Executive ROI

As an executive, your focus is to get the most out of the least. Your goal is to succeed in every aspect of your business. Your key to achieving a positive return on investment is to communicate, communicate, communicate.

You are in and out of meetings every moment of every day. You barely have time to sit at your desk, let alone a training class. You are the strategy…You are the vision. The goals need to be set and refined. Since you are not the content expert, you need to trust your operators, your trainers, your teams to deliver on the expectations you set.

If you plan on being successful over the long-term, you need to be willing to refine your goals as you gain more knowledge. As plans are implemented that reinforce the strategy, you will need to offer your assistance. You also should be the first to initiate change, remembering to check in with all levels of staff as the process is rolled out and behaviors are impacted. By having a face in the organization, you will help the people travel along the varied change management paths they decide to follow. Paths, each of us follow every day, sometimes on our way home…

You are driving home from the office. You begin thinking about what will erupt when you announce the implementation of the new software that is being brought in “to make things “easier” in efforts to meet our financial goals while streamlining the processes for the operations”…at least that is what the IT report indicated…training will have two weeks after acceptance testing to develop and deliver training to your staff of 1500.

You are just about to pick up your cell phone to check your voicemail, when you see the taillights brighten on the car in front of you. You step on your brake pedal and slow down with the rest of traffic. You remember hearing sirens when you left the office and believe an accident is somewhere on this road.

You look around for a way out. The side streets here don’t cross any of the major streets that you need to get home, but they may get you further along this road and out of the traffic. You turn your wheel slightly to the right when traffic moves forward. You decide to forgo the side streets and move with traffic.

You move forward only halfway down the block when the traffic stops again. You will have to wait to take any other route…
Or, will you? You could turn around, head back to your office, and wait until the traffic subsides.

You turn your wheel slightly to the left. Traffic moves forward again. You decide to go a little further and flow with the others. You move to the next side street, but the traffic stops there. Your patience is wearing thin and you need to figure out a solution for communicating the implementation plan tomorrow. You turn right down the next side street, hoping to get ahead of these other cars and just keep moving.

As you complete your turn, you notice three other cars behind you. “Huh, copycats,” you think aloud. You travel about five blocks, the other cars are still in view. On the sixth street, you decide to make your way back to the main thoroughfare and turn left. As you complete your turn, you realize that many others had the same idea.

You decide to turn around and try another street. This time, only one car follows. At the end of each block, you slow down and check the streets before you turn. Finally, you find a path that has only two cars. You turn down that road. You check your rear-view mirror and realize the other car must have turned down another street.

You decide to turn on your radio to see if there is any information about the situation. As you get closer to the other cars, the babbling from the news station mentions a fire hydrant burst and flooding on the roadway…and under the two cars in front of you. You slowed down enough to hit the end of the quickly expanding pool at a stop.

You back and begin to turn around again. If only you had listened to the radio, if only you had stayed on the path you set, if only you had not left the office so early…if only…

These situations happen. Have they happened to you? Did you stay the path? Did you turn around? Did you just pull off on a side street and make some calls? We all seem to be rushing for a quicker way home, a quicker return on investment. However, we rarely receive the return we wish.

In fact, we may waste time by trying different paths. Others may follow. We may exhaust more money in labor or invest in one technology to “fix” another. It’s like turning down a side street with a larger back-up of cars then the one you tried to escape.
We may eventually need to revert to the original path because we reached a point of negative return so large that it overshadowed and even flooded the original investment.

Throughout the entire scenario, we rarely thought about getting home. However, we did think about the meeting the next day and the getting ahead of the other cars. If we can’t remind ourselves of the path or the vision, who will remind the organization?

As the executive, as the vision and strategy, you need to set and refine goals, offer assistance, and initiate change, especially as new projects are rolled out.

