Rummler had a quote that I really loved.

From his 1981 presentation at Motorola – captured in this 45-minute video on YouTube (below).

“… okay you guys put in the knowledge and skills and somehow with a little bit of luck we’ll get this out the other end and it’s very much like pushing 50 feet of wet rope to make that happen. So I’m a firm believer that you pull performance out, rather than you push behavior in. We’ve got to link individual performance to organization performance, and if we don’t do that, it’s basically all over as a performance-based training game.”

This video is so good that I watch it several times a year. Now that Geary has left us, it’s one of the ways that I can get a Rummler Booster shot.

BTW – That quote is at the 4:54 mark.

Doing a Learning Strategy in isolation from the Business Strategy and its strategies and tactics for Performance Improvement of the Current State and/or getting ready for some Future State – tells me that you don’t have much business sense.

The Ends of the Means of a Learning Strategy is Performance Improvement in terms of Measured Business Results and not Measured Learning Activities.

And those Measured Performance Improvements better line up pretty squarely with the HIGH STAKES ISSUES of the Enterprise.

Or, as the man said, “It’s game over.”

Book #20 Is On the Horizon

I’m hoping to have this out by mid-year. Unless Life/Life Issues intervene.

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