Training and development today

Corporate training is seldom focused on the motivational alone. While that was true 20-30 years ago, most corporate training and development now focuses on performance improvement. The key to improving performance is a systematic approach to identifying and solving the (performance) problem. Of course, training is ONE of the soutions. However, the breadth of skills needed including not only stand-up training but instructional design, student mateials development (including elearning development) learning project management, change management, change project management, working with subject experts and working with sponsors. This is a great platform of experience to the larger corporate T&D demand (the one that's a million times larger than motivational speaking). Now, I'm not saying that motivational speaking on topics like interpersonal communications, time management and leadership are unimportant. They are not. They are very important. However, they have a limited perspective in the larger organizational needs which include constant change, adaptation to technology, identifying process issues and reworking the work process, merger, acquisitions, downsizing, etc, etc. Corporate Learning and Development (L&D) is more about the corporate learning process than individual needs (though the individual needs are a factor).