Too Much Emphasis on Knowledge, Not Enough on Skills and Behaviour Changes

Too much emphasis on knowledge, not enough on skills and behavior changes By Jeremy Lee I understand the need from many clients that they want value for money from their training programs. However is the value that they want, really adding benefits to the organization?

Many organizations today when requesting from a training outline, still emphasize on many topics to be covered in a short duration of time. More topics covered equals more value to them. However with more topics needed to be covered in a single training, there is usually insufficient time to practice the skills learnt and even less time for a behavioral change to take place. When too much time needs to be spent on the acquisition of knowledge without the application of knowledge (skill) and appreciating the importance of doing something in a brand new way (behavior change), adult learners usually leave the training with a sense of awareness and little else.

Therefore does it really add benefit to the organization when all that has been achieve is the gain of knowledge. My take on this is that the critical knowledge must be covered in the training and spent as much time as possible on practicing the knowledge learnt and make that behavioral change happen. In this way, the value from the training will be more beneficial and effective for all.