Go sit next to Nellie over there, and copy her. The Industrial Age is gone, the Infor-mation Age is booming, but Nellie is still here, and with her the problems inherent in the training she can or cannot provide. Assembly lines no longer turn out any color of car so long as it is black.
Individual preference means variety.
Nellie and her fellow workers are now responsible for a myriad of different line items, in a staggering number of models and features. Nellie can no longer cope. Over a two-year period, ETS surveyed more than 100 companies, nearly every major company in Silicon Valley. Managers indicated that collectively the various approaches to training yield such a percentage when training is complete. But from Motor City to Silicon Valley, such low rates of proficiency are considered normal.