For many years, the learning world has looked to justify its work to the C suite by demonstrating return on investment. The work completed by Kirkpatrick has long been the model that many L&D professionals have referenced.
Generally, those working in the wider HR field have struggled to produce spreadsheets offering the right data to appease those who hold budgetary control. With the added challenge of creating a clear and direct link between a learning event and a bottom line improvement, exhaustion has set in.
It occurred to our team some time ago that a better way to benchmark would be to measure against those things that the organisation wants to see change. Objectives like an increased number of learning-related discussions between managers and their teams or a rise in the number of ideas that get through prototype stage. Lately, we were introduced to an alternative way of approaching the measurement of success; Kirkpatrick’s work benchmarking on Return on Expectations. We were excited to find that Beyond Performance and Kirkpatrick are adopting a very similar approach.
The challenge presented by trying to demonstrate ROI leaves most practitioners without the will to live, yet the ROE process is much more intuitive and achievable.
We believe our core philosophy, summarised in The Performance Equation, neatly aligns with the concepts presented by Kirkpatrick and we want to tell everyone about it!
| Kirkpatrick model | Beyond Performance, The Performance Equation |
| Focus on the organisational mission | Uncover the context within which the organisation operates |
| Identify leading indicators | Quantify the performance goal, benchmarking for a starting point and identify desired areas of change |
| Define critical behaviours | Determine priority knowledge, skill and behaviour deficits that directly relate to the desired areas for change |
| Determine required drivers | Identify the learner pathway through Design Thinking practices and create a learning ecosystem through collaboration |
| Design learning | Design and deliver the content through prototype solutions |
| Monitor and adjust | Benchmark and refine |
The Performance Equation
(Context + Content) x Collaboration = Performance
The degree to which the organisation collaborates on and engages with the right content within their own unique context will influence the level of performance the organisation can expect to achieve.
If you want to find an alternative way to clearly demonstrate the success of your learning and development programme, why not give us a call?
