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The Learning Curve
Most people's work quality does improve with age. The exceptions tend to be in clothes modeling and sports. However, each of us can probably say we make more money than we did 20 years ago. This is of course driven by being better at our profession. Knowledge increases with age for most our lives. It affords us the efficacy (efficiency and effectiveness) to be rated from "very good" to "excellent" at what we have chosen to do.
As we look at our subordinates, we know this applies to them as well. Our people have grown in their skills and it has allowed us more time to work at the important / urgent tasks that drive the profit dollars. Our subordinates of tenure, in turn, earn a higher wage than average.
All this works to our benefit in the construction industry. However, how do we increase this phenomenon to our advantage? How do we speed up this learning curve?
Certainly, this is why all the industry focus on training. Taking some of the curve out of the learning curve is the object of training. To be clear about the construction industry, we are unique. Some of the training concepts that are well accepted in other industries don't fit us. If we are make training a strategic advantage over our competitors, we must see insights most others don't.
For my part, I have several observations and some conclusions. As a double check on my work, I can look to the industry for proof although somewhat anecdotal. To be fair, our industry is so fragmented and also mostly privately held, deep research is hard to come by much less conduct.
On other posts, we will examine some of the generally accepted rules for training, and why/why not they drive the result we want.
Posted by Matt Stevens at February 17, 2008 4:07 AM