Rx for High Performance: More Training, in More Advanced Skills

Coming up on 25 years of performing research studies about project management topics, I just want to take a moment to showcase something that each and every of these studies has found:

High-performing organizations train more people, for more days, in more advanced topics.

Period. That's the message. I tell people this practically every time I blog or present, but I wonder if it reaches the right ears because we still run across stories in the news about companies cutting training programs when times get hard. I wonder if those who cut training budgets have considered it this way: what will more positively impact your business--better performance or more poorly trained staff?

The "training=performance" message was reinforced again this year in our newest study, Project Management Skills for Value Delivery. Participants in the study who scored as high performers (that is, they scored in the top quartile of the study on an array of performance measures) also reported training a wider array of roles throughout the organization on a wider array of topics, including things like change management, benefits realization and critical thinking. Just as it's not just project managers who need to understand how projects work, it isn't only project management knowledge that project managers need to excel. Especially in the era where AI is predicted to take over a lot of the "science" side of a project manager's job, the human and creative skills must receive our attention, our time and our training dollars. Communication, collaboration, strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, team leadership ... the average project manager has focused primarily on the technical aspects of the profession, when it's the art of project management that makes it so powerful.

Low-performing organizations in our studies stand out for training not only less, but on the wrong topics. They are stuck on software training, which is of time-limited usefulness, and which does nothing to improve the trainee's ability to function in a dynamic, diverse, team-based workplace.