Aligning Training for Results: A Process and Tools That Link Training to Business

PREFACE

As I organized and documented what I have learned over the years, I discovered that I was in danger of missing the picture altogether. I had to keep an open mind in order to sort out the puzzle. I had to keep asking myself, what are we doing well in our profession and how are our processes broken? I also had to ask myself the obvious question, if our processes are broken, can they be repaired? If so, what is the appropriate fix? Can we improve our processes enough to achieve the expected results—and can we do it now?

My experience and my research have led me to the conclusion that I know how we can align our processes for results. I have created the work in this book with the goal of sharing this with you and providing the tools you need to be successful. You can be a major player in continuously bringing results and credibility to our training function. You can achieve this goal with minimal pain. But you must be willing to change the way you think about and apply our training processes. You must accept that there are some broken pieces and that not only is a fix possible but it will also be very gratifying along the way. You must also commit to being process driven, trust your processes, and then work your processes.

Come Along for the Journey

Step through the pages and enjoy yourself on the journey. This book will help you to achieve better results, build on your credibility, and make even greater contributions to your organization’s business goals. Let’s get started.

Acknowledgments

I am very appreciative of the contributions to this book made by four of my clients and colleagues, all esteemed professionals making their own mark in our profession. I have often sought their counsel regarding the accomplishments and needs of our profession. I have partnered with them over the years, each has provided insight into my work, and they have given me considerable ideas and food for thought.

Melissa Scherwinski provided valuable assistance with several chapters. She has also been a constant and invaluable source as she provided insight to the Performance Alignment and Linkage Process.

Donna Schoonover helped considerably with the review of several chapters; her insight has been invaluable.

Don Kraft provided several important ideas for the book; the format for the concise outcome report illustrated in the chapter on rapid verification is his idea.

Sunny Niu reviewed drafts of the Performance Alignment and Linkage Process and provided valuable suggestions with an international perspective, which improved the process. Her input has been insightful and practical.

INTRODUCTION

This book provides a methodology—the Performance Alignment and Linkage (PAL) process—to analyze performance needs and to align training processes with business requirements so that solutions influence performance and achieve business results. Throughout this book, you will learn how to apply numerous tools to influence performance and get the results you and your clients desire. You will learn how to view performance in the proper context and how to properly execute the PAL methodology to build and deliver training results and, yes, to influence return on investment (ROI) if that’s on your wish list. The end in mind is to deliver the expected results for our clients and stake a claim as a key contributor to the organization’s success in the twenty-first century. This book is a necessary resource for helping interested training managers and professionals to be the best they can be and meet the expectations of clients and the organization.

The process begins with how we think about performance and our product and continues with realigned needs assessment, design, delivery, and follow-up approaches that we employ to ensure success and satisfy client needs. In addition to building on the work of many pioneers in our profession, the approach presented in this book brings a new frame of reference and a more results-centered blueprint to our profession. Our goal with these new processes and realignment is to leave our deficiencies in the past and achieve results that build a reputation for meeting or exceeding the expectations of clients and the organization.

Audience

This book is for you if the current processes you are using are unwieldy or you are not getting expected results from your programs. You will learn how to identify performance gaps and root causes, determine related needs, and sustain alignment throughout the training and performance process.

Whether you are a training director, project manager, coordinator, designer, research analyst, performance consultant, or client account manager, you will benefit from this book. The concepts, principles, and processes presented here can serve your needs if you are new to the training profession or if you are a seasoned professional. If you are new and have no background in existing training processes, you will find many practical approaches and tools you can use immediately. If you are experienced and currently using your own processes, or those developed by others, you have two choices:

• Adopt new concepts, ideas, and tools presented here and integrate them with what you are doing now to improve your results.

• Do a process dump and start anew with the processes presented here.

Whatever your role in the training function, you are always in a position to influence the success of training processes and programs. This book will generate ideas that you can put into action immediately to exercise your influence.

How This Book Is Organized

The book begins by addressing performance issues and identifies the top three barriers to performance. It then suggests that we abandon the way we have historically characterized the training process in favor of an approach more in line with today’s needs. The PAL methodology embraces a framework and the tools necessary for linkage and performance alignment. Here are summaries of the ten chapters.

Chapter One: Thinking Performance in the Twenty-First Century. This is a must read chapter. To gain the most from this book, you must be willing to change the way you think about the training and performance process. A new performance framework for training is presented, along with criteria for the training and performance process. Because results are driven by the right processes applied in the right way, this chapter addresses how you must trust your processes, commit to being process driven, and then work your processes.

Chapter Two: Five Key Factors of Alignment. Many training programs have a limited chance to succeed because training managers and training professionals sometimes do not focus on the proper factors during needs assessment, program design, and program delivery. Key factors are introduced that are necessary to ensure alignment and a sustained focus on results throughout the training process. The goal of these factors is to link needs identification with the design, development, and delivery of a proper solution and to address learning transfer to the work setting. These factors are inherently addressed throughout the PAL methodology.

Chapter Three: PAL: The Alignment of Our Processes. An overview of the Performance Alignment and Linkage (PAL) process is provided in this chapter. Detailed components of the methodology are covered in subsequent chapters. The PAL training and performance process is a front-to-back refinement of how we should view and respond to training requests and fulfill client needs. The methodology includes guiding principles and addresses results-centered design, development, and delivery, transfer to the work setting, and rapid verification of results. The PAL process includes tools and templates that serve as built-in quality control mechanisms, helping keep our eyes on our processes to ensure that we sustain alignment and achieve business results.

