I’ve been reflecting on the training business a lot lately. Partly because I’ve been experimenting with some ideas at Edges of Work.
So much training seems to lure us in with offers of highly structured content. I get it. There’s something very alluring about that promise of “You will learn…” followed by several bullet points. It’s a sweet poison. On one level we are being comforted by how useful this course will be and how much we will benefit. But what’s that slight feeling of discomfort that sense of our pocket being fingered?
I think it’s that these reductionist lists also intimidate us. Oh we didn’t know how little we actually knew. If we don’t go on this course and learn the seven secrets, what chance do we stand of survival in this cruel world?
But these lists are a bit of a con. They are really reductions of the truth, not the real thing, and their inauthenticity is what, I reckon, accounts for that sinking feeling. When knowledge is reduced to content, the real life goes out of it.
