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Edward Zitron is right about why companies struggle long term

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I spent a lot of last year trying to understand why companies treated the employees they rely on for success so poorly — The Man Who Broke Capitalism; Lights Out; The Idea Factory; AI Snake Oil; Leaders Eat Last; and so on are all part of that journey. At the time I was a bit fixated on Jack Welsh and his long term impact on General Electric — which I would summarize as being overwhelmingly negative. It was a classic example of managing to short term profit metrics, instead of for long term sustainable growth by delighting your customers.

Ultimately this is why I chose to take a break from working for corporate America, as being treated like a replaceable cog in a profit machine wasn’t really working for me.

Then Edward Zitron wrote this blog post which really resonated with me…

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Training isn’t a work perk, its essential operational risk mitigation

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I’ve been thinking a bit about training at work recently, largely in the context of having spent the last twenty years working for US technology companies. I think effectively all of these companies made a pretty big mistake — they viewed training of employees as a perk much like vacation, book budgets, or t-shirts. They advertise their training programs as part of their recruitment process, and just like other perks they’re cut when times get a bit grim. However, that’s not actually why employers should train their people. We train people so that they have the skills they need to do their jobs — especially when things get real and aren’t working out to plan.

There are definitely industries who have good examples of this sort of risk reduction training done well — airlines and the military both engage in regular training activities that ensure that when things get exciting the people know what to do. This includes leaders being trained on how to make decisions that are likely to result in the desired outcomes.

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