One of the Designing Leaders’ team members had a bit of a travel glitch recently. On his way to the airport to fly to Hong Kong he knew he was in trouble when he got a call that a typhoon approaching the city was going to be bad and they would be canceling the event the next day. The problem was not so much that the seminar was disrupted; that can always be rescheduled once everyone there is ok and the situation calms down. No, it was that he now had an “unusual situation,” and very often in Asia that is tough to resolve quickly.

What was the unusual situation? Well, he now needed to cancel his hotel even though it was past the cancellation deadline, and he was going to have to change his flight, for which he had already checked in online, and which was scheduled to leave in less than 2 hours.

Why was this going to be troublesome? Because local customer service agents are well-trained on how to do the normal tasks, but have a real problem with anything out of the ordinary. They are often a product of training rather than of true education.

When I taught in a master’s degree program at a university in Singapore a few years ago, my students had gone through their primary, secondary, and undergraduate educations all around Asia. They told me, many times, that their schooling primarily consisted of listening to a teacher, writing down what was said, and repeating it back on an exam. They soaked up lots of knowledge that way, but did not learn much about critical thinking, or rational analysis, or decision making…the sorts of skills that one normally develops in the process of being educated. In effect, despite having university degrees, they felt they had really been trained rather than educated.

As for what that meant for our traveling team member…well, the folks he got on the phone were really good at handling normal tasks, but once something unusual came up, they were at a loss for what to do. He could tell from the way they spoke that they were following a checklist (and in the case of the airline agent, he kept following that checklist: “So, you want to check the status of this flight?” No, I want to not be on that flight.) Once he deviated from the norm and started asking for something unusual, there was a lot of apprehension in the customer agents’ voices, and he felt a bit better when the hotel agent said “let me get my supervisor.” The airline folks were at a loss, though; it took three calls before the situation got resolved (about 30 minutes after the flight took off).

To me, this highlights one of the differences between training and education. Training is all about how something gets done, whereas education helps you understand why things get done a certain way. Someone who has been trained can be your expert at something when things go right; someone who is educated is in a better position to help you when things go wrong. You may want employees who have been trained; they have completed certification programs, or apprenticeships, or other programs with a vocational orientation. You may also want employees who have been educated, perhaps to be your leadership cadre because of the decision making talents they should be bringing, or because you want a variety of perspectives without necessarily hiring a variety of people. Most likely you want a mix, and the balance you strike will depend upon how complex your jobs are, and how much uncertainty exists in your business. The more straightforward the job, the more you may lean toward employees with training over education.

Educational systems in this part of the world are changing, and that’s a good thing for Asia because it enables more creative thinking and innovation in complex fields. It also will help create a better foundation for leadership. Wherever you are operating, you need to think hard about your requirements for training vs education, and consider the school systems and other aspects of the places where you are working and recruiting. Neither training nor education is inherently better than the other; what is important is knowing which you need, and getting the right talent.