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What percentage of what is taught is applied in the workplace?

What percentage of training objectives are measured and achieved?

How exactly do you quantify training’s contribution?

If delegates were offered additional holiday rather than training,
which would they choose?

Building world-class knowledge

World-class organizations are world-class learning communities. Do not be
misled by the often meaningless, arguments of the worst sort of trainer
and become convinced that training and development are unimportant. We
may not need to do more training, but we certainly need to do better train-
ing because in an economy that increasingly succeeds on the back of the
application of new, but proven, knowledge, life-long learning is not merely
an option, it is mandatory if you want to succeed.

With this background it is a tragedy that too much training is in the
hands of the glib and the lazy. The attitude implicit in one manager’s
response to the news that I was taking over training may ring some bells
for other line managers who see their people expensively trained to return
only to do things exactly as they did them before. The late Don Hambrook
is reported to have said: “Great idea. Now that he is a trainer they will stop
listening to the bolshie swine. And he’ll soon stop trying to change things.”
Much as I respected Don I hope and believe that he was wrong on both
counts. I think they still listen and if being bolshie means that I seek by
every method that I can find to do things and have them done better, then
I am still “bolshie”.

Research

Lucier and Torsilieri

This research programme emphasizes organizational change, rather than
the individual transfer of knowledge, but it makes a number of key points.
What follows is a summary of the findings and the practical questions that
those findings imply. (Findings are in bold.)

It is possible to transform a business through the systematic
building and use of the best knowledge throughout the firm.

n Do we encourage the sharing of knowledge or do we inadvertently
reward hoarding of information?
– Do we allow the time and facilities for the sharing of
knowledge?

196 Key management questions