Case Study: You are serving as a consultant to a training manager of a large and well known speaker manufacturing company. In your initial discussion with him, it is revealed that he has no organizational budget for the year. Also, he needs to finance his department by selling his training services to the rest of the company. In doing so, he has to offer better and less expensive services than outside consultants. How would this training manager use the concept of alignment to help market his services?

For this discussion, assume the training manager has three main customers within his organization. Also assume his training department has three highly experienced trainers. How would you allocate your staff to ensure alignment? You could ...

1. Organize your staff as a pool to ensure maximum flexibility.Each instructor would be available to work with any department. This may be more efficient than the next option, especially with common programs.
2. Assign an instructor to support each group. The instructorswould be responsible for their own groups and minimally involved with the others. This helps ensure instructor ownership and build relations.

Flexibility and efficiency versus ownership and relations - which would you choose and why?

How else mightyou ensure alignment between training and your customers?