Why Do We Do Training?

I recently asked a student of mine why we do training. He was working on an exercise to strategically align learning to organization goals, an exercise I hope all of you go through at least once a year. Strategic alignment forces you to ask the hard questions. Sometimes the answers are simple, sometimes not so simple. In his case the answers are not so simple, but let’s start with simple and come back to his situation.

This exercise is probably simplest for those who work for an organization (for-profit or nonprofit) which has clear, readily available, high-level SMART goals. Examples common to many organizations would be increase sales by 10 percent, increase profit margin by 5 percent, reduce operating costs by 15 percent, increase customer or patient satisfaction by 5 points and increase employee engagement scores by 3 points. Each of these organizational goals is clear and easy to measure. When this is the case, learning leaders can meet with senior leaders and stakeholders to discuss and determine whether learning has a role to play in helping achieve the goals, especially the highest-priority goals. If it does, then they can discuss and come to agreement on the type of learning, the target audience, completion date, cost, and, very importantly, the expected benefit or impact the learning may have on the goal. Once all this is done for the key organizational goals, then a business plan for learning can be created to show how learning is aligned to key goals, what programs are planned, and what impact is expected from these programs.

As you can see from the above, it all starts with outcome-related goals like increasing sales by 10 percent.  The task gets much more difficult when there are no organizational goals or when the goals are not outcome related. In the student’s case, his organization is the Army and his training division’s goals are not outcome related. Instead they are input-related such as train 10 percent more troops or increase the training provided to the troops by 15 percent. So now when we try to do the strategic exercise we are saying that we will provide training to accomplish the goal of providing training. But this is circular and not at all strategic. Thus, the question, “Why are we training?” The answer cannot simply be because we like to train, it is the right thing to do or we value our people. We have to identify an outcome that we are trying to achieve, or make one up if necessary, but one should really already exist. In the case of the Army I would like to think the answer is about increasing the readiness and capability of the troops, of improving their chance of success on mission, and of keeping them safe. While these may be hard to measure, it forces everyone involved to think about the goal, how training can help achieve it and how the impact of training on achieving the goal may be measured. By the way, educational institutions face these same types of issues.