The big problem is that the only efficient way to test a person is to administer a test of knowledge. Skills testing is far more difficult. Yet this is exactly what sports teams do. They watch potential players perform and choose those who have potential to contribute to their success. Can you imagine a sports team giving potential team members a 200 question, multiple-choice exam and selecting those who make the highest scores?
This confusion about knowledge versus skills is also one of the problems we have with training programs. Senior managers insist that they cannot afford for their people to be away from the job for several days at a time. So they want to shorten our seminars from three days to one day. I always ask what they want the trainees to do when they are finished. "We want them to run projects," they say. My reply is that they will not be able to do so in a single day of training. They then want to know what the trainee will be able to do, and I reply that they may be able to talk about project management, and not very intelligently at that.
When you consider that most projects waste around 30 percent of every dollar spent, and that can be tens of thousands of dollars, in my opinion you can't afford the false economy of not providing the right training for them. Perhaps a major reason for our problem is that we believe imparting knowledge is giving them the basis for being good managers. It is not! Managing is a performing art, which means it is skills, and you can only learn skills by practice, not sitting in a lecture. Until we learn this, our managers will continue to receive the wrong kind of education/training.
Training is not an expense, but an investment, and if it is done correctly, the return on that investment is huge. You can't afford the cheap approach, unless you don't care if your organization suffers huge losses because of incompetent management.
Slange,
Jim
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