Martin - Probably understood the message wrongly, apologize for the same. Visited your website and found it quite interesting.

Laura - To your question, in one of our re-design projects, we had some similar questions come up. Would advice you to look at one of the theories called "Appreciative Inquiry" (http://appreciativeinquiry.cwru.edu/). It proposes that "Anywhere that an organization wants to get, you have someone in the organization already there" – Bringing about a positive change. So, if you want someone who has been performing brilliantly under weird circumstances – you would have someone already there! Similarly, if we are looking at team dynamics, whatever the circumstances surrounding it at a team or an organizational level, if you have a high performer within that team - you have your answer! All you need to do is to try and map the competencies of this person and build them back into training. These would include not only functional competencies but also behavioral competencies. I am not necessarily saying that we ignore other shortcomings as an organization – we should identify them and plan interventions accordingly.

We need to look at changing our paradigm. This reminds me of one of the books I read sometime back. There was this man who was great at solving problems. The organization created a separate position for him and his job was now to go from one team to the other – looking for problems and then trying to mitigate them. After some time, he found himself to be a problem creator – even if the team did not have any profound problems, he had been identifying them and in his effort to mitigate them, he was inveterately showcasing them. Now they were actual problems!! We can either choose to look at problems/ challenges which restrict people from performing or look at positives in other people – our successful people – look at their paradigm – their approach, what makes them successful and try to build that for the others or at least making them aware of the same. The quest continues….

Regards,

Jiten Kapoor
Keane Worldzen
+91-124-5125000 Extn - 5020

That is a tough one. I like Phillips approach of trend line followed up by use of estimates by those involved in the training and their managers. I would add that the discussion should also include what other factors had an influence on the change in sales, or what ever the business metric is.

Companies are use to accepting estimates from knowledgeable sources in many areas of the business.

I would also develop a complete evaluation plan and share it with the client as part of the course design/development process. This would indicate the level of evaluation, method, sources, etc. Getting buyin upfront should help reduce later resistance. It also gets any bias on the table. If you want to see an evaluation plan, let me know and I will send you one.

While I like the control group method, I question if it is practical. Also, we still have the issue of isolating the effects of training.

Jiten - thanks for your comments. I (re)learned from that exchange about the need for me to be precise in the use of language when using email/web forums!

Donald refered to the notion that organisations are used to accepting estimates from knowledgeable parts of the business - and I'd agree with the fundamentals of this. What may be worthy of further consideration is the possibility that these knowledgeable parties are less knowledgeable in some respects than others (and themselves?) believe. There's nothing wrong with an estimate, unless of course its basic premise is wrong.

On the matter of the control group, it does seem to be impractical in many respects. Typically just 2 groups are employed - 1 gets the training, the other doesn't. The assumption is that any difference is due to the effects of the training. This might be true, but it cannot be known, unless all the possible root causes are considered, and students of this aspect of research will appreciate that in order to be sure to isolate 'N' effects or root causes, requires 2 to the power of 'N' groups, each subjected to a different experience where a particular root cause is maximised or eliminated while all other factors/root causes remain unchanged in order to measure the impact arising from changing just that one factor.

Generally a CEO or CFO may be happy with some estimates and the simple logic of trend lines and control group data, especially if that CFO or CEO has signed off on spending large sums on training - of course they will want to see a return, especially after that training has consumed the resources in question. Few will say "yup, sorry! I goofed and authorised the $100K spend on leadership training and it didn't work". More are likely to say "that pesky training manager screwed up and wasted $100K and so s/he is fired!"

It's a different story on those few occassions when the CFO or CEO has gotten very hard-nosed and is wanting some virtual guarantees is advance of the training consuming any resources. In my experience this tends to be when the trading conditions are difficult and/or the shareholders are getting fed up with sustained mediocre performance - probably the very time when a leadership or management skills or other equally difficult-to-evaluate intervention is needed!

I wonder if a bit more scepticism about methods and approaches, agendas and root causes wouldn't go amiss? I am currently working with some very sceptical line managers and they are sure very good at not letting you get away with glib statements about the link between 'soft skills' training and results!

Thank you all for the contributions & debate - keep it coming!

Regards

Martin

Hi Donald - Would appreciate if you could share the eval plan. You could send it on my e-mail ID - jiten.kapoor@keaneworldzen.com. Thanks.

Regards,

Jiten Kapoor
Keane Worldzen
+91-124-5125000 Extn - 5020