Billons of Dollars Wasted, Part Two - What Happened Next...

As I said in my post on December 9th, I never did write the article exposing the "Dark Secret" of the training and development industry - that organizations world-wide were investing billions of dollars annually in instruction that fails to produce lasting changes in behavior and improved workplace performance.

During the 15 years that followed, four things happened...

First, billions of dollars continued to be wasted every year on training that doesn't have the desired impact. This shocking circumstance continues to this day.
Second, I got out of the training and development business. My company was good at it, but the work took a lot out of us and, as I explained in my previous post, it didn't give us the kind of satisfaction we were looking for. Instead, we evolved our company into a human resource development product business. Our flagship product since 1994 has been a breakthrough highly customizable multi-purpose web-based feedback survey system called 20/20 Insight GOLD. 

Third, a number of experts in the field noticed the same problem and did decide to write the articles--and books. Their common theme: organizations pay big bucks for training but by and large they refuse to pay for follow-through. Most of these books explain what the necessary follow-through should look like. The most vocal of the bunch is Mary L. Broad:

Transfer of Training (Addison-Wesley, 1992 - with John W. Newstrom)

Transferring Learning to the Workplace (ASTD, 1997)

Beyond Transfer of Training (Pfeiffer, 2005)

Two other good books on the topic:

Robert O. Brinkerhoff and Anne M. Apking, High-Impact Learning (Perseus, 2001)

Calhoun Wick, et al, The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning (Pfeiffer, 2006)

Fourth, my enduring interest in the cognitive neuroscience of learning led me to understand why the post-training follow-through is absolutely essential. It's because what's acquired in the classroom is mainly knowledge, not skill. Skill comes from many, many repetitions of the desired behavior in the workplace, so that the skill becomes ingrained as a work habit.

People won't continue using a new skill in the workplace unless it becomes second nature. Instead, they fall back on old, comfortable patterns. And skills become second nature only when the brain cells involved in the skill grow together to form a neural pathway. Repetitions of the skill excite the chemistry that initiates the growth of dendrites, which eventually connect the brain cells. And more repetition continues the growth until the pathway is complete. Only then will the new, improved approach to behavior, which was introduced in training, feel comfortable enough to use it in place of the old behavior pattern.

And this usually takes months of consistent application. This is why a few days of training can never produce the desired result. This is why follow-up is needed. And why, to this day, billions of dollars are still being wasted. Because it's still unusual for an organization to invest in an effective follow-up program.

My belief is that organizations may have heard the alarm, but none of the books I cited above included this essentially physiological cause-and-effect explanation. So executives don't appreciate why so much follow-up is necessary. Hence, I wrote an ASTD Infoline monograph entitled Enhance the Transfer of Training (2007), in which I outline the core problem and clarify the solution. It's all there, but in retrospect I think my paper was like a tree falling in the woods.

To address the problem with a technology solution, my company began development of ProStar Coach, a web-based learner support system to serve as a "virtual coach" during the period of follow-up.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .