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Features

Published February 2009

Selling the C-Suite on Results

  

  Chris Moore

Too often, executives discount reports on learning’s impact as too simplistic or attributable to non-learning factors. If those reports aren’t improving learning’s standing, you’re missing real opportunity.

This is the time of year when annual learning summary reports get compiled and presented to executives and other key learning and development (L&D) stakeholders.

Often thick with numbers sprayed across graphs and tabular charts, the reports typically lay out totals for how many employees were trained, in what areas and the costs incurred for the year’s programs and initiatives. The better reports attempt to link learning results with the organization’s results. And it is here that most of these reports lose their audiences.

Too often, executives review the linkage portion of learning reports and discount or even dismiss what they read in favor of crediting a range of non-learning factors for the business gains: the new strategy or personnel, better salespeople, more favorable market conditions and so on.

Executives generally suspect the ability to measure the value of L&D, according to Corporate University Xchange’s “Annual Benchmarking Study.” In a 2007 survey of 200 learning executives (Figure 1), 28 percent of respondents accepted estimates of L&D’s value if conservative estimates were used with an appropriate degree of statistical confidence. Most executives also believed that while there is some intrinsic value to learning, learner evaluations or anecdotal evidence suffice for them to know learning’s value to the organization.

Knowing what to measure is the Holy Grail for learning managers, and the quest to get good business metrics doesn’t seem to be getting easier. When you’re planning key initiatives for stakeholders, you have to ask up-front: “What measurable results are you looking for?” From this conversation, you gain consensus and agreement with stakeholders on the definition of success. In turn, it makes it easier to identify your success criteria as a set of quantifiable metrics.

Learning departments find it painstakingly difficult to get to the real measures of impact from their programs, whether it’s sales figures, quality and defect counts, customer satisfaction ratings and the like. However, if you’re sitting at the table with the executive team that defines those metrics as the success criteria, you’ve got to leverage that opportunity to build a bridge to the measures to collect.

If you return to the table and only report total head count of training sessions, the cost of the training and how satisfied the learners were with the program, be ready for an icy stare and those two cruel words: “So what?”

If you can’t get to the business measures you want, you still can effectively sell executives on how learning contributes to the success of the business. There are several impactful measures that more fully reflect learning’s enablement of the organization’s human capital.