Here is an excerpt from an article written by H. James Wilson and Elaine Eisenman for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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Think of a team of military commandos and an image of camouflaged, disciplined athletes in their late teens or early twenties might pop into your head.

But Navy Seal Team 6, the secret elite group that recently killed Bin Laden, is an “old man’s club,” according to one expert. Members tend to be well into their thirties, each one the product of years of intense and deliberate training that continuously separates elite performers from merely above-average performers.

You might think we’re about to link Seal Team 6 to business. Imagining how your organization might develop such a team of exceptional players over the course of a decade to solve thorny strategic problems is an interesting thought experiment.

But organizations themselves can rarely, if ever, pursue the long-term approach to talent development described in the latest reportage on Seal Team 6.

Rather than creating a long development arc for talent, organizations educate people in short and often unconnected bursts. Our research of more than 1,800 organizations over the last two years suggests at least five reasons for this:

[Here are the first two. To read the complete article, please click here.]

1. Business Uncertainty. The most straightforward explanation is that a focus on training and development correlates closely with short-term financial prospects and results. With 70% of organizations facing increased uncertainty, many are reducing their commitment to training and professional development activities, or make it a ‘nice to have’ perk for when profits are clearly in sight. Following the ups and downs of quarterly forecasts as a driver for training and education runs counter to the systems and structures that create, expand and sustain elite team performance.

2. Participation in many temporary teams. A second impediment is the increasing diffusion of employees’ attention, skills, and knowledge across multiple teams at a time. Compared to 18 months ago, a strong majority of workers (61%) are collaborating on more projects outside their immediate or nominal work group; that’s more than three and a half times as many as those that are not (17%). Rather than working and training in one tightly-knit unit to complete a single critical mission, workers attend to a portfolio of projects. For example, one respondent described how she now spends far more time interacting with an ever-changing cast of outside consultants and contractors than with her internal colleagues.

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While an organization’s current strategy won’t last a decade or more, an employee’s commitment to a developmental plan that she designed very well might. To achieve this, organizations can help new recruits to quickly identify with the company as an organic whole and to create enduring personal meaning and direction. You’ve got to “arm employees” with the responsibility to grow their careers while growing the top line, as one respondent notes.

Does your organization enable this sense of mission? Or do employees feel like they are just operating in the dark?

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H. James Wilson (@hjameswilson) is a senior researcher at Babson Executive Education. Elaine J. Eisenman is Dean of Babson Executive Education and co-author of I Didn’t See It Coming, a book on how executives can manage their companies and careers amid business uncertainty.