Objection #2 comes from many in the training field. In fact I have heard this MANY times. “This doesn’t have anything to do with training.”

Answer: For the most part, you are right – it doesn’t have anything to do with training on the outset. But it does have to do with learning. Training is only a subset of learning and there are many ways to help others learn.

Too often we, in the training field, get stuck on how to ‘train’ rather than on how to help our ‘customers’ learn which in turn drives results, which is the real goal. Our focus should be on LEARNING, not training.

Why? Training can only do so much.

You may have seen the long tail before. It was first used in 2004 to describe the business strategy of Amazon and Netflix. Basically, their model allowed them to not only hold the most asked for items (which in a regular distribution model would be the only items economically feasible) but it also allowed them to hold (much) less asked for items. In fact, those seldom requested items held a large portion of their sales and of the demand from customers.

The same is with social learning. (You will have to forgive my color blindness…) The left most color (yellow-ish?) and the middle color (orange-ish?) are what formal training can deliver. It concentrates on only those things that are economically feasible given the limited resources (sexual harassment, company products, communication skills, etc.).  A lot of people need more information / knowledge / skills (Y axis) to do their jobs, and yet training cannot touch a large part of the knowledge that is needed by only some of the employees (how to fill out the exception report, where to find information on little known refunds, how to deal with random situations). Social learning (green) does not replace training.  It may overlap a little (orange-ish, again) and compliment a lot, but it takes care of the knowledge that training will never get to.

So, in the end, social learning compliments training and covers knowledge formal training was never able to  reach. It is in addition to, without having huge amounts of formal resources needed to deliver.

And, again, our goal in the end is learning.

How would you answer this objection?