In the late 90s and early 2000s, a particular prolific British footballer named David Beckham was known for passing and crossing the ball from acute angles and scoring goals from the free-kick position.
His biography later revealed that he had spent countless hours practising how to take those free-kicks. He even declared that he had practised taking free-kicks over ten thousand times. Again, I will say that again for those in the back and for further emphasis…” TEN THOUSAND TIMES”. I am not sure how many people can say that they have kicked a ball that many times in their entire life.
What that statement revealed to many people is that not everyone is born with specific skill sets. It takes a lot of dedication, hard work, and time to build your craft into an art form.
There are more than enough examples of this with musicians, artists, writers, and a slew of other professions. No one is born with a gift to be good at what they do. It takes an investment by developing the capacity to get people from the greenhorn level to an expert.
The same principle applies in the corporate world. The most successful professionals spend much time, directly and indirectly, developing their skillset of being great public speakers, wonderful strategists, creative entrepreneurs, and developers of people. None of these qualities was genetically handed down to these individuals. It was harnessed over many man-hours of repetitive tasks while learning from their mistakes each time and doing something different the next time.
Therefore, Training and Development will always be a critical component of the DNA of any organisation.
People are often recruited into positions at an entry-level or through recruitment exercises where talent is sourced from other companies. When said talent arrives in a company, they come with some basic skillset acquired either at an Institution of Higher Learning or a previous organisation.
However, to grow and thrive, they must continuously refresh these skills and add new ones to their toolbox. This process comes in the form of working closely with an L&D or Talent Management department that arranges for certain courses to be deployed in line with what is required of a role.
The only thing that is constant in life is change. Everything from weather patterns to human physiology is in a constant state of evolution. As organisations grow and become more dynamic and more diverse, so must their people. People, however, cannot evolve at the same pace as their organisations if they are not developed in line with the changes taking place around them.
Great organisations with extremely high retention rates of staff are known to have robust learning programs that ensure their people are constantly equipped with the knowledge and skills to meet up certain tasks and responsibilities.
When we think about the entire world going into a state of flux due to the COVID pandemic and how most organisations had to reimagine their products and services, you can only wonder if that need to survive through innovation also took into consideration how their people were carried along.
For the companies of the future to remain efficient, they must ensure that the people who are the engine blocks are given the tools they need to keep the trains running on time.
Written by:
Nwaji Jibunoh
Head of Training
