Measuring impact — why do it and how to get your team onboard
Hi there!
I’m Pedro, co-owner of Efectivi.
It’s probably the first time you hear from me, so I’ll start with a short personal story that is very relevant to the topic of measuring impact.
I came into the Learning world after almost a decade in Operations and Product, most of which I spent at Amazon.
During the development of one of the first eLearning courses at Efectivi, I was shocked with how much focus there was on timelines, budgets and deliverables and how little talk there was about business results.
Before, I couldn’t get a project off the ground until I defined the success criteria and had a system to measure results.
Now, I found myself rushing to a solution, without time to even ask why is this course relevant at all or what are we trying to change.
Turns out we were not the only ones suffering this, and this is a widespread problem in Learning.
Not measuring impact is, I believe, the root cause of many of the problems the industry faces such as lack of control over the content pipeline and strategy, impossible deadlines, lack of investment and low learner engagement. That’s when we decided to make it part of our mission:
“To dispel the notion that corporate learning is synonymous with boring and elevate the role of learning teams by uncovering the impact they have in their organisations.”
It’s easier said than done though. The reason it is a persistent issue that continues to plague the industry is that it is a self-reinforcing cycle. Being able to articulate the value learning teams bring to their organisations (and how they do so) is a prerequisite to be able to affect cultural change and have the proverbial seat at the table.
Think about it, why would leadership listen to us if we are unable to measure the effectiveness of our methods? Quoting Laura Paramoure:
“If we had a seat at the table - what the heck would we tell them? What business intelligence are we providing?”
Repeat this cycle enough times and you have cultural change.
In case solving those problems was not motivation enough, there is one more benefit that might convince you and your team to start measuring impact. It will get you and your team promoted.
How? Very simple. Develop awesome learning experiences that deliver results AND measure those results so you can continously improve and communicate the value you bring to your organisation. This is a tried and tested formula that works in virtually any major organisation.
Why isn’t everyone doing this? Because it is simple, but not easy. Impact measurement needs to be an integral part of any project from the planning stage and both, learning teams and stakeholders, need to be committed to it. It’s a process that needs its own time and effort.
I have spent the last 3 months researching frameworks to measure the impact of digital learning. They are great (I particularly like Phillips ROI model), but they all have their blind spots and none of them are a “plug and play” solution. At one point or another, they all require speaking to stakeholders, metric owners or data analytics teams to find the link between key organisational metrics (Big Rocks) and the learning experience.
What metrics do leaders in your organisation report on? What are their targets? Those are likely the Big Rocks.
At this point you might be thinking:
“Ok…it’s clear why measuring impact is important and what’s in it for me. But how can I get started?”
The answer deserved its own write up.
If you’d like to chat about measuring impact with me directly, you can book a free consultation in my calendar.
I’ll be delighted to talk to you.
Ok… that’s it for now. See you in the next post!
