Training is dead, long live the transformation. Towards a new training strategy in Latin America
Latin America suffers from a common evil, the low competitiveness of its workers. By the way, there are countries that are better than others, a question that is easily verifiable with their respective GDP, but this does not ensure at all that the employees, especially in the production lines, are at the level of their equivalents in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and other impressive exponents of Asia. Neither with those of Europe or the USA.
On the other hand, perhaps influenced by the magical realism of García Márquez or Alejo Carpentier, we see ourselves with potentialities that seem to be within reach, but that always go away…. Perhaps the youth of our nations, with 200 years of independence on average, make our dreams of greatness seem realities, but that abruptly crumble at the first earthquake, fire, flood and all the catastrophe looming in our territories, exposing our horrible realities.
Chile, for example, boasts the highest per capita income in LA, but with the almost most unfair income distribution on the planet; Argentina, with one of the most educated populations in the region, is struggling from crisis to crisis; Uruguay has managed to alleviate somewhat the disappointment of the few inhabitants who do not emigrate thanks to an enormous show of heroism, but neutralized by common evils; Brazil, the great giant, also shows off its enormous contradictions…. We could continue with all the Latin countries up to Rio Grande, but this is not an article on economic geography or on topics that are already written enough and lamented by all.
Instead, the previous introduction has one objective: to highlight that we do it wrong on almost all fronts (except corruption) and in a very special way in the "training" of our workers. We have highlighted the concept of training in quotation marks, because we believe that there is "the mother of all problems." In fact, it is the Achilles heel of our dreams of progress.
To be brief, a quick tour of Cinterfor with its dictionary of definitions of labor competencies in all countries or by the government agencies of those same countries that outline occupations by competencies and deploy individual “training” plans, with certifying bodies in the purest style Australian, Spanish or Canadian, demonstrate once again our fundamentalist attachment to bureaucracy and the conceptual error of “formation”, which is precisely what keeps us from Asian countries day by day.
Ultimately, these are at least two strategic errors, which we detail below:
The first is the decoupling of the “formative” strategies from the evaluation process. Indeed, evaluation has always been the tail-wagon of education, in whatever form, that is, it is the last thing that is applied, whether at the end of a thematic unit or a complete course. The evaluation thus conceived is a measuring instrument, which does not differ from what happens with the boiler operator, who looks at the clocks to check for dropped parameters. As in boilers, in the traditional evaluation system, the alarms only come on when the Gaussian bell goes out of adjustment.
Ignoring that a good "training" necessarily requires participatory andragogic methodologies and assuming that Piaget and Vygotsky's discourse works in all its dimensions, we have still detected that evaluation continues to be a measuring instrument and not a tool of the "training".
From our perspective, the evaluation integrated into the transfer process is as or more important, because applied from minute 1 it allows making adjustments, according to type, quantity, gender, age, etc. of the participants in the course. But in addition, all activities must be evaluated on a continuum, either by the facilitator, the participants, the participant (self-evaluation) and all the previous together. It is about everyone evaluating the product of knowledge, skill and behavior acquired in the process. Of course, it is relevant that the facilitator instantly detect drops in attention and motivation, errors in process, successes, etc. For this, it must have the necessary methodological levers to ensure that 90% of its participants, at least,acquires the learning objectives defined for the course.
Indeed, the Gaussian bell must be misadjusted, but to the right and up, towards the effective achievement of "training", without fear, because success is in that everyone acquires the competences… it is important to highlight this, because in our culture there is tendency for the teacher to be very demanding, which is demonstrated by high levels of disapproval. This that occurs in schools and universities, is replicated as a model in the instructional processes of companies… a big mistake, here the glory of the facilitator lies in the fact that all or almost all acquire the skills and are "more productive workers."
From these last words in quotation marks we rescue the second and, in our opinion, the most serious defect of the Latin American training models: they are all "formative", that is, they are constructed in such a way that they finely link the competences of a profile with training modules, whose learning objectives are directly aimed at instructing workers who have deficits in their performance or those who freely exercise a trade, are evaluated and are also detected less than optimal levels compared to the most relevant aspects (sometimes also the irrelevant ones). to one or more competition.
It seems logical that an instructional process based on competencies should aim at the acquisition of these competencies. The purpose, as has been said, is to make man more productive, as if he were the gear of a machine, which with a little padding on the shaft, better lubrication and other adjustments will produce more tomato jars.
However, even on the assumption that 100% effectiveness is achieved and the workers are perfect components of the machinery, this higher productivity does not ensure the sustainability of the company.
Does this mean that making our workers more competent is a waste of money? At all, what we want to affirm is that the training plans, as we know them, are insufficient and that what is really required are “Transformative Plans”.
What this is about: the need for transfer-acquisition processes to significantly incorporate transformative nuclei, such as: systemic thinking, creative thinking, innovation tools, problem solving, among others. Many of these topics are addressed in diplomas or courses for senior management; We are convinced that nesting these skills in the upper floors of the company are of very little use. The 21st century worker, who is the one who will give sustainability to the company, is the one who must know and apply these and other tools, such as management tools.
Transformation, viewed in this way, affects not only the empowered worker, but the entire organization. This should be "flattened", reducing their ranks and hierarchical attributions, also the salary differences… it is quite a revolution, certainly, but it is the only way we can see to make the qualitative leap that our peoples demand.
We believe that this innovative concept requires a lot of feedback from all of us who think and act in the world of training in LA, we want to leave the communication lines open, so that opinions and ideas are collected and published in all the places where possible… revolutions always start between 4 walls.
