In the recent down economy, internal training departments
sometimes seemed to be the first to feel the effects of downsizing. In these
cases, it seemed that the battle was
actually lost months or years earlier, as training developed an internal
reputation as a soft discipline unconcerned with business impact (and so easy
to scale down). In other words, the departments, fairly or not, were perceived
as not really making a difference, as producing a series of events that could
be quickly forgotten. In other cases, these departments may even...