Training or Learning

I was chatting with a set of industry friends on importance of digital. My friends from analogue side of the business kept insisting that they all need more training to adopt digital. To that point I asked a very simple question – “how much more training is required before you’re confident in digital” – unfortunately none of them could give me a specific answer in terms of topics, number of hours, etc.

This conversation made me very sad. Advertising & Marketing industry is so much focused on receiving training rather than taking the initiative to learn. Most people give convenient excuse of ‘lack of enough training’ for not learning digital. What they fail to understand is no amount of training can make you confident unless you learn things and then practice to master them.

After having spent 20 years on the Internet I still wake up thinking ‘oh god so much to learn today’ and spend at least 30-60 minutes learning new things. I have never attended a digital training program but it hasn’t stopped me from learning all things new. And believe me I’m not alone as I see millions of professional learning on their own.

I think it is high time for the industry to ‘stop’ receiving training and ‘start’ learning.