The quote is from Hamlet, the drawing from the New Yorker Magazine.
One of the best things about a classic liberal arts education is that it prepares students for life, for being as it were. After they graduate they may navigate challenges that are very different from what they expected or desired. If their education sound though, their readiness is all that is needed to prevail.
Training on the other hand prepares employees to do a job, for working rather than being. The aim of most training is compliant behavior. If you are trained to do something, then you'd better produce anticipated results. They are what matter, not the knowledge and abilities you acquired.
But what if you were trained to do something that is different from what your job actually requires? This happens all the time, because employees are trained to perform normative behaviors and there are just too many exceptions. With training limited to what they do versus who and what kind of people they are, their performance may turn out to be both compliant and wholly inadquate. You experienced this when you received "bad customer service" from a worker who is assiduously following the rules.
Being trained just to follow the rules was a factor in the meltdowns on Wall Street and Fukushima. When minimally trained workers come up against the unknown and unexpected, they lose their bearings and control. They are more likely to go with the flow than stand ready to correct it.
On the other hand, when well educated human beings confront the unexpected, they may be guided by wisdom. Doesn't mean they'll succeed every time, but they are much less likely to cave and be swept away.
I have said that my favorite book about training is Lone Survivor, which describes the school for Navy SEALs. Sailors are trained not just to do things, but to do anything that may conceivably become their objective. Not by following patterns, but by recognizing and understanding patterns of experience and mastering them with the aid of core values and innate strengths.
Imagine a training curriculum that endows students with "wisdom" and makes them "ready" rather than just capable. You experienced one in college, if you attended a good school, and that made you a more desirable job candidate. But ironically you haven't experienced it at work - and you haven't created the experience for others.
Why? Or more aptly, why not?
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