[Note in passing: I haven’t read the whole report yet, so apologies if I’ve missed some elaboration of this issue–but like most people I will judge you by your summaries .]

It makes no sense to talk about training as the solution to a lack of effectiveness with technology, unless one also picks apart a serious problem: training (in my experience) is either expensive, or poorly targeted, and nobody ever gets enough. I mean, when was the last time you heard someone say ‘We really get too much (technology) training’?

In many cases, I hear people call for training for one of two reasons: as an excuse for not dealing with technological novelty (I can’t use that software, I haven’t been trained on it), or because they don’t think much about other ways of learning.

This doesn’t mean that training (however one conceives that) is valueless, but that it generally serves limited uses, particularly where time and money are serious constraints, or where adaptability is desirable.

We always end up back at the same place: we need more training, but we can’t afford training. This is a pretty good signal to reassess the premises which take us there. The resource picture isn’t likely to change any time soon, so let’s go back to the purposes that training is meant to serve, and seek alternatives.

I believe better alternatives involve self-directed learning, such that

* an individual trying to succeed with technology recognizes a responsibility for finding out how to make it work;

* resources to support learning are deployed parsimoniously, but in highly targeted, “just in time” ways to support that process;

* learning is WORMed (reused) across the organization and perhaps across many organizations.

Organizations struggling to understand and use technology will almost always identify “lack of training” as the problem to be solved, but of course it’s not; it’s the (putative) solution. What then _is_ the problem, and what other solutions might we conceive if we were to define the problem in different ways?