Training and development are critical for success in your career or as a contributing member of your company. Therefore, it makes sense that companies spend ~100B annually on investments in employee training. According to LinkedIn’s 2021 Workplace Learning Report, this investment number will climb higher.

I have been the beneficiary of working for two companies that invested millions of dollars into their internal solid training programs. However, that does not mean it was effective or beneficial for everyone who attended. Both did an excellent job, yet I would be surprised if they got half of their return on investment. I believe Tim Ferriss’ minimum effective dose methodology to learning could change the game for companies in upskilling their current team.

Tim Ferriss wrote a book called “The 4-hour Chef“; the book’s premise is not cooking, but that cooking is the vehicle to teach how to learn, retain, and attain. To summarize and simplify, he takes the Pareto Principle or 80/20 and applies it to learning anything. His point is that you do not have to be an expert on many different skills and areas of learning. It does not make sense to learn all the nuances and the ins and outs of something when you could spend a lot less time to have strong comprehension.

We work to apply this approach to our LinkedIn training, mastery course, and coaching. What gets results and creates efficiencies is the focus. In general, leadership, human resources, sales, and marketing teams do not need to know all of the buttons and features on LinkedIn. They need to know that if they focus a couple of hours on LinkedIn each week, they will be effective, efficient, and see results for their specific goals. Sure, it would be great if they knew everything about LinkedIn, but that is not a practical or good use of time.

As a result of reframing training and development investments and curriculum in what is the minimum effective dose to get my team better at X to reach our goals, you will see a smaller training budget and more substantial results. Of course, this does not work for subject matter experts because they need to know all the details of their area of focus. Applying a strategy and identifying what each person needs to know for their current role and potential future roles in the company will serve you well.