Balancing Training Investments

🚀 How to manage the budget dilemma when dealing with "Model Size" vs "Data Size" One of the biggest decisions in building language models today is figuring out where to spend your limited compute budget. Should you train a bigger model or train on more data? It’s something I’ve had to decide on more than once, especially while planning model training pipelines with fixed GPU hours and tight delivery timelines. This is a real-world challenge faced by AI product and engineering leaders every day. Some recent experiments in this space have shown something interesting: 💠 If you have a small budget, it’s often better to go with a smaller model and train it on a lot of data. Bigger models don’t help much if they don’t have enough data to learn from. 💠 As your budget increases, the ideal approach shifts. You can start scaling up the model size, but the data size still plays a major role. The improvement you get from adding more parameters tends to flatten out quickly. What continues to help is feeding your model more tokens. The key takeaway for you is: ◾ For a fixed budget, a medium-sized model with the right amount of training data can outperform a large model with limited data. ◾ As budgets grow, don't just throw more parameters at the problem. Focus on the balance between model size and data, and lean toward more training data if you're unsure. Finding that balance is key. It often determines whether you’re building something usable or simply burning through compute. 🔍 While there’s no plug and play enterprise product for this yet, there are practical tools you can explore: 1️⃣ A helpful GitHub repo on scaling laws that shows how to model this trade-off (link in comments) 2️⃣ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Scaling Law Estimation, which walks through small-scale simulations and extrapolation techniques (link in comments) I highly recommend you use these type of Open-source tools, combined with internal logs and basic plotting, to give your AI teams a strong head start on getting the most out of your training budgets. Remember, it is not just about building the POCs, it is about getting these AI products/ solutions into production I write about #artificialintelligence | #technology | #startups | #mentoring | #leadership | #financialindependence   PS: All views are personal Vignesh Kumar

Leaders consistently cite insufficient worker skills as the biggest barrier to AI integration. The response: 53% are investing in education programs, 48% in upskilling initiatives. But only 30% are redesigning roles and workflows. Only 33% are rethinking career paths. The tension: Train people for current roles, or redesign roles for an AI-enabled organization? Both require significant investment. But they lead to fundamentally different outcomes. The strategic tension: Your CHRO is managing workforce concerns, retention, and the social contract with employees. Your operations leaders are trying to drive adoption and scale. Your board is asking about productivity gains and competitive positioning. All three need different things from your talent strategy. What's really happening: Training people to use AI tools is table stakes. But it assumes the jobs themselves stay fundamentally the same. Just with better tools. That's probably not true for most roles over the next 3-5 years. What does a finance analyst do when AI handles all data pulling and analysis? What does a manager manage when AI handles routine execution? What does customer service look like when AI agents handle 80% of transactions? These aren't incremental changes. They're structural shifts. The investment decision: Training programs have clear ROI models. You can measure adoption, proficiency, time-to-productivity. Role redesign is messier. It requires change management, organizational realignment, new performance metrics, and revised compensation structures. It's expensive and disruptive. But here's the risk: If you train people for roles that won't exist in their current form, you're creating a workforce prepared for yesterday's business model. The competitive dynamic: Organizations that redesign first will have workforces optimized for human-AI collaboration. Organizations that train first will have skilled people operating in legacy structures. Both deliver value. But they create different competitive positions 24 months from now. The question: Are you investing in making your current workforce better at using AI? Or are you investing in creating the workforce model your AI-enabled business actually needs? That's not just an HR strategy question. It's a competitive strategy question. Read the prior posts in this series: https://lnkd.in/gs9XQ-kx https://lnkd.in/gtgPUyTT https://lnkd.in/guSBUVyk https://lnkd.in/gtgPUyTT #StateOfAI2026 report: https://lnkd.in/gh7ATzKD Deloitte AI Institute - https://lnkd.in/gdseWaiR

