Overview

In this chapter we're going to look at how you can avoid training and how you should avoid training whenever you can. That may seem like heresy to a lot of people who are really big on training, but we're going to see how it's just common sense. First let's remember what was traditionally called "training." It's when we help people stuff information into their heads so they'll remember it when they need it. It can be information about what to do, who should do it, when it needs to be done, where it has to or should be done, and how to do it. People need to know all of this if they're to do what needs to be done, right? Well, we'll see.

Doing some training is probably an absolute necessity in your security program. There are certainly people on and off your security force who will need to be trained to perform their security roles. The problem is that we do too much training. We train people when the problem with their performance isn't a skill or knowledge deficiency at all. We don't do a good front-end analysis, and training ends up being the knee-jerk solution. And we do training when it's a solution, but not the best solution, to a performance problem.

There are two major problems with training people. The first is that training is expensive. It costs the trainer's time, but much more expensive is the time...