Hide and seek

Dear Paul, thanks for great question. I have been working on this topic all my professional life. In my projects we started with a value added work analysis with the stakeholders in order to identify: 1) which value adding activities needed a training gap filled 2) what measures ( by management) would show the delta in that work activity before and after the training. The key thing was management attention and what you measure is in fact what you get. The big battle is to move management/ stakeholders from being contributors to being involved - and I found the best way was to identify the impact on business activity ( not skill or knowledge) and involve them in visibly measuring it. Then there is no more hiding.

What an exciting question, Paul Matthews. From experience, I would say the issue is somewhat more profound. Someone in your organisation says we need training on 'X'. It is created and delivered. Later that same someone asks for a report of how many did training on 'X' and how many completed it. But that is as far as it goes; he/she/they can happily report they had training on 'X' created, and this many people attended and completed. Feather in their cap! Deeper? In many instances where we see people have not changed their behaviour or learned from the intervention, they would probably question why we are doing this, did we need to do it and if so, to what end? Do we not need to look back at the real needs analysis for the training before it is created? Do you know if it is required? If so, then the person requesting should have the responsibility and accountability to check if there has been a change and question what went wrong if there is none. If the requester does not want the responsibility, then there probably was not a need in the first place. My 2c.