Overview

and the absolutely decisive "factor of production" is now neither capital nor land nor labor. It is knowledge.

Peter Drucker

At Beta International, far more often than not, when the subject of training is brought up, a wave of cynicism sweeps the audience. The vast majority do not feel that their training is adequate, either in quantity, or in quality, or both. Some point out that "when push comes to shove" in the budgeting process, training is often one of the first things to be cut. Others point to the boring or misguided nature of the training they receive. Only a few have admitted that they don't personally put a lot of effort into the training process, expecting to be "spoon fed." Learning from training, as we all know, requires hard work from both the student and the instructor.

Such cynicism and pessimism may in fact be well founded. According to a survey published in 1994 by the National Center for Manufacturing Science, ^[1] training does not appear to be a very high priority, at least for US companies. In this survey only some 10 20% of the employees of US companies were reported to routinely receive formal training. This stood in sharp contrast to Japanese companies where 60 90% of employees routinely received formal training. The quantity of training varied with company size, with the larger companies providing more training. Of those employees of US companies that did receive training. Of those employees of US companies that...