Chief Learning Officer- September 2008

EDITOR’S LETTER Too Much Information, Too Little Impact R ecently, while sitting through a well-meaning, but ill-conceived, 120-slide PowerPoint presentation at a conference, my wandering mind recalled a story I heard once, attributed to Harvard University faculty member Roland Barth. It’s worth sharing. One bitter-cold Sunday, an old farmer trudged for miles through a blizzard to reach the small mountain church he attended. No one else showed up, except the preacher. Looking around at the empty pews, the clergyman leaned over the pulpit and suggested to his lone congregant that it hardly seemed worth proceeding with the service with such a low turnout. “Perhaps we’d do better if we returned to our nice, warm homes and had a hot drink,” he said, in a tone that blatantly urged the old farmer to agree. “Well, I’m just a simple farmer,” said the old man. “But when I go to feed my herd, if only one cow turns up, I sure don’t let her go hungry.” Feeling a bit embarrassed and guilty, the preacher nodded his head, straightened up and proceeded to conduct the entire service, including hymns, readings, announcements and an inspired sermon lasting well over an hour. After the service, as he shook hands with the farmer at the door, the clergyman said, “I hope that met your needs.” “Well, I’m just a simple farmer,” replied the old man, “but when I go to feed my herd, if only one cow turns up, I sure don’t force her to eat everything I brought for the lot of ’em!” The most literal moral of the story, of course, is that it’s important to adjust what we deliver based on who’s in the audience. Successful learning organizations follow this simple principle as a matter of course by customizing content and using different delivery methods to meet the unique needs of diverse learners. But the concept has taken on even more signiﬁcance for chief learning ofﬁcers, with the mounting pressure to prove and communicate the business impact of corporate learning programs to senior management. As an audience, this is one tough crowd. They’re obsessed with ROI and quite myopic when it comes to metrics — and rightly so. It’s perfectly reasonable that investments should be held accountable for business results. But while assessment and evaluation always have been an integral part of the learning function, measuring the effectiveness of workforce development initiatives and clearly linking learning to business gain are two very different things. When today’s CEOs, COOs, CFOs, board members and other top-level executives look at the learning function, what they really want to know is how it helps grow the bottom line. Delivering a raft of traditional metrics such as total learning hours, class registration ﬁgures and assessment scores to this group isn’t likely to get the desired results. Like the overserviced farmer told the preacher, it’s a lot of information, but it doesn’t really meet the need. To convince internal decision makers to value learning as an investment, not just an expense, chief learning ofﬁcers need to focus like a laser on using the same level of key ﬁnancial and business-centric data used to calculate ROI for other functions in the enterprise. It’s the only way to deliver exactly what the audience wants. Speaking of audiences, as I joined the bleary-eyed herd leaving the presentation at the conference, I overheard a quip from the crowd that made me think again of the old farmer. “Wow! That guy sure covered a lot of ground,” my fellow attendee told her companion. “Now I understand what they really meant in the conference program when they said he was well-known for delivering ‘quantitative’ data!” What about you? Are you providing the senior leaders of your organization with meaningful, qualitative evidence of learning’s direct impact on the bottom line? Or are you merely delivering a large quantity of measurements that aren’t meaningful for this audience? Drop me an e-mail and let me know what you’re doing to prove the value of learning to the C-suite in your organization. Just be forewarned that I probably won’t open any messages with PowerPoint presentations attached! Norm Kamikow Editor in Chief norm@clomedia.com 4 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • September 2008 • www.clomedia.com 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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