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Building Business Acumen for Trainers: Skills to Empower the Learning Function

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---->Remember the old Robert Burns quote, "Oh, would that God the gift would gee us, to see ourselves as others see us"? (Modern business equivalent: "What do we look like to the customer?") This book is a unique tool that grants us this very top-down and outside-in perspective; it's a Google Earth for the business of training.
---->Terrence Gargiulo and his associates have provided a unique, full panorama here of training as seen by business management. Probably half of the fit into any field of work involves mastering its buzzwords. So we need to be talking the business language that management wants to hear, and this book begins immersing us in "their" terms, beginning early in the first chapter.
---->You can use this book to make a good training department better. The book can not only stand as a textbook for academic programs in T&D but, even nicer, can be grist for team meetings and staff development sessions at work.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Dozens of sections are so concise and useful that you will want to dog-ear and tag them for quick retrieval. Here are eight of my favorites:.
1--The "Break Even Analysis" (including terms) section, pp. 64-67, plus the CD-ROM file.
2--The ROI chapter (Cht. 3) gives Kirkpatrick's 4 Levels of Evaluation, p. 83.
3--"Values Not Demonstrated Through ROI Analysis", p. 101.
4--"Ten Question to Ask Before Turning to An Outside Vendor", p. 120.
5--"Seven Negotiating Tips", p. 149.
6--Ready-to-Use RFP Form in Cht. 4 of the CD-ROM. Why reinvent the wheel?
7--"Top Five Critical Success Factors for Successful Partnerships", pp. 179-191.
8--"Making Effective Presentations" (Cht. 12, p. 315-), including "Delivery Do's and Don'ts", p. 327-). A training manager could make a whole master class (TTT) out of this chapter for staff, even utilizing the web sites on p. 342. In fact, I hope someone will.
READABILITY:
---->Good phrases of no-nonsense advice jump out throughout the book: "Plan out the work to create the RFP", "Get what you contract for", etc.
---->There are marvelous "Thinking Like Management" inserts beginning right with the first "Financial Basics" chapter on p. 18. These inserts resurface throughout the book and are helpfully condensed into Appendix 3 (p. 349).
---->Most chapters feature a Review Quiz to be sure you have mastered fundamentals.
---->There are many URLs that will give current information, and that includes a list of them on the accompanying CD-ROM.
FULL-BODIED POINT-OF-VIEW:
---->True to today's project management thinking, the perspective of the book is business-wholistic, covering the three domains: 1) managerial/financial, 2) organizational and 3) technical (production-focused). The stool cannot stand without all three legs. "5: Building Institutional Support" and "6: Partnering with Your Customers" are chapters rightly included as business topics, and not as marginal "OD fluff". Business happens through people and their relationships, and there's no shortcutting that.
---->Similarly, "8: Human Performance Technology" shows systems thinking in action so that, for example, you're "Making Sure Training Solves the Right Problem" (p. 238). There are no missing pieces in this assembled jigsaw puzzle.
A WELCOME FOUNDATION:
---->I can foresee this book's becoming a standard text and emerging in fresh editions and revisions for years. As trainers, we have to get outside the box and stay there. That's where the instructions are: and you'll find them in this great book.