11/06/2018

Are Your People Making The Difference?

Why is it that the following dialogue is coming back several times a year in social media and always makes people smile?

CFO asks CEO: “What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave us?”
CEO: “What happens if we don’t and they stay?”

Why do we agree that these are the factors in a successful company, but we focus on Business Processes and Tools?

Why is in many maturity models (for example MESA’s Manufacturing Maturity Model and the Singapore Smart Industry Readiness Index) people and training an essential part of the assessment, but do we see in roadmaps afterwards mainly Tool and Business Process projects?

Why are on Industry 4.0 and related conferences tool vendors and presentations over-represented and education suppliers and presentations almost non-existing?

The 70:20:10 model helps to understand this. This model states:

  • 70% of the knowledge comes from job-related experiences
  • 20% from interactions with others
  • 10% from formal educational events.

eLearning for example is only capable to address the 10% for formal educational events. And everybody knows the feeling that after such an educational event and after a short period, everything that was learned is far away and the educational event should be repeated.

Recently I had an experience with a training program for 3 levels of needed competences development; to train people around standards. Together with the customer we modified a standard training to their needs with many exercises as part of the training. What we noticed and heard back after the training was that the discussion with people from the same company but other departments was very appreciated and enhanced the learning.

Combined with the examples (and questions asked around these) from real life experiences of the trainer it was clear that we also went into the 20% for learning with interaction.

We spend millions on ERP and MES implementations, but a learning course of 5 days is a problem.

We should have pure competence development projects with budget of 5% of the company’s turn-over that range from individual interactive training and coaching to master/apprentice approaches and seniors coaching teams e.g. deploying ERP or MES. These should be addressing individuals, teams, and departments to change the company’s culture.

Enable the people to make the difference!

Gerard Ipskamp