Individual Learning Plans LO13993

Vana Prewitt (vprewitt@mail.rdu.bellsouth.net)
Wed, 18 Jun 1997 20:30:34 -0700

Replying to LO13972 --

Mark:

Thank you SO much for clarifying my point. And I must say that it is both
wonderful and astounding to discover how different the experiences of
similar people can be.

You say that you have worked ONLY for companies that implement annual
learning plans. I am 44 and have worked for more than 15 companies, only
2 of which implement annual learning plans. BOTH of my employers treated
the annual performance reveiw and development plan very seriously. My
performance as a manager dependeded on my staff meeting those objectives,
so I took it seriously as did they.

Bottom line: if management is held accountable all the way to the top,
then individual development plans work.

So sorry you have not experienced this. Truly, it's wonderful.

Vana

Marc Sacks wrote:

> I don't think I've ever worked at a company that doesn't have some
> document of this sort. What's important is not the document but the
> reality behind whether management really cares about it. In general,
> development discussions on paper and in a meeting aren't worth the time it
> takes to think about them, except for the employee's self-knowledge.
> Critical aspects are an excuse for limiting raises, while the good points
> only get acknowledged in the form of compliments. As for development
> plans, good luck. I won't say they don't exist, only that they're
> implemented poorly if at all.
>
> What I'd like to see is reality testing of development plans: has the
> employee taken courses X, Y, Z? Has her manager made sure the course work
> can be put to use? Does the manager's manager care enough to make
> subordinates' goals part of the manager's objectives?
>
> This may be happening somewhere, for all I know. I wait patiently for the
> day when management is so enlightened that nobody sees the point of
> Dilbert cartoons. As long as senior management, and the shareholder
> culture that supports it, remains focused on short-term monetary results,
> I don't see much hope for this type of change in most corporations, at
> least for now. It's about as likely, say, as the fall of Communism in the
> Soviet Union was in Brezhnev's days.

-- 

Vana Prewitt <vprewitt@mail.rdu.bellsouth.net>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>