Chief Learning Officer- September 2008

Long Live Impact of Learning For those who want to demonstrate the value of employee development programs to the business, meet Impact of Learning (IOL). IOL is simple enough to be practiced in 100 percent of organizations, not just those elite few that have the time and resources to engage in ROI. There are three basic steps to IOL as a way of demonstrating the value of learning: 1. Insight: Create a map of the linkage from business goals to training initiatives and identify success metrics. 2. Individual: Gather overall data on success metrics, in addition to personal success stories. 3. Impact: Develop an impact report rich with compelling stories of individual and overall success so executives clearly see the impact on organizational issues about which they truly care. Start With Insight The road to business alignment needs to be mapped early on. For each major initiative involving training, it is vital to gain insight and identify the business drivers up-front and in writing. Robert O. Brinkerhoff describes a delightfully simple one-page format to represent business alignment in his book, The Success Case Method. IOL insight involves understanding the business case during the initial phase of work, when the training staff ﬁrst starts to understand how they can support an initiative. Insight essentially means metrics — speciﬁcally, effectiveness metrics that business leaders are com- mitted to achieving. But it’s important to point out that insight metrics rarely are as broad as overall sales or revenues. For example, for the leader of sales at a manufacturing company, sales from new customers were a key focus. That nuance was critical both in planning the learning curriculum and any future assessment of impact. In this case, substantial resources needed to go toward training to sell into new markets. Or in another example, sales metrics can be targeted speciﬁcally to a channel such as independent dealers vs. big-box retailers. Whatever the insight gained from front-end planning, learning leaders must establish from the start that they have clear intent to deliver results. Mapping this makes our intentions even more visible and lays the groundwork for assessing impact. Typical maps of the linkage to success can be four to six columns of information. Sample column headings may include: • Who will be trained (audience, job role or title)? • What will they need (knowledge and skills, competencies or expected behaviors)? • What they should do (key actions)? • What should individual results be (outcomes or job results)? • What are the company’s goals (business objectives or strategic results)? The value of the insight map is that it documents the shared understanding of what needs to happen Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • September 2008 • www.clomedia.com 33 http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer- September 2008

Chief Learning Officer Editor’s Letter Contents Connections Imperatives Selling Up, Selling Down Strategies Take Five Lifestyle Learning: Improve the Bottom Line With Behavioral Education Tracom’s Social Style Model CLO Profile IOL: Determining the Impact of Learning Communicating With the Boss About Impact Mission Accomplished? Measuring Success of Corporate Universities Borrowing Measurement Practices From Investors Value Creation With Human Capital Investment Business Impact Analysis at Chrysler Learning or Performance Enhancement: Which Is It? Best Practices in Global Project Management Training Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

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