A good friend of mine offered up this excerpt from a recent company newsletter…
Ron Z.
“….if you teach a man how to fish, you feed him for life.” This adage is the very essence of training. The reason some managers or supervisors get drained is because they don’t delegate. They don’t delegate because they feel they don’t have anybody to delegate to who’s adequately trained or maybe… it’s job security. Either way, training is vital in any organization especially if you or anybody wants to move up within. If you don’t train somebody under you to take over, you’re not going to move up. You need to train somebody to replace you. Did I say, “Getting Replaced?” Yes, I did. It’s scary, I know, but think about it. Unless, there’s somebody available to take over what you’re doing, whatever organization you’re working for will keep depending on you to keep on doing the same thing you’re doing right now and probably forever.
Additional Thoughts
Ron has some great points on how critical it is to create a cue of knowledgeable and capable employees in your workforce. Once you train your employees to where you wish them to be… you should then make advancement training available. Your intent is to create a cue of people waiting to advance professionally. You encourage this in many ways. For example, the first person trained for the job can be eligible for the promotion. They can also fill in when someone is sick or goes on vacation. This reduces much of the stress in the workplace.
Many forward-thinking companies are adopting a policy that each employee should have someone learning to perform their job, as well as be training themselves for another job. Their performance reviews are partially based on both their progress as well as the progress of their protégé.
-Andy