CAN SOFT LEADERSHIP SKILLS LEAD TO HARD RESULTS?

Of course they can!  That's why we're here in the first place.  Check out this article about a case study where I measured the impact of Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership training program...


Training Industry Quarterly




http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/trainingindustry/tiq_2015spring/#/56

DON'T JUST PUT TRAINING OUT THERE

Like any other consumers, your consumers of training in the workplace also want to know what they'll get for their time and money.  That's why it's critical to measure the impact of your training and describe the real value it can bring to both employees (the trainees) and their businesses.  This information can be used not only to make them feel good about previous investments, but also make them more confident in their future investments.  Not to mention what it can do for your training marketing strategy.  By including some real impact data, everyone wins. 


So why has it been so hard for training groups to conduct these studies and present this type of data?  Check it my new blog post on ATD's website to read more...




ATD L&D article








https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/L-and-D-Blog/2015/02/Its-Time-to-Measure-Your-Training?mktcops=c.learning-and-development%7ec.sr-leader&mktcois=c.measuring-and-evaluating%7ec.eval-learning-impact%7ec.managing-learning-programs

IT'S ALL ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

The most significant finding that can come out of measuring your training impact, and one that is trending now in some of the most forward-thinking organizations, is identifying your most powerful post-training climates – those that can literally “make” or “break” the impact of training.  I call these post-training environments “transfer climates” because they represent all the factors that can either help or hinder the “transfer” of learning from the training experience back to the job.  If we make the climate suitable for learning transfer, the training sticks and ultimately yields high returns.  If the climate is not suitable for learning transfer, the training impact dies there and all your time and resources are wasted.  Once you understand these factors and make your climates more amenable to training transfer, you’ll get more ROI from any program you run.  See my article and read more in this month's issue of Training Industry Quarterly...


Training Industry Quarterly

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/trainingindustry/tiq_2015winter/index.php?startid=52                       

 

LEVEL 6 - WHAT IS IT?

After many years of conducting impact studies with tens of thousands of trainees, I came to one rather conspicuous conclusion – you can’t measure the true effectiveness of training until you know what the climate is like.  And you can’t figure out what the right climate is like until you know how to measure training impact.  Because the effectiveness of training cannot be measured in a vacuum, without also evaluating the climate that influences that effectiveness, I’ve added what I call a Level 6 “transfer climate” to the traditional five levels of evaluation. 

While the 5 traditional levels are critical to any evaluation strategy, they don’t give you the full picture of training success or failure.  Nor do they tell the most important and dynamic part of the story.  That is, they only provide a static report indicating whether training “worked” or didn’t work in the past tense, but don’t make any suggestions or recommendations on why or how to maximize that impact and make the same training more successful in the future. 

Additionally, a Level 6 can explain the variability of training effectiveness across the organization.  It arms you as the training professional with a critical narrative for your business clients – why does training work for Mary and not for Joe?   By uncovering and explaining this type of variability in training effectiveness, you are able to inform your business partners what THEY can do different as business leaders to drive and maximize their own training dollars.  They are the ones that can create and drive the right “transfer climates” for Mary and Joe back on the job.  After all, leaders spend a lot of money putting their employees through training - isn’t it only fair that we give them some control over the outcome? 

In all my years of presenting Level 1 to 6 evaluation results, I have yet to encounter a business group that does not find the results about their transfer climate the most interesting and informative piece of the presentation.  When I tell my audience I’m giving them Level 1 to 5 results for their training, of course they’re excited - less than 4% of all companies are doing it and even less do it right.  But when I tell them I’m also giving them Level 6 results to explain why training succeeds or fails back on the job, that’s what really gets them to the edge of their seats.  Imagine being able to say to your business partners, “We understand this training was more effective for some employees than others, we know why it was more effective, and this is what you can do to make it more effective in the future.”  Now what business leader wouldn’t be happy with that little tidbit? Welcome to Level 6. 

PLANT YOUR TRAINING and WATER OFTEN

After years of conducting impact and ROI studies for some of the top Fortune 100 companies in the world, it became glaringly obvious to me that the biggest factor predicting the effectiveness  of training programs had little to do with the quality of the training, the method by which it was delivered, or the nature of the audience.  In fact, it had everything to do with the immediate work environments employees were returning to right after their training was done.  Every employee takes his/her new knowledge and skills from training back to their own unique work environment. And depending on all the environmental influences in that work environment, they are either inspired to or discouraged from applying that training on the job. That is, based on these critical environmental influences, the same training program can work wonders for some employees and for others it becomes a complete flop.  And because these post-training "climates" are so diverse and unique for each employee, it is absolutely crucial to measure them, understand which factors are most common across your organization, and which climates will be the most powerful when it comes to maximizing  the impact of your training. 

