The American Question
There is a delightful story in the annals of developmental psychology in which the psychologist, Jean Piaget, gave a series of high-level seminars in France. In each of these seminars America was duly represented. None of the Americans knew each other, and each of them enrolled in different seminars at different times during the year. Yet each one posed the same question to Professor Piaget, worded in almost the exact same way.
When the question finally arrived in each seminar, Piaget and his colleagues laughed good-naturedly as he said, "Aahh, the American Question!"
There was a time -- not too long ago -- when it was common to see two trainers leading a group through a demanding workshop. Embedded in the agenda was time for reflection, to regroup, and even to have the participants go through the demanding process of unlearning the way things used to be done in order to allow for new learnings to emerge. When the ubiquitous four-box matrix was drawn on the flip chart -- be it about grief, resurrection, job loss, dealing with change -- the consultants knew they could count on each other to help draw out the wisdom that was already in the room.
Today it is rare to find two consultants leading a group through a workshop. What's happened? If the Olympic motto is "swifter, higher, stronger", then America's is "faster, cheaper, better". The claim is that market forces are at work. Better minds than mine may be able to justify the four-fold process of these forces that led us to the predicament we are in today.
My take is this is how it works. The workshop initially was imagined to include two consultants working with twenty participants in a day long off-site for senior managers. Then someone in the organization realized that "off" site means not on-site. And beans began to be counted. And so the questions began.
Can we have the off-site on-site? No problem.
Next someone realized that there are two trainers in the plan.
Can we develop a program with only one trainer? No problem.
Well since we are having the off-site on site, it might be a good idea for the participants to keep their pagers on during the training, just in case an emergency develops. No problem.
Well now, since the participants will be using their pagers and cell phones during the training, they won't be giving their full attention to the material. Perhaps we could add more participants to the training in order to keep the level of involvement at one hundred percent.
Can we add another twenty participants to the training? No problem.
Geez, now that we have doubled the number of participants in the training, maybe we can cut the time needed to provide the training in half and still provide one hundred percent of the material. Can we make the full day, off-site on-site a half-day, off-site on-site? No problem.
Great! Now that we are investing only a half day to the training maybe even more people in the organization will have time to take the training. Can we add another forty people to the training? No problem.
With eighty participants in the training -- all with pagers -- it seems likely that only about half of them will be able to pay attention to the material at any given time. Maybe we only need about half of the trainer's attention.
Can we pay the trainer half of the fee we agreed on? No problem.
Since only half the trainer is going to be present for only half the time that the training is scheduled for, can we develop half a matrix for half the participants? No problem.
Now that the matrix is half the size, we really don't need to take a whole half day. Can we provide the off-site on-site in two hours instead? No problem.
Given that we now have twice as many participants doing the training in a quarter of the time, we really don't need half the trainer's attention in the room. Can we provide two quarter day off-site on-site trainings with half the matrix at the same time? No problem.
Gee, now that we have so many participants in the training for such a short amount of time and all of them multi-tasking, can we create a web-based module of the training? No problem.
Fabulous. Now that we have the training on the web can we create a multi-media presentation with one quarter of the matrix that will take one sixteenth the bandwidth? No problem.
Well, since the training is on the web now, can we develop a virtual trainer who takes up one thirty-second of the presentation? No problem.
Since this is all going to be on the web, can we present about one-sixteenth of the one quarter of the matrix with just the trainer's voice? No problem.
Wonderful. There's just one more thing. HR needs some evaluation data from the workshop. Can we have a full evaluation of the one quarter of the one half of the whole day on-site off-site? No problem.
Since we are going to outsource the full evaluation of the one quarter of the one half of the whole day on-site off-site, could we use one half of the full evaluation with a focus group consisting of one-quarter of the original twenty senior managers? No problem.
Usually, we do a six-month follow-up to see how effective the workshop has been, but since we already have a focus group in place, can we give the follow-up at the same time as we do the evaluation? No problem.
Now then. Back to the American Question. In each of the seminars an American scholar asked Professor Piaget, "Is there any way to speed up the development of children?" The professor and his colleagues laughed good-naturedly because no one other than an American would have formulated such a question in that context. His answer was that yes there are ways to speed up the process, but the cost is dear. He pointed out that it is possible to train a seal to do tricks, but it is not possible for a trained seal to ever be just a seal again once the training is completed.