A man with one watch knows what time it is; A man with two watches is never quite sure.

"If You have kids less than 10 and you have to keep a day planner, it is not healthy. Kids need unstructured time." Jim Mulready (during  this morning's coffee conversation)

"To a hungry man give a piece of bread and not thirty one flavors, else he will throw up." anand p shah

Storyline:

Many companies have training and development programs for their employees. In some places, they are crisp and targeted to specific needs, while in other places they are extensive. Some of these extensive programs consist of exposing new hires to many different types of training classes in a short time, while the others require employees to go through some massive training blasts that somebody has determined to be essential for revitalizing the company (or whatever).

Whenever I am exposed to massive training blasts, I recall an incidence from several years ago when I volunteered to take care of five kids during my sabbatical.

Trying to keep track of five kids and their activities was a massive planning and scheduling nightmare.  I would pick up kids from different schools between 2PM to 3PM.

Then the sequence was something like this;

If it was 3PM then it must be swimming for Charlie; 3:30 was Ballet for Gitanjali; but what about dropping Bobby to baseball at 4:15 while our kids were waiting after their swimming lessons?
Not to forget that Charlie went to Karate after swimming and Gitanjali went to Piano after Ballet, while Bobby had special math tutoring, and our children needed to go to music classes.

Well, the sequence did not end there but you get the idea. One day, as my luck would have it, I got some time to ask questions to the kids.

I asked Charlie, “What did you learn today”   “I don’t know”, came the reply from Charlie.   “And what about you, Gitanjali, what did you enjoy about the piano class?”   “You know, during the break we ran around sprinklers and got wet. That was fun,” said Gitanjali with a visible excitement on her face. 

Being aware of the conflict of interest, I did not want to dare ask such specific questions to our own children. They would have taken the Fifth* anyway.  However, my curiosity prevailed enough for me to ask a general question.

“Why do you go to these classes?”   Came the unanimous reply, “Because our parents want us to.”   I followed up with a question, “And what do you do with what you are taught in the classes?”   “When do we ever get the time to do something with what we have been taught?” said our boy, mustering up all his courage.

 

 

Reflection:

Further investigation and introspection revealed that these children were occupied in so many activities during the day that they had no time to practice and perfect any of them well enough.

This is what happens with giving an overdose of training to the new hires and delivering massive training blasts to all employees. The office shelves get full with training binders, checklists for “training completed” are in compliance ... but in most cases what was taught is not ever put into practice.

The cases where training has been highly effective is when it was targeted for specific needs, people were given enough time to absorb what was taught, and there was a follow up as to how the training was put into practice.

* For overseas readers: "The Fifth" is the reference to The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) of the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, is related to legal procedure. One of the key part is that  no person shall be compelled in any  case to be a witness against himself. (Source: Wikipedia)

Comments

[Mark Dennen]

Today, IMO, there is too much emphasis on "structured play" for children. I realize parents want to give their children the opportunity to experience many things, but I think it may be better for them to experience their "imagination" and to entertain themselves. Our neighbors have three wonderful, well-adjusted children who spend a majority of their time outside playing - even in the cold & snow of winter. One day, it is street hockey, then it is baseball, etc., etc., etc. The same can be said for business, there is so much structure (meetings, goal setting, goal reviews, development plans, HR review, blah, blah, blah) and so little time to actually think or work, except after hours when many go home and the distractions are minimal. Maybe most should come in late every day (after everyone else goes home)?