Unfortunately, many CEOs do not see learning and development as an area that is critical to the success of the business. There are very few organisations where the head of learning and development will report directly to the CEO, instead there tends to be an average of three levels between these two positions.
It’s no wonder then that the requirements for measures of learning success are often misunderstood. The learning and development leaders are having to guess at what the CEOs want as their measures of success because of the gap in levels between the two positions and hence, the gap in communication. In addition, the CEOs do not see it as their position to define how the learning and development leaders should be measuring success.
This issue is discussed in Phillips & Phillips’ book; Measuring For Success: What CEOs Really Think About Learning Investments (2010). They conducted a survey into what CEOs think about the value of their learning and development investments. Data was collected for this survey in 2008-2009 from CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies. There were ninety-six anonymous responses. When asked about their general satisfaction with the measures of success for learning and development there was an average result of 2.52 out of a possible 4 (4 being satisfied, 1 being disatisfied), which is obviously disheartening.
Phillips and Phillips wanted to find out three things from the CEOs;
1. “What metrics are being reported to you now?”
2. “What should be reported that isn’t being reported now?”
3. “How would you rank these in terms of value?”
There were eight categories mapped into the evaluation; “inputs”, “efficiencies”, “reaction”, “learning”, “application”, “impact” and “ROI”.
Click here to see a copy of the table of results for this survey. They found that “reaction” was ranked at the lowest value to the CEOs, however this is the most highly reported, an illuminating finding.
The two areas reported as of highest value to the CEOs were conversely the two that were least measured by their heads of learning and development, and they were “impact” and “ROI”.
In my experience, it is not the numerical ROI that CEOs want to see, but they want to have impact on the business demonstrated. As a business we have been developing our own impact dashboard, which I will share more of with you next month… watch this space. In the mean time though, be confident that impact after training is of the upmost importance.
If you would like to take a look at the Phillips and Phillips book, here is the reference:
Phillips, J. J., & Phillips, P. P. (2010). Measuring For Success: What CEOs Really Think About Learning Investments. ASTD Press: Alexandria,Virginia.