Idea in Brief

The Problem

Companies are dumping billions of dollars into training and development programs—but their investments aren’t paying off.

The Reason

Six common managerial and organizational barriers prevent people from applying what they’ve learned, no matter how smart and motivated they are.

The Solution

To create a favorable context for learning and growth, senior executives must first attend to organizational design—both at the very top and unit by unit.

Corporations are victims of the great training robbery. American companies spend enormous amounts of money on employee training and education—$160 billion in the United States and close to $356 billion globally in 2015 alone—but they are not getting a good return on their investment. For the most part, the learning doesn’t lead to better organizational performance, because people soon revert to their old ways of doing things.

A version of this article appeared in the October 2016 issue of Harvard Business Review.