Evaluation – John Tomlinson

This article builds on L&D is not about training courses, it’s about improving workplace performance

In the L&D business, evaluation is the step in the process that gets done least well.

It is the poor relation, the neglected tail-end-Charlie at the end of the cycle that feels more like a box-ticky obligation than a critical cog in the machine.

I think this is dangerous.

If we are unable to provide a professional set of results to justify the investment made in our services, we are doomed to be stuck on the periphery.

This leads to what Charles Jennings calls the “Conspiracy of convenience” where everyone is happy that the training happened and the ragtag of MI measures and happy sheet smiley faces confirm that the box was ticked properly.

As a socially-awkward INTP, I am never quite sure when I am being super clever and when I am being hyperbolic, so please tell me to calm down if this is over the top, but I believe that showing senior leaders a jumble of unimportant graphs and expecting a pat on the head is infantilising the profession, reinforcing the idea that we are not central to the organisation’s success.

Continue reading “Learning evaluation: I wouldn’t start from here” →

What is the most important thing about the training courses you deliver?

Is it that you get good feedback? You get top marks on the happy sheet? The organisation is willing to invite you back for more work?

Probably all of the above, because this is largely how we measure our success.

But it’s not how we succeed.

We succeed when people learn, and more so when they implement that learning and improve their performance, improve the organisation, improve their lives!

People learn stuff when their ideas and assumptions are challenged, when they think differently, when they change something about themselves and the way they deliver within the organisation.

Most of us working in Learning and Development are passionate about this.

We want to change people’s professional lives and improve organisational performance, it’s what gets us out of bed in the morning. We care about the impact we can have and we strive to get better, even to the point of reading a blog post like this one, just in case there’s something we can learn from it.

Yet the way we measure our performance undermines our ability to have that positive impact.

Collusion of Mediocrity