Problem 1: You consider “training” and “work” to be two different things

As part of the launch of The Impactful Executive, Dr Ali Monadjem and I have launched a newsletter focused on the topics of organizational health and performance. Over the next eight weeks on this site, I will post the previous seven articles from that newsletter, an 8-part series on the problems and solutions with corporate training and professional development in 2024.

The introduction to the series can be found here

If you'd like to read the whole thing now, please go to https://newsletter.impactfulexec.com/

Problem 1: You consider “training” and “work” to be two different things

As raised last week, corporate training is a $300 billion global industry, but much of the training offered is ineffective. Over six weeks, I am detailing six reasons I’ve seen for that ineffectiveness, and how they can be addressed.

Today’s focus…

Problem 1: You consider “training” and “work” to be two different things.

Back when I ran a school, teachers somewhat regularly asked me for a day or two off to attend an off-site training they had found, often one run and sponsored by the Ministry of Education. I nearly always said yes. I appreciated the initiative they showed, and I wanted to encourage the self-improvement attitude it exhibited.

But.?

I did not expect these training sessions to improve their teaching. They rarely (if ever) did.

This is not merely my view, nor is it a view unique to my teachers or to these specific training opportunities. In 2015, non-profit TNTP (“The New Teacher Project”) studied the impact of the? $18,000 per teacher (7-9% of total budget) that American schools spent on training and development.

During a 2 year sample:?

• Just 3 in 10 teachers measurably improved due to this training,?
• 5 in 10 stayed the same,?
• and the other 2 actually saw their performance decline.?

Those that did improve were nearly all in their first 5 years of teaching, most in the first 2 years. After that, performance leveled out.

So, after all these millions of dollars, the net positive impact on teacher performance was, basically, zero.

(Notably, improvers and non-improvers expressed identical views about the quality, relevance, and value of the training—both groups, in general, thought it was good, and helpful. We will discuss in a later post the limitations of participant ratings of professional development efforts.)

International efforts have achieved similar outcomes. Everyone in education knows that teacher quality is the most important driver of student achievement, so the motivation to invest in teacher improvement is very high. And yet, throughout most of the world, efforts to improve performance nearly always fail.

The TNTP researchers did find one exception, however. In one system, teachers were not sent to external training at all. Instead, they invested those resources in continuous developmental coaching that took place inside the school. Other systems used coaching and feedback also, but this system did it differently than the others.

This was not fluffy, feel-good coaching. Instead, the schools defined a clear standard for what quality teaching looked like, then observed teachers regularly and provided feedback directly related to those standards.?

They focused on one or two things at a time for teachers to improve—the lowest hanging fruit that coaches felt could most quickly improve the quality of their lessons. Often, and most effectively, they videotaped teachers’ lessons and then discussed specific improvement points with the teachers while viewing those lessons together. This practice continued throughout teachers’ careers, under the assumption that everyone can always improve.

In these schools, teachers in their first two years improved twice as much as those in other systems. Then, in years 3-5 and 6+, when improvement in other systems slowed and then stopped completely, these teachers actually saw their improvement accelerate.

Lest we assume that these practices are unique to the peculiar field of education, let us consider for a moment the consulting firm, McKinsey & Co. McKinsey has been called the “CEO factory,” and is known for producing more future CEO’s than any other company in the world, across every industry and every geography on earth.

Some of this success is due to selection, of course. McKinsey hires smart, driven people who are highly likely to succeed anyway. But a large part of their success stems from the development activities they undertake at McKinsey.?

And what does McKinsey do?

First of all, it sets very clear standards for performance, at each level of development, through its Leadership Development Model. It ensures every consultant at the firm understands how the model works and how they will be measured against it. Consultants conduct regular feedback and coaching sessions, both formal and informal, in which their performance against that model is appraised, with specific (recent) examples given and improvement advice provided. They are given one or two things to work on in a given 3-6 month cycle, and communicate these “development needs” to every colleague each time they join a new project.

What we see in both of these examples—and in many, many others—are a few core principles, practiced with discipline.

1)? ? Integrate learning into the job. Off-site trainings and workshops are fine, but they are the sprinkles on top of the sundae. The real learning and development occurs by doing and reflecting on the work.

2)? ? Set clear, comprehensible performance standards and provide regular feedback against them.

3)? ? Engage in the “deliberate practice” cycle—attempt a task, receive rapid feedback, attempt it again, receive feedback, and repeat again and again and again.

4)? ? Leverage apprenticeship. Provide access to more experienced colleagues who have already mastered the skills being developed, and allow employees to learn from those colleagues in multiple ways: observation, direct coaching, opportunities to emulate them.

5)? ? Take people outside of their comfort zone. Doing what you’ve always done is easy, but it does not drive improvement. Improvement requires continuously challenging people to do more, and to do better, than they’ve done before (what the fitness industry calls “progressive overload”).

For CEO’s, the good news in all this is that developing your people to continuously perform better is possible. The fact that current efforts rarely work does not mean that no efforts can work.

The bad news is, it requires a lot from you.?

You have to embed the learning and development process into everything you do, and you have to do so in very carefully designed ways. You cannot invest a bit of money in it, check a regulatory box, and expect it to work. It will not.

Instead, you have to set up structures that ensure your employees improve a little bit each day, throughout the normal course of their jobs, through a specific process of feedback and reflection on performance that happens rapidly enough and regularly enough to drive small, frequent changes in practice.?

This process is not always “fun” or “easy”. But it is the only way to ensure reliable, continuous performance improvement.