Vision is not always 20/20…
Sometimes, it is clouded by heights
no one intended to reach
since the beginning…

Branding a part of your organization is a piece to the long-term puzzle, not the answer to short-term finances…

Branding is the successful transition between what a product is and what you wish it to become. It is the one piece that if it sticks well, can mean a lifetime of positive press. If the branding becomes a sign of negativity, much work is needed to reinvent the product. A new look is needed. A new campaign must be established in order to distance yourself from the old brand. A new story will need to be shared, and shared, and shared, in order to create new key message points.

Integrating messages becomes more important when establishing a brand than if you are just selling a product and looking for short-term financial success. Many businesses today design posters and flyers or radio and tv ads, but do not have any other intentions other than the hope that people see the ad and experience the product. Research is conducted by independent firms to see if customers remember the company and product associated with an ad. What is being observed is that even though we can recall an ad because of an emotional connection, we may not be able to remember the product.

Reinforcement is the only way to change this behavior. So, you can either produce and distribute more ads, or you can choose multiple venues and share the key message points created from a distinct storyline and phased timeline. With the later, your brand gains momentum and is more likely to drive continued and predictable ROI rather than immediate and unstable.

Improving on decisions is best for the company…

Leaders within an organization make decisions everyday, some good, some questionable. You are always told that if you do not support a decision once it is made, you are not a “team player.” If you are not considered a “team player,” your opportunities within the organization may decrease. It is OK to have an opinion, really. It is how you choose to share your opinion that becomes the challenge.

Deliver on the decision that has already been made, and do so to the best of your ability. Share your solution-oriented feedback. Increase awareness of the vision and importance of your organization with your teams and peers. Set the example. Understand that the solution you are supporting is just the first step in a successful business.

Executives or decision-makers in organizations may not have enough time or even enough information to plan the full implementation of a project. This is your opportunity to take ownership and improve on the decisions already made. This is your opportunity to demonstrate that you are there to deliver by reinforcing content, operating efficiently, and increasing awareness throughout your scope in the operation areas.


Solutions are just as liquid as the problems they are meant to dilute…

Reinforcing learning is the most important component to changing behavior…

On-the-job training and application is essential to understanding what needs to be accomplished for a role. In fact, adults learn effectively by doing. With on-the-job training, a skilled person shares his/her knowledge with an unskilled person within certain responsibilities. The results of this situation are positive in the short-term only if the person who shares the knowledge is available to consistently answer questions about the tasks needed to be accomplished.

As a leader, you will need to understand the resources available to you and your team. You will need to remind them of the importance of their tasks. You will need to reinforce the content within their training. Work with training and/or your communications teams to create job-aids or key messages to share with your staff at planned intervals after the initial training takes place. These resources should center on gaps identified in knowledge and skill assessments as well as application assessments.

This is the importance of each step within the evaluation process. Take part in and encourage your team to take part in all aspects of the measurement process. By supplying information to the training and marketing teams as well as your
executives, your job becomes easier. The executives will be able to adjust their expectations. The training team will be able to work on continuous learning projects rather than focusing on the get-them-in, get-them-out philosophy. The marketing team can share more of the story or reinforce the key messages about the item. This helps increase knowledge and enables you to lead your team rather than managing resources.

Agreement, if stated in a vacuum,
gets whirled around and dusty just like the rest of the debris..

Trainers are expert trainers….

Trainers know the content of their training enough to apply it effectively. They can tell you or any member of your staff why you conduct one process before another. Trainers can demonstrate the ideal patterns of usage for the content they train. They can also help reinforce the messages of the organization with you.

However, trainers are experts in training and learning. If you pull them to “help” the customers, who is helping your staff? Who is helping you? Customers always come first. However, by focusing on the numbers rather than the quality, you will negatively impact your customer satisfaction in the long run. Busy periods are the best times for the trainers and leaders to spend time with the staff to listen and learn about the flow of the process. Using your trainers to reinforce the content of training and how it connects to the business objectives and marketing plan can help you operate more efficiently. You build the skillset of your staff so that they can handle more customers, more effectively.

