Focus.  Learning.  Behavior change.  Those are three things that don’t happen until something becomes relevant.

One of the biggest challenges facing healthcare is getting people to change their lifestyles.  We all know that we shouldn’t smoke or overeat.  That we should stay away from salty foods and avoid high-cholesterol products.  But how many of us do that?  For that matter, how many of us go to the gym regularly?

We know what we are supposed to do, we just don’t do it.  Why?

I believe it’s for the simple reason that it is hard to change behaviors until they become meaningful.  Which is exactly why people who have a medical “scare” seem to change their lives.  We all know someone who had a bout with cancer, and now are healthier than ever.  Or someone who had a mild heart attack and now cuts out the fat and junk in their diet.  It’s not as if their knowledge changed.  They knew prior to the heart attack that eating that third hamburger from McDonald’s wasn’t a good idea.  But that knowledge had no meaning.  Only when it became relevant did their diet change.

The same is true for work.

You can have world class training programs, but if you can’t connect the training to something meaningful, they will be completely ineffective.  If you can’t show the relevance of the training to their work, you might as well not even bother with the training.

Photo provided by flickr