Is Training Dead? Why It’s Failing (and What Actually Drives Learning at Work)

Training isn’t dead, but it isn’t healthy either. You might be surprised to read that from someone who has designed and delivered training for most of his professional career. The health of training isn’t really a question or the problem. The problem is the way we view, design, and use training in our organizations.

Training can be a useful part of the learning and development efforts in an organization, but now more than ever its role needs to change if you want to get a great return on the investments you make in it.

The Limitations of Training

• Training is episodic. Training is an event we attend and then we have “completed” it. This mental frame too often turns training into a check box exercise. Learning isn’t about completion, but gaining, growing and moving.
• Training may take too long to build or revise. Even with new AI tools, building effective training takes time, and likely iterations (like a pilot, for example). This is great if the world or skills we are training are stable. For much of the learning we need today, stable wouldn’t be part of that conversation.
• Training is the wrong goal post. The right goal post isn’t an event; it is new behavior in the workplace. New behavior requires learning, which training doesn’t completely address.
• Training ≠ Learning. Each of the other bullets in this list use the word learning, but in truth, learning is a process, not an event. This doesn’t mean training can’t be a part of the learning process, but it can’t create it alone.
• Training is part of the solution. I wrote that training ≠ learning, but perhaps training < learning is a better equation. It is useful, but not by itself or as a substitute for what we really need.

How to Make Training Better

• Make it mindset-focused. To the credit of training, done well, it can help change or shift mindset at scale across a group. And since mindset is the precursor to changes in skills, we need to lean into this use for training. Increasingly I find this is the biggest strength of training, and in today’s world, this should be a big part of its purpose.
• Make it more modular. While there is a place for longer sessions (see the next bullet point), shorter, more focused sessions may meet the flow and rhythm of work better today. The added benefit of spacing delivery out is more time and expectation of practicing the bite-sized pieces that have been learned before the next module.
• Focus on the community aspects. One of the things training can do very well is allow people to get to know each other and build relationships, trust and insight across the enterprise. Well-designed training needs to include this and design interaction into the purpose of the event.
• Make it more experiential. Lectures have a place. But training that is mostly or completely one-way knowledge exchange doesn’t work and won’t meet the expectations of today’s learners either.
• See it as a part of the process, not the end-goal. When you see training as a foundational building block of workplace learning, it is far more valuable than when we see it as the full solution.

What You Need Beyond Training

• A longer view. Since training isn’t the full answer to your learning gaps, we must think of the learning process as just that – a process, and not a single or even series of events.
• More reinforcement. Curate and build in short learning bits and ways to reinforce what was shared in training. These should serve to remind people of keys ideas, keep those ideas top of mind, build confidence in their relevance and usefulness and support people in applying those new skills.
• More support. Support from other human beings. Peer support, mentor support, coaching from internal or external sources (especially the manager). Decision and habit support from AI tools will soon be mature enough to help here too.
• More accountability. If we want people to apply skills, the expectations and accountability to do that must be clear. Make sure accountability isn’t “did you attend the training”, but “are you applying what you learned.”
• More practice. Ultimately, we build skills by practicing them. We might do some light practice in training, but training in the real world of work is what builds skills and new habits.

I’ve diving deeply into some of the tools and techniques of workplace learning (i.e. what you need beyond training) in an upcoming strategy session titled Moving From Training . . . to Learning: Tools and Techniques to Help People Learn at Work. Click the link to learn more and register to join me.