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capable of having a greater effect on the business. The “freezing”
by successful groups that leads to the re-use of a tried and tested,
but no longer relevant formula will become increasingly dangerous
to the business.

n Colleagues and supervision are threatened by new skills and the
newly trained are under peer and management pressure to make
less than optimal use of what they have learned.

n With an accelerating business cycle the need for quick results is
becoming essential rather than merely short-term thinking. In this
situation the need for training and development is growing, but
the need is not for “education for its own sake” or even for “life-
long learning”. It is for life-long learning delivered, applied,
measured and proved – “just-in-time”.

Whether you are a training professional, or an executive who believes in or
doubts the value of training, ask yourself this killer question often:

n How much did we waste on training in the last twelve months?

mini case study

Some years ago I was invited by a major corporation to report on why their expensive
TQM (yes it was some years ago) programme delivered few if any benefits. I discovered
that the sequence of events had been as follows.

First, the company had hired consultants to put in place a Quality Circle
programme. To ease the transition the consultants had agreed with senior
management that no improvement was to be put into place without first being
presented to a committee of executives for detailed analysis and approval. There had
been a major and vital problem that had put massive demands on the time of those
same executives as they, unsuccessfully as it turned out, sought a solution. As a result,
the Quality Circles met and delivered suggestions for improvement. With no time for
analysis and approval no improvements reached the implementation stage, but a very
considerable backlog of good, bad and indifferent ideas grew. Within the backlog was
the solution to the problem that was taking up so much of management’s time, but
for the harassed executives there was no way of knowing this. As a result the top
team concluded that, “Quality Circles don’t work”.

Since quality is clearly a “good thing” a different approach had to be tried. An
engineer was seconded to the training division and was flown away to sit at the feet
of Juran and learn all about quality. He returned full of enthusiasm for the
considerable amount of enlightening and inspirational stuff that he had learned about
the psychology of work and designed a training programme that focused entirely on
sharing his new knowledge, first with his new colleagues (many of whom had their
own rather different views), and then with the willing, but confused workforce who
could not quite see what this all had to do with the price of fish. One thing was clear.
Quality Circles were a thing of the past and psychology rules whether relevant or no.
But what cannot be measured cannot be managed so few, if any benefits were
recorded.

204 Key management questions