Most organizations know that training is important, but many of them fail at achieving their goals. They handle training poorly and waste valuable resources, and sometimes the outcome is worse than if they’d done nothing. Avoiding these pitfalls might seem difficult, but when they’re broken down and understood, training can improve anywhere. First, focus on the problem at hand. Understand the most important skills to develop on your team. Ask yourself what’s stopping your success, and what would lead to meaningful increases in productivity, creativity, capacity, or efficiency. Next, you must ensure employees will be engaged with the training. Ask them how training should be delivered, and incentivize participation. This doesn’t mean you should pay people to attend sessions, but you should offer material benefits or at the very least make it clear how the training will benefit them in their day-to-day tasks. Finally, you need to make sure the information presented in training is being retained. Solicit feedback and re-examine sessions. Develop metrics to understand if training is being used, and improve the mechanisms by which information presented in training is being applied to employees’ actual job duties.