$150,000 invested in one surgeon with leadership training. $100,000 invested in one surgeon with clinical training alone. 50% more expensive. But 100x the impact. Most impact investors in African healthcare are missing this math. Prof. Salome Maswime at the University of Cape Town has articulated what I call the "leadership multiplier effect." The traditional model of training a surgeon creates linear impact. One clinician serves roughly 1,000 patients over a career. Valuable, but bounded. The systems-builder model works differently. One surgeon who also builds training programmes produces 10 additional surgeons. Those 10 surgeons serve 10,000 patients. Add policy influence and systems-level interventions, and the reach extends to millions. Maswime herself exemplifies this. Her maternal mortality reduction initiatives have affected millions across Africa because she builds institutions, not just clinical skills. She builds surgeons. She shapes policy. She multiplies. The WHO African Region Health Workforce Investment Charter confirms the pattern: every $1 invested in health workforce development yields $9 to $10 in economic returns. In fragile settings, health training investments have demonstrated Social Return on Investment ratios exceeding 1:11. For those deploying capital in African healthcare, consider this: - Stop evaluating solely on direct service metrics (patients treated, clinics opened). These measure linear growth. - Assess whether founders demonstrate systems-thinking and leadership development capacity. Look at their track record of training others and engaging policy. - Recognize that women who complete surgical training in Africa have already proven systems-navigation skills. They navigated broken infrastructure just to qualify. That's a selection mechanism worth paying attention to. - Accept that the $50K premium for leadership and advocacy training is infrastructure investment. It builds the platform that scales. At Kenyatta National Hospital, reorganizing orthopaedics into subspecialty units built around mentorship yielded a 71% "excellent" training rating from alumni. Sustainable generational returns. No massive budget increases. We multiplied what we already had by adding intentional structure. So here's the real question: Are you funding clinicians, or are you funding the leaders who will multiply them? The 100x opportunities are out there. Maybe we've just been looking through the wrong lens. True leadership adds value.

Why being "cost-conscious" might be killing your profits I overheard a misconception recently that I thought would be helpful to share. "Our ops manager is very frugal and doesn't like to spend money, so we're not investing in training right now." Look, it could have just been a "get lost" message masked in a polite excuse but for the sake of this post, let's take it at face value. It sounds responsible on the surface, right? I disagree. (Of course I do 😉) Here's why this mindset is actually destroying progress in your business: Training isn't a cost center – it's a profit driver. And if it's not - you're doing it wrong. When you say, "We'll do training when we have the money," I say, "You do training to MAKE money." Think about it: 📌 What's the real cost of rework and mistakes? 📌 How much productivity are you losing to poor processes? 📌 What's the hidden price tag of low team morale and internal conflicts? Every training initiative should be tied to specific business outcomes. Want improve throughput? Reduce errors? Reduce downtime? Boost team performance? Great – Answer why and put numbers to it. Calculate the current cost of the problem, design training that directly addresses it, and measure the ROI. When training isn't tied to actual business outcomes and implementation plans, it's just information floating in space. No wonder people see it as a cost rather than an investment. The trap that many business leaders fall into is that they invest in isolated skills instead of complete solutions. Before investing in any training, answer these questions: Business Impact: 📍 What specific business problem are we solving? 📍 What is currently happening & what do we want to see happen? 📍 How will this new skill be implemented in our daily operations? 📍 What support does the team need to succeed? 📍 How do we measure the return on this investment? Implementation Strategy: 📍 How will we support the implementation? 📍 What is the follow-up plan? 📍 What parts of the current process and culture need to change? Bottom line: Training isn't an expense – it's an investment in your business's future. But like any investment, success depends on your strategy, implementation and execution. Without this, you're just throwing good money at bad training.

I watched a startup blow $150K on a 3-day sales training last quarter. Within 24 hours, their reps had forgotten 70% of what they'd learned. Here's what happened: They flew the entire sales team to a retreat for a 3-day SKO. Brought in expensive trainers. Created elaborate role-playing scenarios. Everyone left pumped up and ready to crush their numbers. Three weeks later, I sat in on their pipeline review. Reps couldn't remember basic product positioning. They were still using outdated talk tracks. The training investment had evaporated. The hard truth: Traditional sales training doesn't stick because it's disconnected from real selling moments. Your brain forgets classroom content within hours. Product knowledge decays fastest. Even expensive LMS platforms with hour-long modules get gamed by reps who speed through at 2x while multitasking. The breakthrough happens when training meets real-time selling. Instead of quarterly offsites, successful teams should deploy AI-powered training that activates during actual sales motions. Pre-call refreshers generated from your CRM data. Real-time battlecards that surface during discovery calls. Win-loss analysis that feeds back into coaching within hours, not months. When training happens in the moment of need, you close the feedback loop in real-time allowing sales teams to apply what they learn on the fly. When you do this your training investment actually compounds instead of evaporating. And those expensive SKOs? We should praise them for what they really are: motivational team building rallies to pump up the sales team for the next quarter. #SalesEnablement #Sales #Training

