Teach IT: Why Staff Learning Beats Training

Most IT organizations offer their teams some form of training, yet few IT leaders bother to help members acquire useful knowledge.

Ron Delfine, executive director of career services at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, notes that there's a big difference between training and learning. "IT training is showing individuals how to perform and accomplish a specific task or tasks, while learning can be thought of as a process to apply knowledge across multiple contexts."

IT learning focuses on obtaining and developing IT knowledge and skills, while IT training is concerned with imparting and transferring a specific IT understanding and abilities, observes Susan Gershman, chief customer innovation officer at Prophix.

Learning is by nature a self-motivated activity that requires the learner to identify their skills gap and seek knowledge to fill that gap, adds Greg Shields, senior director of IT ops skills at online IT training firm Pluralsight. "Training, on the other hand, is more directed in nature."

Embracing Learning

Mike Saccotelli, director of solution delivery for SPR, believes the best way to encourage learning is to give team members the opportunity to work toward a goal and potentially fail. "Then help them identify what went wrong and how to do better next time," he says.

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Prophix offers hands-on learning and coaching tools to new customers, helping them to learn how to use the firm's financial performance management platform. "This enables them to get familiar and comfortable with the technology while building real life models specific to their business processes, versus a more traditional training session," Gershman says.

Managers and Mentoring

Delfine recommends mentoring as a relatively easy way to elevate training into learning. "Mentoring provides guidance, support, and industry insights to learners," he says. Mentors are typically experienced IT professionals who share knowledge and advice on a one-to-one basis. "Mentoring facilitates the transfer of practical skills, helps learners set goals, and provides ... networking and professional development opportunities," Delfine says.

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