Another important area of consideration for development is learning styles. Learning is the acquisition of skills, knowledge, and abilities that result in a relatively permanent change in behavior. 74 Over the last decade, growing numbers of multinationals have tried to become “learning organizations,” continually focused on activities such as training and development. In the new millennium, this learning focus applied to human resource development may go beyond learning organizations to “teaching organizations.” For example, Tichy and Cohen, after conducting an analysis of world-class companies such as General Electric, PepsiCo, AlliedSignal, and Coca-Cola, found that teaching organizations are even more relevant than learning organizations because they go beyond the belief that everyone must continually acquire new knowledge and skills and focus on ensuring that everyone in the organization, especially the top management personnel, passes the learning on to others. Here are their conclusions:In teaching organizations, leaders see it as their responsibility to teach. They do that because they understand that it’s the best, if not only, way to develop throughout a company people who can come up with and carry out smart ideas about the business. Because people in teaching organizations see teaching as critical to the success of their business, they find ways to do it every day. Teaching every day about critical business issues avoids the fuzzy focus that has plagued some learning organization efforts, which have sometimes become a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s style of self-exportation and human relations training.