22 February The Pork-Barrel State (...master...)

[Paul Terlemezian]

Where are the decisions made to invest in training within the corporate environment?

 

Are they centralized internal decisions?

 

How are the decisions made to use the investments?

 

Who is being impacted by the impact of the decisions and the effectiveness of the training?

 

What would happen if individual contributors were asked to vote for the investment initiatives being considered?

 

What would happen if we held individual contributors responsible for their "voting" choices?

[Paul Terlemezian]

Drucker makes a point that prior to WWI no government could extract more than 5 to 6 percent of income for taxes.

With the fear of War - we are willing to be taxed to protect ourselves - all governments benefit - and ironically it is usually governments that declare war.

While training is not warfare - I wonder if we find ourselves appealing to fear or to opportunity. We can always justify fear investments even when no fear is present on the basis that our investments eliminated the potential for fear to become reality. And when the fear does become reality - we can justify even more investment.

The challenge with justifying investment based on opportunity is that we are then accountable for the opportunity becoming a reality. With this risk comes the value of meaningful work.

We the training industry have a choice of becoming a Pork-Barrel fear mongering "fat cat" or a lean and mean opportunity innovator. Which path have we chosen? Are you happy with the answer? If not what will it take for a change to occur?