Harold, that's a hell of a cogent metaphor you make in your comments.

I was musing earlier today (might have been in a comment somewhere) that one reason traditional corporate training looks as measureable and as effective as it does is that so much other stuff happens to make it look good -- people survive information dumps, coworkers aid each other, little guerilla job aids emerge.

A side effect of this rudderless approach, though, is inefficiency and superstition: people doing something in this way mostly because that's how Ned did it, and Ned knew all about the system.

(Just to be clear -- by "rudderless" I mean traditional organizational training, low on front-end analysis and generally bereft of either transfer or on-the-job support.)