What makes firm-sponsored training programs succeed—or fail? New research by Raffaella Sadun and team explains an often overlooked piece: middle managers. Using detailed data from three large firms across Latin America—a car manufacturer, a restaurant chain, and a retail company—the team documents a stark result: even with centrally designed, well-compensated training programs, participation varies dramatically across units. A critical ingredient was not the training itself, but rather the manager. That echoes a long-time view from Gallup, most notably Jim Clifton and Jim Harter's book "It's the Manager," that employees leave (or stay) managers, not firms. The new paper shows that managers who focus on employee well-being, engagement, and development (“High Training” managers) generate training take-up rates that are 45–60% higher than others. These same teams also exhibit lower absenteeism, lower turnover, and higher promotion rates—and respond better to unexpected production shocks, like demand spikes or adverse weather. In short: even without extra pay or formal implementation duties, some middle managers play an outsized role in coordinating training, motivating participation, and translating abstract HR goals into real outcomes. The implication for firms and policymakers: training investments will fall short without managerial alignment. Yet most HR policies and public subsidies assume take-up is automatic once a program is offered. It’s not. Policy and practice should: 1) Incentivize managerial buy-in through recognition or performance reviews. 2) Integrate training promotion into middle managers’ formal roles. 3) Complement centralized design with decentralized implementation strategies. 4) Consider managerial type as a key input in scaling human capital investments. Put simply by the authors: “training relies on complementary managerial practices and behaviors.” The best curriculum in the world won’t matter if the frontline team doesn’t believe in it—or even know about it. #HumanCapital #WorkforceDevelopment #TrainingAndDevelopment #Management #Upskilling

$50,000 on leadership training. Six weeks later, nothing's changed. Sound familiar? An HR Director showed me their latest training scores last month. 4.8 out of 5 across the board. “Best program we’ve ever run,” she said. Then I asked about actual behavior change. Silence. Here’s what most leaders miss: 🧠 70% of new information is forgotten within 24 hours 🧠 By day 30, only 10% remains 💸 That $50K? Mostly gone But here’s the real cost: No change in how your managers run meetings No shift in how feedback is given or received No new leadership behaviors modeled for the team Your top performers are quietly job hunting And your L&D team is burning budget with nothing to show for it The problem isn't the training content. It's the follow-through. Here’s what works (and costs nothing): 📍 Within 48 hours of training, require every manager to book a 15-minute “application planning” session with their direct report. Not to recap what they learned. To commit to a behavior change. Use this structure: 🎯What’s one thing you’ll do differently starting Monday? 🎯How will we know it’s working in 30 days? 🎯When do we check in to course-correct? That’s it. No fancy platform. No extra budget. Just accountability where it matters. Because training without application is just expensive theater. But training with built-in accountability? That’s how you turn budget into behavior change. What’s one training investment you’ve seen actually move the needle? Follow me, Dr. Zippy Abla, for strategies that turn your L&D spending into measurable leadership transformation.

~ But What Does It Cost?! ~ CBA - 'Cost Benefit Analysis' or 'Can't Be Arsed' - either way it's the same calculation! Personal investment comes in three forms. Make sure you weigh up each in your decisions, whether small or large: 💷 Financial = Fully replenishing. The cheapest form of currency. It may not feel it when you're in money difficulties, but finances are available to us in a variety of ways. Think: What will it earn you, what will it prevent you from earning, what will it help you earn in the longer term, what will it stop you earning in the longer term. ✨ Energetic = somewhat replenishing. Strong swings in currency - ill investment can leave us incredibly depleted and positive investment can leave us with a huge abundance. It can be difficult to move from one to the other. Think: What boundaries does it support, what mood does it leave you, how does your soul feel after, what are the long term impacts on how you feel, how does it effect your relationships, what are your values and how does it meet them. ⏰ Time = Limited resource. An expensive form of currency - once it's gone, its gone. And this can come with heavy emotions, pressure and perceptions. Think: Is it time well spent, what are you missing for spending, what are you gaining for spending, what are the risks, what are the perks, can it open more time opportunities later down the line, what are the emotions associated and am I squandering it. There are no rules on what the balance of each should be, and which you will value more. It may be that the investment is heavier in all three than you'd usually allow, but the reward at the other end of the project is well worth it Perhaps you'll spend a fortune on a consultant, quit your job, work 65 hours a week for yourself, lose half your friends and be exhausted - and in a year you'll get your dream job and be happy as larry. Maybe you'll make your partner a marathon widower while you spend all your time and energy training for weeks, but the buzz will be huge and you'll make money for charity. It could be that you've agreed to take on a client for the money and they only take a few hours a week - but you absolutely HATE the work and it's really getting you down. CBA should always be undertaken on an individual case-by-case basis. And all three personal investment areas (financial, energetic and time) should be calculated and assessed. And if you're happy with the cost for the potential/known outcome, go for it. But if one or more depletes more than you're comfortable with - than that's a boundary crossed my friend - and then you say no. Best wishes Snippy🌻

