A short elevator ride changed how I think about wasted training budgets. I was on my way to the gym before running a session for a group of sales executives I had not yet met, looking forward to helping them rethink their results. I pressed the wrong button by mistake, apologized to the woman next to me for adding a stop, and the response she gave me said more about corporate learning than most surveys ever will.
A Throwaway Comment That Says Everything
She told me that every minute in the elevator was a minute she did not have to be in the conference room. I asked whether it was her last day in the session. It was not. She and her colleagues were booked in there all week. Her tone was not bitter. It was resigned, the kind of resignation you only get when something has become normal.
We have all been in that room. Reluctantly heading into a workshop where someone tells us what we should already know, shows little interest in us as individuals, and somehow expects us to care anyway. The cost of that experience is not just the time on the calendar. It is the disengagement people carry back to their actual jobs.
What This Costs Companies Every Day
Step back from one elevator and the picture gets harder to ignore. Companies spend millions of dollars a year on events that produce almost no behavioral change. The participants know it. The organizers often suspect it. The sponsors usually find out too late, if at all.
The economic waste is one layer. The deeper cost is what these sessions teach people about their own employer: that learning is something done to them, that their time is not particularly valuable, and that the standard for “good enough” is very low. Every dull, generic session quietly reinforces the idea that the status quo is acceptable.
The Alternative Looks Different on Day One
Effective behavior change is not a matter of more slides or longer programs. It is a matter of design. Sessions that actually move the needle share a few traits:
- They are built around specific behavioral outcomes, not topics to cover.
- They are co-created with the client so the content reflects the real environment people work in.
- They are experiential rather than informational, so participants practice rather than just absorb.
- They explain why before they explain what, because emotional buy-in is what carries the work back to the desk.
Done this way, organizations often spend less, get a better return, and produce events that people actually want to attend. The secret is not magic. It is treating learning as a business intervention rather than a calendar event.
Speak Up Before the Energy Drains Away
As we got to my floor, I suggested to the woman that she might not be alone. The thirty or forty colleagues sitting alongside her were probably feeling the same thing. They were equally empowered to walk in, name what was not working, and ask for something better. Her answer was honest: “They pay my bills.” I understand that response. Most people in most jobs would say the same.
But silence is the mechanism by which mediocre programs persist year after year. Sponsors assume the experience is fine because no one tells them otherwise. Vendors keep delivering the same content because no one demands more. The people who suffer most through bad sessions become the strongest evidence that nothing needs to change.
What This Means for Leaders
If you are a senior executive or someone responsible for development at your organization, the question is not whether your programs are popular. The question is whether they produce different behavior on Monday morning. If the answer is unclear, that is the answer.
Change does not happen by waiting for it to feel safer to ask for it. It happens when one person, in one room, politely refuses to let the status quo go unchallenged. That can be the leader, the organizer, or the participant in the back row who finally raises a hand. The shareholder value left on the table every day is real, and the cost of accepting average is paid in attention, talent, and trust long before it shows up in the budget.