The Dark Secret Of Hr

The Dark Secret
of HRD

Four Things You Need to Know to Stop
Wasting Money on Training

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Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2011, Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
PERMISSION - Readers have permission to make copies of the PDF file of this eBook to give to others for
educational purposes.

Published under the copyright laws of the Library of Congress of The UnitedStates of America by:
Performance Support Systems, Inc.,
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Contents
Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................4
How We Got into the Training Business—And Why We Got Out .................................................6
Reality #1 - The Dark Secret Is Exposed .....................................................................................13
Reality #2 – How Work Habits Are Created: The Message from Brain Science...........................16
Reality #3 – What Brain Science Says about Changing Work Habits ...........................................20
Reality #4 – No High Performance without Core Strengths ........................................................25
People Skills Are Hard Skills, Not Soft Skills ................................................................................28
PersonalStrengths are Core Strengths ......................................................................................32
Connecting the Dots ..................................................................................................................37
What It Takes to Make Training Stick ........................................................................................40
Why We Created ProStarCoach ................................................................................................44
Virtual Coaching and the Coaching Network .............................................................................47
Your Future Employees: Individual Achievers and Rising Stars...................................................51
Are You Ready to Ask the Hard Questions?...............................................................................54

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Executive Summary
The purpose of this book is to inform you about four poorly understood realities
related to employee performance. The failure to acknowledge these four facts has
caused organizations in the U.S. to waste nearly $100 billion every year on learning
and development programs that fail to change behavior.The book explains why this
horrible condition has persisted for decades, and what to do to get maximum ROI from
your investment.
REALITY #1: Most of the money invested in learning and development is wasted. This
is what I call the “dark secret of HRD.” Organizations that invest in training aren’t
getting what they paid for. Not even close. The reason is that in the long run, what
peoplelearn about in training usually isn’t applied in the workplace. This truth has
been on the street for a long time, but for various reasons the message hasn’t reached
top management.
REALITY #2: At work, people usually don’t think about how to act; instead, they
automatically engage ingrained work habits. In a typical workplace, there’s a lot going
on and employees have a lot to think about....