With the rise of AI and robotics, the need to “train” a person is fading quickly. Jobs that can be easily trained are quickly being replaced by machines, while jobs that require deeper insights and skill continue to grow.
Sol Price, the founder of Price Club (which became Costco) said it simply:
“You train an animal, you teach a person”
Or as Seth Godin said in his book “Linchpin”:
“There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.”
Related is a quote from Jim Sinegal, one of the other cofounders of Costco, who said:
“If you’re not spending 90% of your time teaching, you’re not doing your job.”
Training is what we needed in the last century, but things are very different today. A few years ago, Seth wrote and shared a long post about the purpose of school and how things need to change. For decades, the purpose of school was to train obedience so that students would become good factory workers. That worked well for that stated purpose, but it’s no longer the goal. Training students to be obedient is training them for jobs that no longer exist.
Seth also did a TEDx talk years ago with some great examples from the post, which you can watch here:
If you feel like you have to “train” your employees, you have roles that aren’t going to be around much longer.
