Robert O. Brinkerhoff
Principal Consultant
Advantage Performance
www.AdvantagePerformance.com

Rob Brinkerhoff is a world-recognized expert in training effectiveness and evaluation. His Success Case Evaluation Method® (SCM) has been heralded as the simplest, most convincing way yet to measure the business impact of training.

Rob is the author of The Success Case Method, Telling Training's Story and High Impact Learning. He consults with dozens of industry leaders and is a frequent speaker at ASTD and ISPI events. He is professor emeritus at Western Michigan University, and a principal consultant with the Advantage Performance Group.

Advantage Performance is the world’s leading human performance consulting network.

A pioneer in developing human resource interventions that result in verifiable business results, Advantage is launching a suite of tools and methods called The Advantage Way to support the entire learning and performance management lifecycle. Advantage clients include Microsoft, General Electric, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Toyota, Oracle and many others.

For additional information about Advantage Performance Group's products and services, visit their website at: www.advantageperformance.com.

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Telling Training's Story

Robert O. Brinkerhoff, EdD
Principal Consultant
Advantage Performance Group

Those of us in the training and development profession know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what we do almost always adds value to our companies and the people we teach. The problem is that our customers and clients are often skeptical; they want "proof."

Unfortunately, most of the methods recommended for evaluating training impact are too complex, too costly, and take too much time or resources. Worse than that, they fail to tell training's story in a credible or convincing way; indeed, excessive claims for ROI have damaged, rather than enhanced, our reputations.

What to do?

We are convinced that there is a fresh and much more effective way to approach the challenge of proving and improving the impact of training.

We call it the Success Case Method. It is based on three key concepts:

• The power of stories. Stories are extremely powerful communication vehicles. They are far more memorable than lists of numbers; they give life and meaning to financial analysis.
• A judicial view of evidence. We do not have to prove scientifically that training produced a benefit — or prove it beyond any doubt. We just have to meet the standard in any court of law; we have to prove our case beyond a reasonable doubt by a preponderance of evidence.
• Evaluation is a tool to improve the value of training as much or more than to prove it. If we are going to spend a portion of our precious resources on evaluation, then it must do more than just justify our existence; it must provide insights that help improve future outcomes.

The Success Case Method begins by focusing and planning the study and generating an "impact model" that defines what successful behaviors and results are expected if the program is working well.

The best and worst cases of impact following a training program are then sought out and identified. That is, which attendees took what they learned and used it in ways that produced tangible, documentable value? Who are those who attended the same training, but failed to use it ways that produced anything of value?

The "success cases" prove that the training, when transferred and applied to work, can produce real benefit for the individual and for the company. The "failure to apply" cases identify the problems or impediments that kept the training from delivering value; these are most often environmental - outside the scope of the training itself - such as a lack of managerial support.

Success cases need to be rigorously documented and, if appropriate, their value estimated. A sample of unsuccessful participants need to be interviewed to find out what got in the way of delivering results.

The proportion of unsuccessful cases (often large) indicates how much potential value the company is leaving on the table, and can be a rallying cry for greater managerial involvement and other environmental supportive systems and behaviors.

Finally, the results, conclusions, and recommendations need to be communicated to the key stakeholders in a fashion that tells training's story and leads to an agreement to take action to improve the future.

Ideas Into Action

1. Assess training results while there’s still time to
   make mid-course corrections . Don’t settle for measuring the worth of a training project once it’s said and done. Assess your efforts in real time, as the training is rolled out, so you have an opportunity to continually incorporate what you learn to improve the value of the training to your organization and build increasing interest and commitment to the training.
   
2. Learn from your experience; don't just measure it. If all you measure is the "Training ROI" — the average value of outcomes — you wasted the chance to learn why the training succeeded or failed and who benefited and who did not. To make intelligent decisions that will improve future results, you need to find out which aspects of your program worked best and worst, why,and for whom.
   
3. Tune the environment, not just the training. Crucial environmental factors like supervision, organization
   design and financial rewards have a huge impact on the outcome of training. Use an evaluation approach that acknowledges the role played by non-training factors, that encourages team play, and helps integrate training and environmental factors.
   .

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