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Effectiveness - Jay Cross

Published October 2007

Don’t Call Them Trainees

  

  Jay Cross

“Western cultural views of how best to organize and lead (now the methods most used in the world) are contrary to what life teaches. Leaders use control and imposition rather than participative, self-organizing processes. They react to uncertainty and chaos by tightening already feeble controls rather than engaging people’s best capacities to learn and adapt.”
– Margaret Wheatley

Hans Monderman is a Dutch traffic engineer who is gaining fame for what he doesn’t do.

He’s also famous for what he doesn’t like: traffic signs. His reasoning is that over-engineering drains things of context, civic responsibility fades, reckless driving ensues and people get hurt.

Monderman was asked to design a village’s bike path, on which about 2,500 children a day would ride. Following his standard routine, he invited the village elders for a walk in another village. There, they saw a road with no speed bumps and no chicanes.

The lack of signs and obstacles made drivers take responsibility for their actions. They immediately reduced their speed by 10 percent when alongside the bike path. Eventually, their speed dropped to 50 percent of what it had been.

Monderman has worked his magic in more than 100 Dutch communities. He uproots signs and clears barriers so drivers can easily see pedestrians. Traffic accidents in Holland are 30 percent of what they were when he began.

Remove the center line from a country lane, and people drive safer. Clutter a road with signs and barriers, and people feel sufficiently protected to drive as fast as they like.

Monderman says that if you treat people like fools, they act like fools. Take off the training wheels, and they drive like grown-ups.

The vice president at a major Silicon Valley chip producer was concerned with the meager results of the company’s classroom training. He wanted the firm to focus more on building competencies and less on training events.

Workers had been happy to pick and choose traditional training from a buffet of offerings. Taking away their choices would require extreme measures.

Yet, the vice president shut down the learning department cold turkey. Focus shifted to talent management. A steering committee representing the vice presidents from each major function was formed and backed the plan.

Online employee development plans replaced training. Employees work with their managers to determine what competencies they must master. They agree on a path to get there: on-the-job learning, coaching, books and other means.

Nearly four years later, they are letting some training creep back in. Compliance and certification never really went away. A new CEO favors management development workshops. Training is allowed, but other development options are encouraged first.

I am not advocating the dissolution of training departments — withdrawal is not pleasant. But I am in favor of dumping the term “trainee.”