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CEO, SkillDirector Stuart Rogers is SkillDirector's CEO, focusing on strategic leadership, finance, and operations. He has broad operational, sales, and executive management experience at companies in the technology and hard goods distribution sectors. Stuart holds a bachelor's degree from Wofford College and an MBA from the University of South Carolina, with concentrations in marketing and finance.

Stuart Rogers

ASTD Career Navigator: Create Your Customized Development Plan

Make sure that every training program is linked to the desired business outcomes of the unit that funds your training budget.

Linking Learning and Business Results: Are You Part of the Problem or the Solution?

ICE 2012 Sales Enablement Zone Blog Series 3-8

Two daunting trends—the increasing skills gap and the lack of employee engagement—are affecting the perception of learning and development (L&D) in organizations. Employees, managers, and executives are becoming increasingly disengaged from the L&D department and its offerings. It’s time to turn it around!
In this webinar you’ll learn:

the three primary contributors to learning disengagement
why the existing approaches aren’t working and may make the problem worse
a new approach that leverages adult learning theory to drive learning engagement
steps to implement personalized learning in your organization.
 


Personalized Learning: Overcoming the Learning and Development Engagement Problem

The L&D field is awash in suggested tools, techniques, frameworks, dogma, and just plain junk. Fortunately, there are also plenty of useful and effective concepts, tools, and guides. Indeed, arguments abound about whether ISD, HPT, talent development, training, e-learning, learning objects, expert systems, balanced score cards, Lean Six Sgima, quality management, or constructivism is the “way to go.” However, support for one approach over another is usually based on personal biases rather than research and pragmatic feedback from sensible application. Bottom line: Learning and performance practitioners must do the right thing, not just do things right. What’s more, as professionals, we are responsible for what we use, do, produce, and deliver in terms of the value we add or subtract from our internal and external clients. All of us are charged with improving performance, and we are confronted with change in our pursuit of performance improvement. What’s more, we are responsible for the consequences of the choices we make in these efforts and in reaction to such change. Too often, though, we look for quick fixes, magic checklists, and comfortable ways to enact change and improve performance. Sadly, we typically look for conventional ways of doing things, rather than seeking out the best tools and concepts to manage the actual realities we must face. Although convenient in the short term, this sort of approach to managing change won’t work in the long term. Perhaps it is time to make sensible and justifiable—not just conventional and temporarily safe—choices. In other words, will we be the masters of change or the victims of it? Here are some sensible, sensitive, and effective guidelines—based on applied research and successful practices—for managing change while improving performance. Think and act strategically, not just tactically and operationally. Correctly align what we use, do, produce, and deliver to measurable external client and societal value added;Find, define, and justify valid and useful objectives based on performance data, on evidence.Use and align three levels of planning and results: societal/mega, organizational/macro, and individual/micro.Collect needs (not wants) assessment data and use that for deciding your choices of where to head, what you do, and what you deliver; needs are gaps in results not lack in means and resources.Select the right tools, such as Lean Six Sigma, balanced score cards, e-learning, learning objects, for measurably improving performance based on needs assessment data. Don’t start with a solution before you know the problem.Be rigorous about evaluation and continual improvement to assure that you and your organization adds value within and external to your organization. All of this is possible … and ethical … and professional … and we know how to do it.For more advice on improving organizational performance, check out my latest book, Needs Assessment for Organizational Success. Co-authored with Ingrid Guerra-Lopez, this book provides new insight in managing the needs assessment process to structure performance improvement across all aspects of measurement and supportive decision-making tools.

Will L&D Pros Be Masters of Change—or Victims of It?

Needs assessments can align with a bottom line—if done correctly. Further, there are two bottom lines that are important: one is the conventional one and the second is the societal one. Both are important but success can be further assured by aligning and contributing to both bottom lines.  Defining and Delivering Success: The Primary Role of Needs Assessment A proper needs assessment—identifying and prioritizing gaps in results on the basis of the costs to meet the needs as compared to the costs to ignore them—increase your success, as well as the continuing success of your organization. It provides evidence for strategic planning, decision making, design, development, implementation, and evaluation/continual improvement. To best assure that a needs assessment will add value to at least one bottom line depends on which approach you use. There are, indeed, two bottom lines: the conventional one displayed on a corporate profit and loss sheet (usually quarterly and yearly) and the societal bottom line that documents what value has been added to individuals, the organization, and our shared society. There is a choice of needs assessments approaches, and which one you select from the “cafeteria of options” will determine what value you add and to whom the value is added. Hope is not an option in selecting a needs assessment approach; mother advised, during my more formative year that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” So select your assessment on the basis of what results you will get, as compared to the usual “this is what others use and they say it will it is good.” I believe that only evidence-based approaches that have proven merit should be considered. Needs Assessment, Strategic Planning, and Measurable Success There are three levels of planning, and thus three levels of needs assessment.  Needs assessment will provide the basic evidence—data—for strategic thinking and planning. Which level you start with will determine if you get results at the conventional bottom line or also at the societal bottom line. Here are the basic questions any organization should ask and answer and a format for obtaining commitment.  Do you commit to deliver organizational contributions that adds measurable value for your external clients AND society?  (MEGA/Outcomes)Do you commit to deliver organizational contributions that have the quality required by your external partners? (MACRO/Outputs)Do you commit to produce internal results that have the quality required by your internal partners? (MICRO/Products)Do you commit to have efficient internal products, programs, projects, and activities?  (PROCESSES)Do you commit to create and ensure the quality and appropriateness of the human, capital, and physical resources available? (INPUTS)Do you commit to deliver:products, activities, methods, and procedures that have positive value and worth?the results and accomplishments defined by our objectives? (EVALUATION/CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT) Based on the questions, there are three levels of results: Societal results and contributions (Mega)Organizational results and consequences (Macro)Individual or team results and consequences (Micro). Needs and Needs Assessment Needs—gaps in results and consequences—should and may be collected at the three results levels of Mega/Outcomes, Macro/Outputs, and Micro/Products. This data will allow strategic thinking and planning to move forward based on evidence; making useful and valid decisions and providing the basis for evaluation. It is vital that “need” be defined as a noun, as a gap in results, not as a gap in resources or processes. NEEDS are gaps between current results and desired results at three levels (Mega, Macro, and Micro) NEEDS ASSESSMENT is the identification and prioritization of NEEDS for selection elimination or reduction   Needs may be prioritized on the basis of the costs to meet the needs as compared to the costs of ignoring them. Needs when identified can be captured in a summary form that identifies the gaps in results and also identified possible means to close those gaps that should be considered after selecting the needs to be met. These data points will allow for useful strategic planning and decision making. If you are to add to both the bottom lines, start at the Mega level. If you only intend to add to your organization’s bottom line, start at Macro or Micro level. But be aware that that limited focus might not add value to society or sustain your organization for long.Editor’s note: This post is adapted from the ASTD Handbook (ASTD Press, 2014). The second edition of the ASTD Handbook is the most valuable resource you can own as a training and development professional. Written by 96 of the best and brightest thinkers in the field, its 55 chapters cover everything you need to know about the profession today. Find key statistics from the book in this infographic. Join me online February 25, 2015, for the Essentials of Conducting a Needs Assessment Certificate.

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