Appalling Lack of Security at Federal Facilities

What’s the solution?

July 8, 2009 newscasts cited alarming examples of security breaches at Federal facilities.  One report mentioned that a guard had allowed a baby in a carriage to pass through an x-ray machine.

So what’s the solution?  The one offered was “more training.”  Please!

I offer education programs as part of my business and one of the things I’ve learned over the years is that you can’t educate people who aren’t interested.  It doesn’t take training to know that sending a child through an x-ray machine endangers the child’s health.  Nor does lack of education explain why some guards didn’t even watch the screens as bags passed through the x-ray machines.

More plausible explanations are:

• poor hiring practices
• inadequate job rotation to minimize boredom on the job
• clear expectations
• a tracking system that allows the guards to measure their successes

Training is often the scapegoat of poor performance when, in reality, there are a whole host of factors that should be considered.  Ascribing failures to poor training leads to a larger investment in training with a very low probability that you’ll get a return on that investment.  I hope that the Congressional committee investigating these failures will realize that huge sums of taxpayer money are about to be wasted on training that won’t produce the desired result.

Although it doesn’t seem that it should be, it’s apparently counter-intuitive to understand that training can’t generate interest where none exists.  If you’re experiencing poor performance and the early indications are that employees just aren’t paying attention to what they should be doing, investigate the root causes of their disinterest.  You’ll save yourself a lot of the time, energy and money that’s typically wasted on training.

The 7 Steps to Becoming INVALUABLE program is designed to help you see more effective ways of doing business – ways that dramatically improve your bottom line while making your life easier.  In today’s blog I used Step 1, Contributory Negligence, to see that knee-jerk reactions to problems often lead to waste.  For more information on the 7 Steps to Becoming INVALUABLE visit www.furtwengler.com/7steps.htm.

If you’d like to receive a weekly email reminder with a link to The Invaluable Leader blog or if you’d like me to address specific topics, please send me an email at dale@furtwengler.com.  Please share your experience with our readers by posting a comment.