Throwback Thursday: The ankle bone's connected to the bottom line?

A classic article for Bob Pike's Creative Training Techniques newsletter.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

This article was written by Bob Pike and originally published in 2015.

Do you remember the song about how the various bones in the body connect? "The hip bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the knee bone" and so forth? Training and performance are a lot like that old song. Virtually everything connects to something else.

Here's what I mean. Suppose we start with an individual's performance. Why do we care? We care because a job needs to be performed at or above a certain level. Why? Because the job involves production and delivery of goods or services that are the basis for an organization’s survival and growth.

What if we do a great job training people to create products or services that the marketplace doesn’t want? Then we have a problem. The organization may not survive even if workers do their jobs perfectly.