Don't Be So Naive! Been having meetings with my mentees and mentors for a couple of days where we exchanged thoughts on personal development and how to balance investing in our growth financially and this is what I have learnt in a nutshell. 👉🏿It is crucial to maintain a balance between ambition and practicality. 👈🏿 Often, we are so eager to invest in ourselves and improve our lives that we overlook the importance of informed decision-making, especially when it comes to how we spend our hard-earned money on these endeavors. When I talk about practicality, l mean that you avoid naivety and approach personal development decisions with a discerning mindset. I want you to put this into practice! 1. Before diving into a new course, seminar or coaching program, take the time to understand what it entails, who the providers are, and what outcomes you can realistically expect. Look for reviews, testimonials and credentials to ensure that you're making an informed choice. 2. Be specific about what you want to achieve, how you plan to get there, and the resources required. Avoid being swayed by flashy promises or guarantees that seem too good to be true. Align your personal development choices with your long-term objectives. 3. Seek advice from professionals or individuals who have experience in the area of personal development you're interested in to make informed decisions! 4. Set a clear budget for your personal development endeavors, and stick to it. Most importantly, evaluate the potential ROI. Don't overspend due to impulsive decisions. 5. You need to be keen on this one. After you follow 1, 2, 3 & 4, beware of exaggerated claims and overly idealistic portrayals of personal development programs. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. I wouldn't want you to be in a disappointment and disillusionment situation. I have been in these digital spaces for a while and this is what I have held dearly to my heart: Patience and Persistence. What do I mean? ✍️🏿Be intentional with the decisions you make ✍️🏿Don't expect instant results or quick fixes ✍️🏿Genuine growth takes time, effort and dedication ✍️🏿 Stay committed to your goals ✍️🏿Keep learning ✍️🏿Be patient with yourself as you progress. I hope you will make the right decision.

Most of AI training investments fail because the investment logic is inconsistent. They fail to address the difficulty of the problem. Across the UAE and global markets, organizations are accelerating spending on AI capability. Budgets are approved. Platforms are purchased. Courses are launched. Yet the return remains unclear. From a leadership and capital-allocation lens, these four verticals will not let this investment fail. Instead, they will help to determine whether AI training creates value or not: Cost models: AI training is not a one-off expense. When leaders design dynamic cost models that cover content refresh, platform scaling, and role-based learning, expenses remain under control most of the time. But when they don’t, costs quietly become compound and budgets inflate without accountability. ROI expectations: AI training must be tied to productivity, margin protection, and risk reduction. It's clear that ROI metrics convert learning into business outcomes. Without them, training becomes activity-heavy and value-light. And it becomes sometimes difficult to defend at the board level. Technology platforms: The right platforms enable adaptive learning, real-time feedback, and data-driven personalization. They scale capability across regions and functions. The wrong platforms create fragmentation, low adoption, and sunk costs that are hard to reverse. Instructor capabilities: AI instructors must understand the real operational use cases, data ethics, and decision-making under uncertainty. Otherwise, training remains academic and disconnected from execution. When these four investment verticals are thoroughly aligned, the gains from AI investments will be greater, with faster adoption, measurable productivity gains, stronger governance, and a sustainable AI advantage. #JumaBeljaflah #GroupCHRO #AI #Training #LeadershipStrategy