The first thing to do is fire the old training guard

I have now been involved in many situations that have played out almost identically.

There is an innovative, typically "older gen-x" sponsor who either develops a custom simulation or brings in some off-the-shelf simulation. When the simulation is finished, the sponsor sends it out to some training power brokers for their input.

To be clear, at this point, the simulation either represents months of work, or is an award winning program with documented case studies of success.

In more cases than I care to count, the response from these old guards is "no, it will never work. Scrap the project." This is, of course, disheartening. So I often dig deeper. 10 times out of 10, when probed, I find out the same two things from the old guard.

First, they engaged in less than 10% of the whole program. So for a two hour program, they may have looked at 10 minutes.

Second, their "reasons" for dismissal were staggeringly capricious. "The font size is too small" or "the program both reads the text and shows the text at the same time which is counter to instructional methodology" or "I had to click the 'next' button too often."

To me, such counter-innovation smugness should be grounds for immediate dismissal. No graceful exit. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

It is one thing to say, "Sorry I don't have the time to review your program," or "I am so deep into my own experiment that my view is skewed" or "What happened in the focus groups" or even "I wish I could comment, but I am so far removed from the target audience as to not be valuable." It is another altogether to craftily do the least amount of work possible to "validate" a hastily-conceived intellectual position.

These people are clearly not serving the organization that pays them each month. What I don't understand is why they take the position that they do.

Here are some theories:

• Are they more scared that the new program will be a public failure or a public success? Failure might mean that all formal learning budgets are cut, while success might switch the balance away from their budget to someone else's.
• Do they truly believe in the validity of their own pettiness? Have they become so superstitions and intellectually brittle that they believe in a set of little rules as the key to success in formal learning programs? Is their circle of colleagues so narrow that they have feedbacked-looped their own theories into fact?
• Have they just learned to treat everyone as badly as they feel they have been treated? Are they mean because they can be mean?
• Are they, just by being in the profession of lecturing, far too comfortable giving out poorly thought out and researched positions as absolute fact?
• Do their minds get overwhelmed when they see media on a computer screen that is interactive and "game-like," causing them to thrash about in panic looking for something familiar and safe to intellectually judge and hit?
• Do they just have a rote process that they have developed for reviewing material that they are blindly applying?
• Do they resent being put in the place of a lowly student? Do they hate to learn?
• Are they simply insane?

Now, I admit that these comments haven't derailed any programs that I have tracked. But they sure take the wind out of a lot of great sails. (What is then amusing is seeing the smiling portraits of these old guard members in conference brochures next to blurbs about how innovative they are. I have heard some brag in public about programs they have tried to suck the support from in private. And honestly, either they are fabulous liars or they are truly unaware of their own hypocrisy.)

I get periodic bulk emails, letting me know that people who have been nothing but obstacles to the entire formal learning industry have retired, and each one fills me with rejoice. (Sometimes I even get personal emails from these old guard members asking for recommendations when they get appropriately sacked, which fills me with something else.)

That is why I often say at the beginning of conference presentations that everyone who has been in the industry for more than three years should leave, because they won't act upon anything I say. I pretend to joke but I am serious.

Sadly, if World War II created "the greatest generation," the baby boomers now in power in the formal learning industries have got to be the worst generation. Many have hoarded power by pandering to critics and cynics to ultimately lower the vision of the entire industry to using e-learning slide shows to teach people how to do simple processes and other test prep.

Thankfully, the wheels of time are relentlessly pushing the old guard out of the way. I just hope there is a profession left when they are done with it.