Training alone is not powerful enough to deliver business results
You need to partner up with the environment where great thoughts get transferred to great value. You need to partner up with business managers in advance, during and after the training initiative to make impact on business.
Move beyond simply delivering a powerful learning event – while getting impact from training is the responsibility of the whole organization, it is your job in L&D to manage the learning-to-performance process (involving managers to prepare and support trainees, and so forth).
In the long term perspective you will need to change the way training is perceived and managed. A strong way of doing this is to use evaluation …
Don’t try to single out the sole effect of the training program. Doing so is futile from a methodological perspective and strategically counterproductive. Typical Level 3 (Behavior) surveys of learning application of all participants produce discouraging results: They predictably show that most trainees have not applied or sustained use of their learning. That does nothing to promote our cause and does not tell us why the results occurred.
Instead, leverage the fact that training never works alone or in a vacuum. Use evaluations and follow-ups to uncover the critical performance system factors that helped or hindered the performance results. Then, turn that knowledge into recommendations for increasing performance in later training efforts and for supporting participants in their daily job.
Training alone is never the sole cause of success or failure. There is always something else at work—usually some performance system factors not aligned with the intended performance outcomes. Consequently, when we evaluate training impact, in reality we are evaluating an organization’s performance management system.
Join us on Thursday June 30th and preferably Friday July 1st with a business/line manager to revisit or set up training programs that will deliver key business results. Learn how to build business partnerships and create collaborative plans to maximize business impact through all phases of the training and performance process.
Evaluation and measurement are the tools that can best help us begin and complete the journey in changing the perspective on Training. Join our certification program on Tuesday and Wednesday (June 28 & 29) to get the tools you need to create and show true business value from your training initiatives.
