Cal Wick
Founder and Chairman
Fort Hill Company

For the past six years, we have been studying the factors that differentiate companies in which training and development contribute significantly to competitiveness and business results versus those in which training and development have much less impact.

We identified six disciplines practiced by the companies that get the greatest return from their training and development investment. We are pleased that Pfeiffer agreed to publish our findings in a book that has just been released: The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results.

We want to thank all our clients who helped contribute their time and insights to the book. We welcome your comments, experiences and suggestions for using the Six Disciplines to take learning to the next level of excellence.

Cal

Cal Wick is the Founder and Chairman of Fort Hill Company.

Cal is a nationally-recognized consultant, educator and researcher on improving the performance of managers and organizations.

Cal's research led to the concept of Follow-Through Management® and the development of web-based Follow-Through Tools® that improve results by increasing follow-through and learning transfer.

Cal graduated as a Rockefeller Fellow from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and continued his studies as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow at MIT's Sloan School of Management.

He can be reached at: wick@forthillcompany.com

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Recent Learning Alerts

The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning

Seven years ago, a client asked me to do some follow-up interviews with participants in one of their flagship programs. What I discovered was discouraging: although the program received excellent end-of class evaluations, only one person in six could give a specific example of how they had used what they learned to improve their performance.

I realized that such a low transfer rate greatly reduced the value that the training and development initiative could have delivered. I decided to dedicate my energies to finding ways to accelerate learning transfer and application.

We have had the opportunity over the past six years to work with a large number of companies that do an outstanding job of putting learning to work. What we discovered was that most effective learning organizations practiced six key disciplines:

1. Define business outcomes
2. Design the complete experience
3. Deliver for application
4. Drive follow-through
5. Deploy active support
6. Document results

These six disciplines form a chain of value which is only as strong as its weakest link. The 6Ds™ have proven to be a valuable mnemonic for reviewing programs and identifying opportunities to strengthen even already strong initiatives.

Ideas for Action

1. Define business outcomes.

   Make certain that the objectives of each training and development initiative are defined in terms that describe the benefit they will provide to the business. Work closely with business leaders to agree on the desired outcomes and measures of success. Create an impact map that shows the links between the business needs, the required knowledge and skills, and the proposed learning experiences.

2. Design the complete experience.

   Think holistically and systemically about the learning experience from the learner's perspective. Do all the elements - before, during, and after - the instruction reinforce and support one another?

3. Deliver for application

   Minimize the learning-doing gap by presenting material in a way that emphasizes and illustrates its application. Set the expectation for transfer and stress the need for application throughout. Introduce the goal setting process early in the program and provide time after each major topic for the learners to reflect and plan on how they can use what they just learned.

4. Drive follow-through

   Treat development objectives like business objectives; ensure that they are well crafted, agreed to by management, followed-up on, and rewarded. Set expectations for application and a mechanism and schedule for reporting out progress. Use a follow-through management system to track participation and progress during the transfer and application period.

5. Deploy active support

   Make sure participants have access to the support they need to most effectively transfer and apply their new knowledge and skills; learning only produces value when it is applied to the work of the company. Engage managers in the process; inform them of their role, provide relevant information about the program, and what they can do to maximize payback to their department.

6. Document results

   Document the results of their programs to justify continued investment and support continuous improvement. Identify success cases and use to illustrate program value in reports and to future participants. Conduct a “lessons learned” session with the design and execution team. What went well and should be augmented? What is not working and needs to be changed? Use the information to improve subsequent cycles.

Wick, Pollock, Jefferson, and Flanagan:The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2006. (Enter promotion code W6656 at www.Pfeiffer.com and save 20%.)

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