Goldilocks Teaches Us About SeatS At TableS

Will Kenny, Best Training Practices

You all remember our old friend Goldilocks, who, like so many of the chief learning officers and training directors I have encountered, was looking for “a seat at the table”. Now, we are all inclined to think that Goldilocks was a bit fussy about things, such as the temperature of her porridge, but she did find a seat that was “just right” along the way.

Goldilocks, of course, was an individual, while the Three Bears were more like an organization. They had different seats suited to different “levels” of the organization, namely, the Papa, Mama and Baby Bear levels. And that organization was happiest, no doubt, when all the seats were in use, along with all the bowls of porridge, each seat the right size for the bear sitting in it, each bowl of porridge the preferred temperature.

If you are engaged in training or employee communication functions for a company of reasonable size, I’d encourage you to take less of a Goldilocks approach and more of a Three Bears approach. Specifically, don’t get too focused on one seat at one table!

Sure, it’s good when the head of training is regarded as a peer among executive management. But there is a limit to how much impact you can have on an organization solely from the executive suite.

If you truly want to influence how employees do their work, on how they contribute to carrying out the executive vision—and that’s where the return on investment in training actually comes from—you need relationships with other functions in the organizations. And having a seat at the table at the highest level is not, in itself, a relationship between functions.

Take a trip down your company’s organization chart to:

Make sure you know the key players at the next level down in other functions and departments;

Identify corresponding level players in your own training unit; and

Make sure that real conversations are going on, between your department and the others, at all levels, not just at the top.

Then, “rinse and repeat,” that is, have your staff carry this exercise down “recursively” through the next lower levels of the various departments.

As with the Three Bears, there is furniture of every size in a large organization, and not everything happens at the Papa Bear table. If “your people” aren’t regularly talking to “their people,” you are really doing things the hard way.

And you are probably leaving yourself vulnerable to the whims of external events and internal changes of philosophy. If the other Papa Bears aren’t hearing good things, often, about the training function from the lower levels of their own departments, they just aren’t going to support you as you would like when you try something new, or compete for resources in tough economic times.

My own view is that it takes more than just a Papa Bear to produce a happy household. An obsession with winning influence at the highest level—where it may be a fragile, all-or-nothing connection—may do less to build a truly lasting impact on the success of the organization than a patient, consistent and pervasive effort to integrate training concerns and good employee communication practices at more levels, more locations, more functions.

Only one seat was “just right” for Goldilocks, but all of the seats were “just right” for their original purposes and owners. Make sure that all the staff in your training department are working hard to hold comfortable seats at the right tables, and the entire company will be better off.