While these climate factors certainly hold the key to defining a training success or failure, they have also been responsible for making training so hard to measure over the past few decades.  Because there can exist such a huge variety of climate factors within and across any given organization, and because they can influence employees in very unique ways, the results, business impact, and ROI of any one training program can be inconsistent and hard to quantify in any reliable way.  However, by including some form of climate assessment within your measurement strategy, you can evolve the conversation from "How did training work?" to "How do we make it work better?"  By adding this layer of climate measurement, you turn a static post-mortem report about the  impact of training into a living, dynamic report about why training worked better for some rather than others, and how you can improve that impact in the future. 

For this reason, I added a Level 6 - Transfer Climate analysis to the traditional five levels of evaluation.  I call this new level the “transfer climate” because it represents all the factors that can either help or hinder the “transfer” of learning from the training experience back to the job.  As with anything you try to transfer, plant, or replant somewhere else, no matter how strong the leaves or how pretty the flowers, you still need just the right soil with just the right sun, and just the right amount of rain. So too with training, no matter how thoughtful and well-designed the training, you still need to make sure all the right factors are in place to care for and nurture it through that critical and precarious incubation period.  If the climate is suitable for learning transfer, the training sticks, thrives on its own, and ultimately blossoms into fruitful returns.  If the climate is not suitable for learning transfer, the training impact dies there and all your time and resources wither on the vine.  So if you want your ROI to grow, make sure you plant it in the right climate and water it often. 

SCARED TO MEASURE IMPACT?

What's the problem?  Why do organizations and their training groups  end up with nothing to show for their multi-million dollar investments in training?  Why aren’t business leaders making an aggressive and determined attempt to measure and report the true benefits of their training programs?  The short answer is simple - they lack the expertise and confidence to present their results to their C-levels and stakeholders.  In a recent study, it was estimated that over 95% of organizations feel the real need and urgency to demonstrate the impact and bottom-line value of training, but less than 5% feel confident in their ability to measure and report that very same business impact.  The paradox here is that ROI numbers are so important to the business that most training organizations are too afraid to present them.  They want to get it right so bad, and they are so deathly afraid of getting it wrong, that they end up presenting nothing!  This paralysis and lack of data is quickly interpreted as ineffectiveness and only fuels the already prevalent notion, especially amidst the more skeptical business leaders, that most employees’ training doesn’t “work” and is simply a frivolous waste of time and money. 

Ironically, another reason why HR and training groups are not doling out the impact studies is that they have historically been given somewhat of a “free pass” when it comes to proving their worth and justifying their expenses.  Because they represent, advocate, and spend much of their resources on developing the human side of the business, organizational leaders tend to be cautious about taking them to task and demanding irrefutable evidence that every single one of their initiatives are turning a profit.  No leader wants to advance the notion that investing in people is a “bad” idea.  Giving even the slightest hint or inkling that you don’t want to develop and enrich your employees can surely put you on the fast track to early unpaid retirement.  As most leaders realize, human capital and capital gains are better kept in separate conference rooms.   While this historical treatment has been a blessing on the one hand, it may also have over the years, rendered us just a little bit more relaxed when it comes to proving our value to the business.  And although the burning platform has been ignited, and will be burning a lot faster in the future, the sheer lack of fire for all these years has simply left most training organizations inexperienced at the art and science of defining their worth.  

When you put these two factors together (lack of confidence and no experience), you end up with an inevitable scenario where HR and its internal training groups are just not able to compete for resources as well as most of the other functions throughout the organization.  Organizational leaders and stakeholders must allocate their limited capital and make hard decisions about where they want to invest their money.   It should come as no surprise that they will be focused on what will provide the largest and surest return on their investments.  Obviously, the business groups and functions that can show a great ROI track record and present their budgetary needs with the promise of demonstrable returns will be the ones getting the lion share of resources.  

BUILD A BRIDGE AND MEASURE YOUR ROI

In order to show the true benefits of training and ultimately prove that it “works”, we need to build a clear and coherent path from content to results. We need to build a strong solid bridge that tells a story of impact and carries trainees from their original investment to an even higher return on that same investment.  Ideally, we must begin building this bridge before the training (our blueprint or business case which aligns content to business objectives) and then finish building the bridge after training to measure its effectiveness.  Without this bridge to define all the glorious benefits of training, you’ll forever be presenting the only tangible numbers you’re sure to have - the costs. 

In my new article in the 2014 Fall issue of Training Industry Quarterly, I'll show you how to start building this bridge and how to get the biggest "ROI" from your training...


Training Industry Quarterly

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/trainingindustry/tiq_2014fall/index.php?startid=40