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Business & Education: Some Uncommon Sense About Learning — Part 1
High-performing employees are no different than gifted students, nor are the approaches for creating them
When the “Johnnie Can’t Read” stories began attracting national attention in the United States during the 1970’s, the educational “crisis” was seen to be primarily the problem of professional educators and parents. It was almost another decade before expressions of concern began to creep into the business press. Escalating portions of training budgets devoted to remedial skills were the first warning signs. The greatest concern, however, was evoked by a gradually dawning realization that, even if the “basics” were well taught, traditional education systems were still producing workers who were ill-equipped to deal with the increasingly complex demands of work in the 1980’s, let alone the 90’s and beyond. As increasing numbers of businesses move toward team based structures and delegated leadership and decision making, this concern has launched a widening search — in the schools and at the workplace — for more successful ways to prepare people for modern business.
Two independent, yet fundamentally similar, efforts — a ground-breaking eight-year-old educational research and development project, and a thirty-year-old approach to organization development — offer valuable insights into what those ways might…
