US writer, trainer and consultant Fred Nickols is outspoken in his views about training and development, and his articles make for interesting reading.

In an article entitled `Why Those Darn Training Problems Won't Go Away: A Look at the Politics of Training', Nickols says that the same `problems' with training are still cropping up 30 years after they were first identified.

However, he argues that most of the problems are not to do with the training itself, but the feedback, consequences, expectations, or the design of the work itself.

Nickols' point is that training is used as a scapegoat rather than blame management practices or company systems - it's easier to blame a lack of skills or knowledge in the workforce than to address an underlying problem which may be the result of bad management decisions.

Nickols says that managers can use training as a `smokescreen' for other problems, and that this only fails when a business finds itself in such dire straits that the original problems have to be dealt with (hence the reduction or removal of training programmes altogether in businesses which are suffering).

You can read the full text of the article at
http://home.att.net/~nickols/darnprob.htm