Developing Human Capital: Using Analytics to Plan and Optimize Your Learning and Development Investments

Chapter 6Measurement Alignment

The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.

—John Tukey, American mathematician

The leadership development initiative of a global consumer products company was under scrutiny at budget time. The CFO wanted to know if it was working, and wanted proof beyond surveys from the learning department. With the initiative’s goal of “Live the Vision,” the learning department struggled to find any evidence beyond anecdotal feedback. No one had ever explicitly defined what “living the vision” would look like in quantifiable, measurable terms. It felt like leadership development was too squishy to try to quantify. But was it? This chapter introduces the Measurement Map, a tool for aligning an initiative to business outcomes using quantifiable measures. We contend that yes, you can measure the squishy stuff.

In the preceding chapter, we talked about curriculum alignment, where a thorough task analysis could be used to identify the behaviors of high-performers as they deliver on business goals. In this chapter, we take alignment to the initiative level, such as a program, course, or series of courses, to operationalize success so you can quantify and measure its impact on business outcomes.

ALIGNMENT WANTED

What the consumer products CFO was looking for was a link between the leadership development initiative and its impact in terms of an improvement in business performance. While aligning people strategies ...