Does Your Training Meet the Mule to a Remote Village Test?

Posted 11:18 AM by Michael Fox

If you are a lawyer and you don't know the name of David Maister, you should. But putting aside all his other contributions for a moment, in his recent blog post, Why Training Is Useless, he suggests the following standard to determine if your training should happen:

If the training were entirely optional and elective, and was only available in a remote village accessible only by a mule, but people still came to the training because they were saying to themselves ‘I have got to learn this – it’s going to be critical for my future’, then, and ONLY then, you will know you have timed your training well. Anything less than that, and you are putting on the training too soon.

If that test were truly applied, my guess is that many corporate training rooms would go quiet for some time to come.

Comments:

Thanks for the "Know David's name" comment - it's appreciated. But it's not clear whether you agree with my standard, or think I am setting the bar too high. Do you agree or not that many corporate training rooms *should* go quiet for some time to come?

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:52 PM

In response to David's question - I clearly agree with his standard.

# posted by

Michael Fox : 1:07 PM