I’ve been sifting through various requests our team receives from the field - assistance with bringing people up to speed with one thing or another - which is nothing out of the ordinary (we are, after all, the L&D team). One thing generally stands out about requests that we receive, though, and I’m sure it’s been noticed by others at other organisations, too: just about every request that comes in comes from a manager asking for a certain training program to be run for their people.
What else would they be asking for, you ask? This is, as I said, the Learning and Development team. Of course they’ll be asking for training; that’s what L&D do!
The traditional view of L&D would agree with you. Someone, or in some cases a couple of people, from the L&D team go out to the workplace, run a course for a group of people, hand out some resources, maybe point participants to a guide that’s kept online inside or outside the corporate firewall, and off they go. People get sent back to their jobs (as quickly as possible, because people need to focus on “real work”, rather than sitting around in “training”) and perhaps someone from the L&D team will come back in a few weeks to make sure everyone has remembered the bits they need and can do the tasks that were taught.
It’s not like that anymore - and in organisations where is still is like that, it should be different. The assumption that some kind of formal training is the solution for any given performance need is a dangerous one that has led to uncountable hours of lost productivity and faux solutions across just about any field of endeavour you can name.
While it may seem natural for a manager to request a training solution, it is part of the responsibility of a learning and performance professional to emphasise that the key to whatever is done is performance. Positive outcomes for core business performance is the prime consideration when looking at any instance where that performance needs to be enhanced, supported or improved.
The way to achieve this goal will vary, depending upon the situation. Formal training is only one possible intervention among many, and the field includes changes to the working environment, improved access to required information, more open communication across business units, redesigning the way work is done - the list goes on.
It takes a certain amount of discipline to engage operational managers and higher leaders in a discussion of potential solutions, when instead they want to talk about the training they believe their people need, but it’s worth the time to develop that discipline (and the self-confidence to bring it to bear when it matters). It also requires learning and performance professionals to maintain an awareness of the key performance measures of the area or business unit in question, and how these relate to the way performance is rewarded/recognised within the organisation, in addition to the way in which these results are achieved within that team.
Early disucssion needs to be steered away from the solutions to be used (e.g. formal training, job redesign, better information resources, etc.) and toward examination of behavioural change in the workplace. What should people be able to do afterward that they are unable to do now, and how does this help achieve those results that are important to the performance of the team and the organisation? Only after that has been agreed should interventions be considered. Ultimately, it’s unlikely that any training program, by itself, is going to achieve the results the relevant manager wants. Performance issues are more complex than that, so even in cases where some kind of training is warranted, it is not the whole of the answer (and this is especially important when that training is done outside of the context of the work itself - e.g. in a training room).
As learning and performance professionals, we need to be able to look beyond the quick fix and critically assess underlying issues that must be addressed and the end results that will indicate we have been successful. We need to be able to articulate the reasons why training alone is not a panacea to organisational, team or even individual needs. Finally, we need to be able to gather the information required to make a considered recommendation on how the desired results can be achieved, and then play our part in identifying who is going to be responsible for what actions.
If in doubt, better access to expertise and timely guidance is always preferable to offering people a bunch of theory and just-in-case knowledge, then hoping they can go about their merry way and put it to work effectively.
- June 7
- , 2011
