One on One with PwC's Andrew Wolff

With the economy in trouble, it can be easy to push off training initiatives. But that's exactly the wrong move, says Andrew Wolff of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Wolff spoke with Consulting magazine about training strategies and philosophies, and making sure firms are getting as much  "bang for [their] training dollars" as possible.

Consulting: You recently gave a presentation during a Consulting magazine Webinar in which you talked about the importance of going past "awareness-level training." Can you explain what that is, and why firms need to go beyond it?

Wolff: Awareness-level training is where training organizations frequently spend a lot of their time. And typically the task is to tell someone about something that's happened. And in the grand scheme of things, that stuff's important. If you look at a sales organization or something like that, it can be really, really important because you can't sell a product if you don't know what the product is or why people want it. It's also something that you can do much more efficiently and sometimes more effectively other ways that are a lot simpler than training.