TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

Geoff has been involved in training and development since his early teens when he first started coaching Little League Baseball. A closer look at his family background might make his interest in education appear hereditary - his father worked at the University of Victoria, and his grandfather founded Davidson Business College in Saskatchewan before that.

 

"Inspired learning has always fascinated me," notes Davidson, "I'm always amazed by how dramatic the change in performance is between two people with exactly the same training - and I had to both understand why that is, and how to use that knowledge to make the learning experience more inspired for everyone who shows up with even the slightest interest. This took a lot more time and good deal more study than I'd thought it might, but over the years I've been fortunate enough to be part of a few great success stories".

 

Davidson has been a bit more than just involved with a few success stories - gaining recognition for his Five Levels of Learning and Three-cubed Learning Matrix, as well as even more attention for the unprecedented results from the Competency-based testing and training programs he helped to define, develop and deliver.

 

"You can't manage what you don't measure". While the principle seems fairly obvious in its simplicity, this is one of the hardest truths to put into real world best practices. Cause and effect are not always easy to connect across qualitative and quantitative outcomes, and none of the competency testing that Davidson found was up to the task of predicting actual on the job performance - or more importantly what was needed to use the results of those tests to improve that performance. This quest became the cornerstone of both Geoff's business and his academic efforts, finding a way to "Continuously improve training effectiveness". The results of his work are a series of Skills & Capabilities Assessments that are accurate predicters of current performance, and that also produce specific and targeted learning opportunities for immediate on the job performance improvements for the individual as well as across entire organizations.