Nice article Shannon. It is tragic how many organizations treat the whole concept of performance management so poorly. Regarding ROI, what I continue to stress to my peers it is absolutely critical that training departments become performance organizations focusing their efforts on what is needed to accomplish the corporate strategy.

This is a topic I am deeply concerned about with respect to the United States maintaining its stature in the world economy. The causes however are deep-rooted and relate in large part to what I consider to be a root cause for many issues, the lack of effective parenting including the development of core values during our children's development years. We have in effect "outsourced" the rearing of our children to day care centers who at best focus on entertaining to get through the day. We have isolated our children from having to experience menial work while foriegners assume these roles. I am not sure how to fix this except one child at a time, beginning with our own children.