If you use trainers to act as expert front-line staff, you will watch the skills of the actual front-line staff decline and your customer satisfaction level out, and even begin to dip over time. You will also see your training quality decline over an even longer time
as your trainers become burned out. They will not consider themselves qualified trainers. They will, however, feel like glorified front-line staff. For those who enjoy the learning process, this will not be enough. Eventually, you will lose your best trainers because you didn’t respect them and the skills they bring. Remember, if you are not respecting your staff and your partners, your customers will eventually feel the same way.


Expertise is a funny creature…
it often disappears when another like beast enters the lair…

Assessments measure knowledge of learners…

Knowledge and skill assessments should be based on the learning objectives for the class. The questions should be distributed proportionally across the learning objectives based on the percentage of content for each objective. The learning objectives themselves are best aligned with business objectives to determine the importance and priority of focus. The business objectives will need to be identified and developed prior to creating learning objectives.
Knowledge and skill assessments are a good source to measure what knowledge the participants have when they leave the learning environment. However, unless you conduct a pre-assessment, it can be difficult to determine if they learned it from the training or enter the class with the knowledge. Participants may not communicate their knowledge effectively in a pre-assessment even if they know the content, especially if the questions still need to be tested for construct (can the knowledge be used effectively) and criteria-related (is the knowledge being used by top performers) validity.

Application evaluations become more difficult when you try to educate a group who might be familiar with the content. How do you know when behaviors stem from a class or learning event you devised? How do you know that your content didn’t trigger an approach participants learned at an earlier stage in their careers? At times, we may not know if someone’s past experience aided him/her in understanding material better. All this should be taken into consideration before a level of competency, application, and ROI are calculated and set.

People ensure learning will be successful…

By aligning your training objectives to business objectives, you help fill gaps in content from a learning perspective. You can conduct multiple needs assessments and analyze the data until the cows come home…however, since most live in a city environment now, you may be analyzing an awful long time. You can even make sure the content aligns proportionally to the greatest and least need of your organization. This still will not ensure success. It only helps it along.

Learning is a challenging task and it takes people to make it work well. Sure, you can have online, web-based, PDA learning events, but someone, somewhere, has to put the event together. An even greater number of people are needed to hold things in place after participants engage in the learning. As adults, we have to link some importance to content before it replaces something else in our short-term or long-term memory. People, whether they are leaders, trainers, or executives, need to connect the dots for us after we attend a learning event by talking about how it relates to our everyday work.

We can look toward measurements to help integrate the learning experiences. Through satisfaction measurements, we are able to understand what marketing of the training needs to take place for the next group. Through knowledge assessments, we are able to revise or reinvent how content is delivered to a group after they attend the initial training so that we can build off of it. With Level 3 surveys, we can recognize the impact of our efforts and minimize the effect of work-arounds or lack of focus on our ROI.

Measuring what is not applied creates more work for those who are measuring…

Optimal learning comes in different formats…

Needs assessments are almost a necessity these days in any training environment. Designers, analysts, and leaders can devise a plan to hold dialogue sessions, focus groups, or focused dialogues with specific questions around the topic at hand. This same group may also align the gaps identified within these sessions to the goals of the organization. They will even develop a class, a tool, or an event to address these gaps.

However, in order for optimal learning to occur, different formats must be created. Using the expertise of an instructional designer and possibly an analyst, you can determine which format is right for the initial training and what may be a better fit for follow-up sessions. You may determine that there are too many questions to be answered with an online resource and start with a classroom setting. However, as your population begins applying the learning, you can introduce
a web-based class for reinforcement with various checks for understanding built into the tool.

Integrating a gap analysis approach into your delivery methods will help increase your ROI through connections made within the learning itself. This shows the importance of the events and the organization’s investment in the people rather than the product, service, or system. Integrated learning indicates an investment itself rather than a point in time.

Sometimes, when alignment is out of sorts, it creates all sorts of alternate sometimes…

Reinforcement provides a primary impact to application…

The number one reason why training fails is that it is not supported by the leaders after it is delivered. The number one reason learning fails is that it is not reinforced. Both are similar, yet different in their distinct ways.

