.

The trainers didn’t really seem to be in any better shape. Their responsibilities began and ended at the doors to the training rooms. From what I was told, they weren’t seen among the operational people before or after training (my friend clearly said that when a manager thought training was required, that manager would phone “someone from training” and they’d have a conversation, maybe followed by some emails back and forth. Once in a while, for a particularly important initiative, one or two of the training team would come over - they worked in another building - and meet with a few key managers to hash out the details).

Talk about silo city. The training team did very little intelligence gathering from the people who would be attending their programs, and didn’t come back afterwards to see what was being applied back at work after a training session. Managers neither asked for, nor received, a summary of how their people handled the training or any feedback on common questions raised by participants or observations from the trainers themselves. Everyone had the best of intentions, but it was like they lived in different worlds.

Needless to say, my friend and I talked about the importance of integrating a learning and development team with the operational people they were supporting. Far from being fly-in/fly-out consultants, the training people needed to be a part of the larger team. Similarly, managers needed to take an active role in the development of their people, and the frontline operators needed to be able to use their own experience and knowledge to become involved in the conversation. 

We also talked about putting the operational staff in the driving seat - giving them the tools and support to share their knowledge and skills among the wider organisation. As you guessed, we’re talking about a very traditional organisation here, and the idea of giving all and sundry access to broadcast their tips and thoughts on practices and improvement ideas met with a worried frown.

This friend and I will be having this conversation for a while yet, I think, but at least he’s heading to work this week determined to bring ops and L&D closer together. It’s a start.   

  • October 23
  • , 2011
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