by Eddy Parham, SPHR

A few months ago, I was driving through several Mid-Western states and noticed a lot of silos. For those unfamiliar with agrarian storage devices, a silo is a tall cylindrical device used to hold grain. And each silo only contains one type of grain. As I drove along, I began to think about a different type of silo – the one where an organization and/or its employees become so focused on current products or current skill sets that they become a silo of sorts. Essentially the organization and its employees store only one type of grain. Allow me to explain my thinking.

We live in an ever changing world. In my lifetime I’ve already seen electronic data storage go from 4 kilobytes of memory weighing in at a whopping 100 lbs. to being able to hold more than 64 gigabytes in my hand; from magnetic tape drives to floppy disks to CDs to jump drives to cloud storage; Personnel Departments transitioning from recruiting, benefits, and payroll to more holistic Human Resources Departments that are becoming a strategic partner within organizations.

Some of these changes involved growing upward by employees who needed to keep their skills current or organizations that kept product offerings relevant within the same market segment. However, in order for an organization and its employees to stay relevant, additional development needs to occur.

Training is necessary to keep skills current, development is necessary to remain relevant. It is no longer enough to expect that training will keep employees on the cutting edge. They must develop their skill sets and this may involve learning things that at first don’t appear to be relevant to their current position. Think of the secretary who knew shorthand or was a whiz with the IBM Selectric. Now I understand that there are those who view the computer as a passing fad, but if that secretary did not develop then chances are they are no longer employed. You see, training would be how to change out the ribbon on the typewriter; development is understanding the changing landscape and learning software programs that either will be used or are starting to emerge in the workplace. Another way to think of the differences is this: Training is maintaining and Development is a reinvention.

By just focusing on training both the employee and the organization will stay in a silo whereas development will allow for growth and relevancy. For the record, I’m not a silo hater – I believe that silos are great for storing grain but if either an employee or an organization stay in one, the silo will be their death trap.