BOCSoft eQuestion at Office

Are your people ready?

Microsoft stated that Microsoft is a campus. By stating that a company is a campus, its employees must learn continuously. According to Jeffrey K. Liker in his book The Toyota Way, Toyota is truly learning organization. People in that kind of organization must be a lifetime learner.

As a campus or learning organization, a company must have a procedure of how the people should be trained, who will be trained, for how long they will be trained, and how do they measure up the effectiveness of the training. One way of how the people will be trained is perhaps by conducting it internally using internal trainer inside the company. So people will gather up in a room where a teacher will be conducting a lecture. Another way to train its people, rather than conducting a class, a company could create materials in a book and let its people to study in that book. Whatever the way to conduct a training, one important thing that should be done is measuring up its effectiveness. The most common way to measure it is conducting a test.

Some companies have excellent internal procedure of how to prepare its people for current requirement to compete in this global world. They have the right tools, the right trainings and the right procedures to measure its people readiness for competing. In that company, these kind of activities using digital technology rather than on paper. Their resources for learning are enormous. They trained its people not in a traditional way of learning. They train its people using internet technology, they trained its people using well prepared materials presented in DVDs, they trained its people using teleconference classes, they trained its people using well written exams using internet application to measure up their people skill and yes the feed back will be given instantly.

Well we must go back to reality. Not many companies can do it as good as Microsoft in preparing its people in the battle field. Not many companies have the resources to realize that. We do not even want to think about suggesting that every company should follow Microsoft. By saying that we do not suggest that a company should not try to improve its processes in doing business. We suggest that a company should at least try to improve its processes, and start at the most simple process which cost the least, or perhaps start at the most important one.

We learnt a few years ago in some schools that a head master in Junior high school must at least have a bachelor degree. I think this is a good program, though it is not enough. I think this is not what it means by continuous learning as it is described by Professor Liker in his book, The Toyota Way. Continuous learning can be achieved by always asking what we can do to improve the process of doing things. Continuous learning perhaps means reading books to get fresh idea of how they can improve its processes. It is surprised us that many teacher preach their students to read books but they never do what they preach. After getting a degree they put that degree in the back of their name card and that is the end of their journey of learning. Should not it be the beginning of an exciting journey of learning?.

Are your people ready? Hopefully that they are. But hope is not enough. Your people should be made it ready by applying the right trainings, by using the right tools.

But please remember that tools are only as good as the people’s skill who use that tools.

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