The Training Measurement Book: Best Practices, Proven Methodologies, and Practical Approaches

Chapter Three

Limitations of the Kirkpatrick Model

In discussions with many training managers and executives, I found that one of the biggest challenges organizations face is the limitations of the existing measurement models (primarily the Kirkpatrick model). If you were a sales manager and were asked to measure your sales organization, you would focus on measuring sales revenue. Then, as you became more sophisticated, you would start to measure revenue per salesperson, revenue per customer, time to close a sale, number of leads per month, and many other things. There is a “causal” model behind sales: more leads lead to more opportunities, more opportunities lead to more deals, and more marketing increases the number of leads. These measures ...