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n Are our top management team all committed to being the best of
the best in every aspect of the business?

n If not, whom do we have to bring “on board”?
n How specifically will we achieve consensus at senior level without

becoming the victims of “groupthink”?

Learning must be measured in terms of the most important fac-
tors creating competitive advantage – total cost per unit, asset or
employee productivity, sales revenues and profits, new customers
attracted.

n Is learning recognized as being a means to an end rather than as
something vaguely pleasing for its own sake? (Example: John Egan
in his Jaguar days required that all budgets include 10 per cent to
facilitate learning so that money was invariably spent effectively.)

n Do we have all necessary measures routinely in place?
n Can our training department put a pound or dollar value on all of

their activities?

Summary

I My one-time colleague Liese Spiegelberg Tamburrino used to be a
I vice president of training and education in General Electric. Over
I a four-year period careful measurement showed that, following
I training, the average annual improvement in productivity for
I every employee was 14 per cent. Even in a country in which
I productivity per worker is increasing at a rate that is twice as fast
I as most of the rest of the advanced economies, identification of a
I direct link between training and productivity growth that is
I two-and-a-half times the national average is significant. It
I demonstrates the potential that training has to make a difference,
I but only if it is done properly – if what is learned is transferred to
I the workplace and used.

Bruce Joyce – University of Columbia, New York

According to methodology used, unsupported training provides a level of
transfer to the workplace of between 5 per cent (chalk and talk) and 13 per
cent (realistic “practical learning”).

Through conference room emphasis on real world problem solving, par-
ticipants can appear to learn and use up to 80 per cent of the materials
taught, in respect of the problem dealt with, but there is little evidence of
successful transfer of that knowledge to other problems other than to the
very limited degree noted above. While people are adept at using what they
are taught in the classroom as long as it appears to make sense in the real

Stop wasting the training budget! 199