From Demonstrating Impact to Having Impact: Three Strategies for Influencing L&D Investments

In the couple of weeks following the Australian Institute of Training & Development 2018 National Conference I’ve had a lot of requests for my slides, so I thought I’d share the main points from my presentation below.

The central idea of my speech was a proposed shift in focus from ‘demonstrating impact’ to ‘having impact’. Exploring what it takes to make this shift was inspired by a presentation by Kurt Kraiger, an organisational psychologist, learning evaluation specialist and Professor at Colorado State University. In it he stated that a key opportunity he sees for L&D professionals is not getting better at measuring our programs, but getting better at influencing decision-makers in relation to these.

To have impact you must first empathise with the work of leadership.

In laying the groundwork for why a shift from demonstrating impact to having impact is needed, I reflected on my recent experience of hearing former US president Barack Obama deliver a keynote at the recent ATD conference in San Diego. One of the many stories that resonated with me was one that he shared about the “work of being a President”.

He said, “as President, the only things that land on your desk are the things that really smart people, working really hard and with all the available information, still can’t make a call on.” That’s when the work of the Presidency starts. It’s your role as President to make the best decision that you can in situations where there is no obvious or good one to make.

Increasingly, I think this reflects the work of all leaders. They are being tasked with making decisions with plentiful but imperfect data under conditions of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

So, what does that mean for us as L&D professionals?

It means we need to hep leaders make their next decision, not justify one they’ve already made.

We need to use learning data to look forward, not simply to describe what happened. Calculating ROI may tell us whether a decision to invest in learning paid off, but if it comes, three, six or 12 months after that initial decision to invest was made, the decision-makers have well and truly moved on.

So how do we engage leaders and other stakeholders in learning data in a way that helps them make their next investment decision?

Three influencing strategies that I’ve adapted from Kurt Kraiger’s work that I think can add value are:

1. Developing a theory of impact
2. Thinking in terms of evidence not proof and
3. Isolating the effects of learning.

Develop a Theory of Impact

When it comes to influencing organisational decision-makers, one of the first strategies to consider is partnering with them to develop a theory of impact. This is where you link evaluation to unique capabilities and / or valued outcomes for the organisation.

In one example (which you can read in full here) I collaborated with Bakers Delight to define what delightful customer service looks like and the business outcomes that this is expected to drive. Our theory of impact was designed to underpin a strategic blended learning initiative dubbed “The Delight Factor”. The Delight Factor was geared towards enabling Bakers Delight to regain market share by reconnecting with their brand promise: that every baker should be delighted by the bread that they bake, and every customer should be delighted by the service that they receive. We identified six ‘ingredients’ of delight that included 1) Acknowledgement & Greeting, 2) Personalising Service, 3) Tastings & Product Knowledge, 4) Ad Ons, Up Selling & Substitute Selling, 5) Random Delight & Instore Theatre and 6) Complaints. When these six ingredients of delight are combined and consistently applied we hypothesised that this would lead to increased revenue, repeat customers and brand advocacy. Importantly, Bakers Delight needed these factors to come together in time to impact the six-week Easter Period, which typically has the strongest sales for the year.

If this is our theory of impact, was it proven correct?

Immediately following the rollout of The Delight Factor there was a 11.7% increase in sales during the 6-week Easter Period for 2017 compared to the same period the year before. In addition, over 1.2 million more hot cross buns were sold.

By developing a theory of impact together with decision-makers, it was not only more likely that our learning design would be effective, but in doing so we primed them to accept a connection between The Delight Factor and improved business results, in this case sales.

Think Evidence, Not Proof

 A second influencing strategy is to think in terms of ‘evidence’, not ‘proof’ given that organisational performance is driven by a range of systemic and interacting factors. Attempting to pinpoint one factor as causal can quickly get you unstuck. This is a similar criticism to that commonly levelled at attempts to pinpoint ROI calculations to a specific dollar figure. Instead, it can be valuable to involve decision-makers in identifying and committing to evidence points that would signal to them that the learning has been effective.

With The Delight Factor, we consulted with franchisees and Area Managers to understand what success would look like in behavioural terms. They described things like front-of-house staff offering more tastings, providing random delight through complimentary product, value-adding through educating customers about products in line with their needs, going the extra mile by helping someone carry their groceries to their car (for example) and simply having more fun within the bakery.

This meant that when franchisees experienced boosts in sales following The Delight Factor, they were primed to notice the ‘delightful’ practices that contributed. For example, one bakery in Western Australia experienced an almost 17% increase in sales shortly after The Delight Factor was implemented. This increase came after years of stagnant sales (in fact, FY13 sales were about the same as FY16 sales, despite price increases over the same period). When approached to find out more about the bakery’s recent success, the franchisee said one reason was no doubt a greater focus on customers, inspired by The Delight Factor and encouragement of his team to embrace the ethos. So, while correlation is not proof, sharing success stories like these helps to build a ‘credible case’ for the impact of learning.

Isolate the Effects of Learning

The third strategy I shared in my presentation relates to isolating the effects of learning. While we know that a broad range of factors contribute to organisational performance it’s important to think about ways to eliminate or reduce counterarguments to claims that the learning intervention was effective. One way to do this is to use additional data points to rule out alternative explanations for obtained effects such as seasonality, marketing or product changes.

For The Delight Factor, we used “comp” (comparable) sales to reduce explanations linked to seasonality. In other words, we directly compared the 2017 Easter period to the 2016 Easter period, rather than comparing say March to April’s figures as we would expect a revenue increase as we got closer to the long weekend. Another data point we leveraged was ‘spend per customer’ (SPC) which showed that post The Delight Factor the average dollar amount customers were spending in a single transaction rose from $6.41 to $6.53. This result helped counter claims that the 11.7% increase in sales was driven by increased foot traffic, for example, off the back of an awesome Easter marketing campaign. The SPC figures suggest that it wasn’t so much there we suddenly more customers visiting bakeries, but that when they did, something was happening within the sales and service experience itself that was influencing customers to spend more.

Learning With Impact

The cultural cut through that has been achieved by The Delight Factor has resulted in some great customer stories, such as this one about Nicola from Albury Bakers Delight, providing random delight to a customer who needed it more than most:

“Today as I walked through Centro Albury, I was approached by a lovely Bakers Delight staff member, Nicola. She offered me a bag with bread and hot cross buns. I was blown away. I asked her what for and she politely told me because they wanted to do something for people in the community. This is the nicest thing I have had happen to me in a very long time and I am so very grateful. My family has been having a rough time lately and this has given me such a boost. This act of kindness has exceeded anything I have experienced in retail.”

While the numbers did a lot of the talking in relation to the effectiveness of The Delight Factor, its customer feedback like this that to me, truly speaks to impact.

Further Investment, Further Impact

In summary, developing a theory of impact, thinking evidence not proof and isolating the effects of learning are three influencing strategies to enable you to go beyond demonstrating impact to having impact as an L&D professional. In the case of The Delight Factor, such an approach helped to green light further investments, including establishing Hero of Delight Awards, linking learning assets like the “Deck-of-Delight” to ongoing marketing campaigns, including Delight Factor skill building as part of onboarding and providing refresher training. These further investments drove further momentum which in turn deepened the impact of the learning. By shifting your mindset to one that is about having impact, not simply demonstrating impact, you enable organisational decision-makers to be informed, active investors in learning.