Q&A with Larry Prusak:

Question: One of the things that our organization attempts in this knowledge area is that not only do we attempt to capture and share what we think we know, but we also think that we are in the business of disseminating that to our clients. I work for a part of the organization that is called training. We do it in a way that takes into account almost nothing about how folks learn, we give folks a lecture.
Larry: That’s exactly right. You’re dead right. That training budget should all be given to the United Way or to the Red Cross. There’s been a cognitive revolution, there are people who study this subject, and they have totally changed the way we understand learning. But it hasn’t seeped in at all to the training people. I’m sorry, but you’re dead right.
Question: I’m not trying to put the whole training department out of business, but if you think that your business is knowledge, that is, you’re not just trying to understand your existing business by sharing what you know within the organization, how do you do that in a way that captures, first, that learning is local and contextual, and second, that sometimes what people most learn from is from other practitioners.
Larry: That’s a good question, and you seem to know the answers, and they’re the right answers, I would certainly build case studies. I would teach on a case basis, use real knowledge, this is starting to show up in the universities, in the business schools. And you should write some yourself, how do people really learn, how is knowledge disseminated. What you do for your clients, you should also do for yourselves. Big companies spend billions of dollars on training, and for the most part, it’s wasted money. It’s chalk and talk,  it’s abstract, and it’s just *&^%*&%. And no one learns anything. People really learn, like how you use systems, by example, by watching others, by understanding how the subject is actually practiced.