Google "employee training" and "data analytics" and you'll find a wealth of articles and resources to assist you in analyzing the "big data" associated with managing a workforce of individuals.

This month The Training Doctor had an interesting experience with "little data." Rather than having thousands of data points and crunching the numbers in oh, so many ways, we analyzed a finite period of time (one week), across three organizations, for one specific job-task in under 4 hours, to determine:

• There was a training need for the population

• That need was NOT what we thought it originally to be

• Management needed to be aware that the lack-of-skills in this area / population was rippling throughout the organization and causing "poor performance" in other areas

With this very specific look at the data we were able to pinpoint a problem - and solution - in a matter of hours.

Another interesting "ah-ha" moment was that analyzing the data was NOT the original approach (nor even the second approach) we attempted to conduct the analysis. This is when you need to be chummy with your IT department. Ask them - what kind of information do we collect in X area? How can we access it? What does it show us?

The data WE analyzed showed us things we weren't even looking for or expecting to find; but seeing the repetitive nature of the data made it quite apparent where the process breakdown was occurring. It was also helpful to see that same data across three organizations to "prove" that it wasn't an anomoly at one organization. The data gave us the 30,000-foot view we needed to see the "big picture" (not the big data).