quote:

One might begin by explaining the answer to the part that completely begs the question -- for whom should one stick one's neck out? When one is usually first in line for the chopping block, one really must wonder...

...for one's own professional pride. For professional ethics. For one's profession. For feeling good about the work one does.

...for oneself.

Perpetual victims who blame others don't do this. We should do a study to see what percentage of trainers suffer from learned helplessnes (Seligman)., or in more every day terms, PPPM (poor poor pitiful me, with apologies to the great late Warren Zevon).

I have never felt powerless as a trainer. One EARNS respect, EARNS influence. One is never given it because one is a trainer [or most other professions].

I have chosen to delete all of my messages from this thread. I'm sorry I took the bait in the first place.

Well, I'm glad my comment about having to quantify your value prompted this degree of further discussion.

Let me elaborate briefly that I did not intend to insinuate that you should not make an effort to measure the effectiveness of a given performance solution. I'm a big believer in evaluating the effectiveness of the work we do.

However, when it comes to the decision to cut the training department's budget or staff, I believe all the performance data in the world won't make a difference, unless the leadership of said department has established valuable relationships with the ones driving the strategy and direction of the organization as a true business partner. Period.

Doug's comment is very true, and another thread on validity of measurement point to some of the issues here.

It's a slippery slope. Liars can figure, figures can lie. Many folks measure "X burgers served", but that may not be a valid or meaningful measure. Measuring is expensive (when done correctly), and often misinterpreted, nor can it account for every variable- it's all a negotiation.

One thing I often do is really get a clear understanding of what the sponsor(s) REALLY want (what keeps them awake at night)- then deliver solutions that they intrinsicly have value against that solution (example: a call center pulling the most productive resources to train new hires- at some point it is inevitable, but about 60% what we reviewed with one client was completely deliverable as self-paced training- and thus, the $10.25/hr resource was not monopolizing a $300/hr resource- we didn't even formally measure it as much as just understood the logic for the decision and the informal feedback from the folks participating).

Look for these opportunities- I find a lot of pencil-whipping can be saved if both sides really understand bottom-line goals and develop transparent solutions to push that in the right direction.

(That said, there ARE things which are formally and methodically tracked, but the real "value" that keeps us at the table are these transparent wins).

To Glowman and Doug H.

Thank you for the well thought out ideas and well expressed posts. I think sometimes we get lost in polarizing as in measure or not measure, when in fact nobody in their right mind would support either extreme.

I agree with the things both both of you said, particularly the issue of having relationships with other decision-makers. These relationships can be forged by the heads of training units, but let's not forget that each trainer is also a potential relationship builder.

One of the best ways to protect the training function is to be "well related".

As for the issue of stats, actually statistics don't lie. They may be misused by people who are intentionally lying, OR don't know better, but I'd suggest that simply put, you can't make statistics lie to a person who understand statistics.

I think you'd have great difficulty bending stats to lie to me. I'd know.

Which is part of the problem with statistics and measurements. You really can't cheat the competent if they don't want you to.

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