Education is an important part of expanding people’s capabilities—if it’s handled right. Many companies are almost promiscuous about it, offering cornucopias of generic courses in management or leadership and putting far too many people into them. In one company I know every bonus-eligible manager went through the executive development program. It was an absolute waste of time for 50 percent of them. You need to make judgments about which people have the potential to get something useful out of a course and what specific things you’re trying to use education to accomplish, in order to expand
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