The weakness of Jitol lay in the difficulties of integrating this learning concept within the existing operational practices and patterns of the workplace and with historical training practices in most organizations. The potential of Jitol lies in the emergence of new practices, from outside of the narrow training and development perspective, that focus on enhanced performance, knowledge creation and dissemination and new approaches to managing highly skilled knowledge workers. While we are aware that traditional workplace learning practices, typically formal training sessions, are not optimal, it is also important to be aware of the power of historical practices and tradition as a significant barrier to change. In short, most trainers, managers, and employees are comfortable with the traditional formal training model. While training professionals and participants may intuitively be aware of many of the weaknesses of these practices, traditional training activities are all that they are familiar with.
Comfort leads to an unwillingness to change.
To be effective, Jitol, or later incarnations such as knowledge management, must be able to overcome these barriers and work carefully to establish new practices and norms. Some organizations, for example management consulting practices, have been very successful in introducing these new practices. However the changes have been driven by a very strong competitive and productivity challenge, as opposed to a sense that this is an interesting new approach to training. Therefore the changes have received top management support, reward and incentives structures have been introduced to support and reinforce these behaviors and finally, technologies have been carefully designed to link learning, knowledge management and existing work practices. In all cases, time must be seen as the critical scarce resource.