authorities such as the Occupation- al Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). • Training is required or recommend- ed by industry standards such as ANSI Z133. • A squared-away training program is oen required to compete for attractive contracts and keep the contracts you currently have. THE “WE’VE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY” TRAP In running any business or organi- zation (and in doing many things, for that matter) we oen do things because they’ve always been done that way. To a certain extent, this is a timesaving, error-saving, and overthinking-sparing tactic. Aer all, aren’t best practices tried and true methods that promise to give consistent, predictable, and posi- tive results? There is a logical fallacy here and it’s called “appeal to tradition”. Despite the apparent logic behind best practices or traditions, organizations embracing these approaches frequently miss the mark and fail to achieve intended pro- gram goals. Best practices and traditional approaches oen only help to achieve a minimum standard of performance. They don’t guarantee excellence, nor do they prevent an epic fail. It’s kind of like putting those inflatable rubber bumpers in the gutters of a bowling lane. Although they prevent a gutter ball, they don’t guarantee a strike (or a spare), and it’s still entirely possible to miss all the pins completely. Need proof? Here is a video of a kid who, even with bumpers in place, managed to miss all the pins, while also using two balls. Relatable? Can you think of an example in your busi- ness or organization where you’ve taken an abundance of caution only to still fall short?
The limb walking playground gives climbers of all experience levels a way to practice their balance and limb-walking skills or even try out new climbing systems.
• Recertification conducted on time • Employee signatures on all training rosters • 100% company adoption rate of training or learning management so ware To be fair, achieving all the checkbox items above is fantastic. But those are not the intended goals of the training program. We start to shoot for the metrics while losing sight of the orig- inal goals and the positive organiza- tional outcomes we expected from them. We forget the reasons why. Hit- ting KPIs is great, but it provides a false sense of security and disguises vulnerabilities. GOALS … SIMPLIFIED I want to stress that it’s not wrong to identify “reasons why,” training pro- gram goals, and KPIs. You should be doing that. However, we don’t want to focus on all those KPIs and “training in practice” goals at the expense of “training in spirit.” Let’s simplify the goals by reducing them from eight down to two:
GOAL DISPLACEMENT As an organizational development and talent development professional, I’ve oen observed that training can be- come the Achilles heel of an organiza- tion — especially in a high-risk industry where competence and compliance are both keystones to safe operations. One reason for this is that training programs oen fall victim to an organi- zational phenomenon called “goal dis- placement”. Goal displacement occurs when intended goals become replaced by som ething else. When this happens, you lose sight of your “reasons why” that first defined your goals. This can take many forms, but oen, original goals are displaced by measurement devices or key perfor- mance indicators (KPIs). Examples of these KPIs include: • Compliance training conducted during onboarding • Tailboard conducted weekly • A+ company rating in client data- base
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