Running Training Like a Business: Delivering Unmistakable Value

Many of today's business leaders champion learning as essential to business success, backing their belief with massive investments in Training and Development (T&D). In fact, T&D investments reach $56 billion per year in the U.S. alone. In this era of unprecedented opportunity, the time is right for T&D to become a full-fledged "player" in the world of business.
At issue, the authors contend, is T&D's inability to seize this opportunity and deliver unmistakable value to its most influential customers-the exectuvies who pay for trainiing services but are unable to see clear business value being returned on their companies' training investments. The authors also contend that T&D must alter the traditional precepts that keep it "separate form the business" and "out of the loop" strategically.
Van Adelsberg and Trolley suggest that the key to delivering unmistakable business value lies in transforming T&D-in spirit and in practice-from a funciton to a business. The authors draw on their experiences working inside Moore Corporation, DuPont, Mellon Bank, Kaiser Permanente, Texas Instruments, and other top businesses to illustrate how "Running Training Like a Business":
1. Eliminates the many hidden costs of training;
2. Re-focuses T&D from delivering training content to addressing business issues;
3. Makes T&D a full stategic partner in business decision making;
4. Ensures that training measurement is "baked in, not bolted on";
5. Improves the effectiveness and efficiency of internal and/or external T&D organizations.
Trolley and van Adelsberg lead the reader through a proven four-step process for transforming traditional training organizations into training enterprises capable of delivering unmistakable value, quarter after quarter and year after year.

David van Adelsberg is Chief Executive of Forum Europe Limited and Executive Vice President of The Forum Corporation. He oversees all of Forum’s operations in Europe and is responsible for multinational accounts. Edward A. Trolley is a Senior Vice President of The Forum Corporation responsible for development and leadership of Forum’s Training Management business.
Ed Trolley was then Manager of Training and Education for DuPont, a 110,000-person multinational corporation. Over the preceding 23 years, he had held line leadership positions in three different DuPont strategic business units and two functional units. David van Adelsberg had joined Forum in 1992 after holding a variety of sales, marketing, and management positions in both an entrepreneurial start-up and IBM, where he helped pioneer IBM’s entry into “out- sourcing” of information systems management. Trolley and van Adelsberg blended their experience and perspective to conceive and then implement the strategic insourcing concept described in Running Training Like a Business.