Leaders who choose not to reiterate the importance of a training event push the trainees further away from the intent of the training class. The mindset of the participant shifts to, “well, if my manager doesn’t know about the class, why should I?” Negativity fosters negativity. If you choose, or your organization chooses, to have training events, then your leaders should attend the training as well. The success of the initial program is always on the training team. However, the long-term impact is felt more in the operations. By recognizing the impact of training, you will need to set a transition point so that your partners in the operations and support areas can pick up where you left off. They will be significantly challenged to do this if they do not have an idea about what was learned within the training. The higher up you go in the organization, the broader your view.

Leaders who choose not to make the content a part of their every day interactions with their staff will assist in the decay of the learning process. Negativity plays a small role here, but lack of usage, lack of interest, and higher levels of priority push out the content of a learning event. The success of a continuous learning process is always on training and development. As training professionals, we need to organize delivery effectively and provide job-aids or reminders at various times after the training. The reinforcement tools provide leaders with opportunities to talk about and direct their staff toward growing from a learning experience rather than just attending a class.

People improve performance…

Training allows an organization to share knowledge. It doesn’t impact performance directly. Rather, it allows people in the organization to grow and use their understanding to increase their application. This application should be based on the strategy and direction of the organization.

This is where leaders can make the most impact on an organization, initiate change on the thought process of a company. The traditional “business” thought is that people attend training where satisfaction and knowledge is measured initially. Application is measured 60-90 days afterwards. ROI can be shown beyond that point. There is usually something missing in between satisfaction and knowledge measurements and application calculations…the missing item is reinforcement.

Usage is not enough to reinforce the material. The leadership of an organization needs to remind everyone of the goals within their projects. This is a change in thought process. In fact, this transforms training into learning. Training is usually an event or series of events with a finite timeline. Learning, however, is continuous.


Planning for a tomorrow that never arrives makes today much busier, but we learn more through each experience…

Leading people encourages peak performance…

If you are a senior leader, you lead the organization and offer assistance to others on how to lead their teams. If you involve yourself in the management of things too oftern, results will be negative. Someone has to keep the focus on a higher strategy. Someone has to ground the organization on what success looks like.

By offering assistance to your organization at various points, and demonstrating how to lead, especially in times of change, you commit to the success of the project and your organization. You also demonstrate that you want continuous ROI, not just one big enough to build your own career.

Driving for results is good if you have a purpose. Negative reinforcement of training by penalizing those that “fail” assessments instead of understanding where gaps lie, will negatively impact results, especially short-term results. Offer opportunities to demonstrate knowledge and application. Offer positive reinforcement through recognition for high levels of application. By leading through change, you can manage your return more thoroughly.

Perception and Alignment to Scope of Role

Organizations and team rely on each other to get the job done...or, so it goes...

Sometimes, it just goes...Each level and area of an organization has distinct areas of focus while growing and sustaining a business. The title above contains a link to an example of how each member of a team is important when trying to move from customer satisfaction to customer loyalty. We have many more examples, or think of some of your own, but empower yourself and your staff to understand and use the dashboard and measurement techniques within.

As a Front-line employee, you have the greatest impact on a customer's individual satisfaction. Whether or not he/she is satisfied before they leave, hang up, or sign-off is up to you.

As a Front-line leader, you have the greatest impact on the experience. How you treat your staff and how you look at the statistics of the team helps determine the stability of the experiences your customers may have.

As a manager, you have the greatest impact on building customer relationships. By working with the front-line leaders and employees, you see what influences satisfaction and drives positive experiences. By reinforcing positive behavior and looking for ways to engage and empower your teams, your relationships will grow strong with your customers.

As an executive, you drive customer loyalty. Through vision and insight aligned to an integrated listening post with all parts of your organization, you customer loyalty and commitment to your brand moves toward the positive.