I’ll admit it – I was afraid the first time someone at my old job brought up using off-the-shelf resources (OTS) to augment our training plan. In that moment, my mind went straight to my jump to conclusions mat and landed on “now your services won’t be needed anymore”.
Sometimes, it can feel dangerous or scary to bring in an off-the-shelf provider. Before joining an off-the-shelf company, I was wary of OTS providers for a few reasons – one was that I didn’t think they could live up to my standards (I was wrong) and another deep down secret that I held was that I thought that if I brought an OTS solution to the table, that leadership would think “well why don’t we just use OTS for everything then?!” and I would be out of a job.