What's YOUR Business?

One of my favorite writers is surgeon Atul Gawande, whose first-person reflection on his internship, Complications, should be required reading for any training practitioner interested in learning how adults really learn.  He has a piece in the December 10 issue of the New Yorker, "The Checklist", outlining solutions to problems with critical care (aka "intensive care") and hospital infection control rates. Gawande reports that implementation and diligent use of carefully developed checklists have dramatically increased quality of care while dramatically reducing--and in some cases eliminating--central line infection rates.

To translate this to training-speak: Gawande reports on "performance solutions" involving "job aids". What's especially important to us about this? Well, while the medical personnel had received training preparing them to do their jobs, the performance solution did not involve training, or any training department, at all. An outside consultant-- a doctor -- drove the "checklist" train.

I see this time and again: training practitioners talk about "performance solutions", but while the training department is off running workshops, someone else on-site, with fuller knowledge of the problem, is figuring out a real solution.

Article after article in the training literature talks about training "taking a seat at the table" and being part of "C-Level" discussions. If that's going to happen we must start breaking out of traditional boxes, whether it's developing and delivering useful support tools, creating effective online solutions, and being honest with management if a training solution is not indicated --then helping to identify something that is indicated. If training is to remain viable and credible we must realize that we aren't in the classroom business: we're in the perfomance improvement business.

Gawande's article "The Checklist" is still available online .

Jane Bozarth is the author of Better than Bullet Points: Creating Engaging E-Learning with PowerPoint; E-Learning Solutions on a Shoestring: Help for the Chronically Underfunded Trainer; and From Analysis to Evaluation: Tools, Tips, & Techniques for Trainers. See her blog for training tips and low-cost solutions .