Chapter Four: Situational Needs Assessment: Opening the Door. This chapter keys in on how to establish initial alignment and how to rapidly adapt the needs assessment process to a wide range of diverse client situations. It addresses how the situation drives the way in which the needs assessment process should be used, resulting in contextual application and greater efficiency. This aids greatly in gaining cooperation from the client to conduct needs assessment activities necessary to deliver an effective training and performance solution.

Chapter Five: Situational Needs Assessment: The Analysis. This chapter covers the use of various analysis tools to address the following significant aspects of the front-end analysis:

• Clarification of the performance requirements

• Identification of the performance gap, which identifies the deficiency

• Identification of the cause of the deficiency

• Identification of relevant needs along with alternative solutions

The tools are easy to use and allow for quick completion of the assessment and analysis to identify the problem area and an appropriate solution.

Chapter Six: Aligning and Proposing the Solution. This chapter demonstrates how to propose the recommended solution in a context that will educate the client about alignment, communicate the support needed through Active Management Reinforcement, and gain approval to proceed with design and implementation of a feasible solution. It also includes how to address a request to forecast a return on investment when required. A key component of this chapter is communication of the proposed solution in a way that gains client support for the most effective performance design.

Chapter Seven: Aligning Design and Development. This chapter addresses how to sustain alignment from needs assessment through design and development to achieve the desired business outcome.

Chapter Eight: Aligning Delivery and Execution. This chapter addresses sustaining the alignment through delivery and execution. It also addresses the significance of the need for methods to trigger execution in the work setting. Alternative transfer actions and key components of developing a transfer strategy are addressed so that execution is appropriately influenced in the work setting.

Chapter Nine: Rapid Verification of Results. This chapter addresses how to execute a form of follow-up evaluation that is less intensive, less expensive, and less time consuming than traditional evaluation approaches. It satisfies the need for expeditiously capturing indicators of success without draining resources.

Chapter Ten: Cultivating and Sustaining Sponsorship. This chapter addresses how our clients and stakeholders routinely assess the value of the training function during normal day-to-day operations both with and without our knowledge or input. Important areas that frame stakeholder attitudes about the training function are identified, along with suggestions for routinely addressing them to gain and sustain sponsorship.

Getting the Most from This Resource

All the tools you will need for this learning package are at your fingertips. In addition to the text, a web site is provided that includes the key process tools addressed in the text. Each tool that is located on the web site is identified by a distinctive icon, as shown in the margin here. The tool might be a table, a job aid (called exhibit in this book), a form with detailed instructions on how to use it, or an explanation of an important concept that is central to a methodology. Many of the tools also include a template on the web site. Use the tools and what you learn from this material to achieve results with your own training programs to satisfy clients and other stakeholders. Your existing know-how—along with a new frame of reference, new processes, new learning, and new tools—will improve your possibility of achieving business results and a return on investment (ROI) with your projects and programs.

There is one axiom I would like you to remember as you read this book and as you apply the processes to your projects:

If you have the right processes and you follow your processes, the desired result should follow.

Chapters One through Six should be read in sequence, as they contain a common thread that sets the stage for linkage and alignment to achieve results. If you are experienced at conducting traditional needs assessments, you may want to skip Chapter Five, with the exception of the Risk Assessment and Analysis section in that chapter. The remaining chapters may be reviewed in any sequence desired. Beginning in Chapter Four, a case scenario—Big Sky Medical Group—is used throughout several of the chapters to demonstrate the use of processes and tools. Other case scenarios are also used frequently. This influences active learning for the reader and sustains interest in the book as well.

As you are reading this text, experiment with the ideas and tools on one of your current programs. Ask a coworker or even a client with whom you have a comfortable relationship to be a willing partner as you practice using the tools and applying the processes to your programs. While your initial learning is still fresh in your mind, consider making a personal commitment to apply the methodology and tools with your next three projects or clients. This will help you see what works best for you and will increase your confidence in using the methodology and tools.

The processes, concepts, and tools presented in this book are not a total reinvention or restructuring of our business processes, but rather a strict realignment that you should be able to easily adapt to your situation.

For updates on performance issues and additional tools and worksheets associated with the processes in this book, visit my web site frequently at www.performanceandROI.com. The site includes templates of the job aids presented in the book, as well as new tools and templates, and a newsletter and is host to frequent free webinars. The site also has a description of performance-related workshops and other services.

Key Terms Used Throughout the Book

Alignment or align: Refers to the need for interventions or training solutions to be compatible with business needs and requirements. For example, the business need (the end in mind) must be identified up front when there is a request for a training program. The training solution that is selected must address this identified need. Alignment or align also refers to the need for the different phases of the training process to be in alignment. For example, the training design must be compatible with the needs that are identified during needs assessment, and the instructional staff must follow the design when delivering the solution.

Active Management Reinforcement (AMR): AMR represents factors that are typically the responsibility of managers as they prepare and engage their team in the work setting to achieve desired behavior, task assignments, and performance goals. These actions include factors such as communicating expectations, negotiating performance goals, providing coaching and positive reinforcement, and managing incentives and rewards. The concept of AMR emphasizes that performers may perceive these factors to be inadequate unless the factors are actively being addressed by managers during any given performance scenario. When these AMR factors are absent or inadequate, the result is often less than desirable performance by the workforce.

Client: Used in this work, the term client refers to the person who has requested training services. Clients are usually members of management, but could be someone in another role, such as a member of the community if the training is providing services to the community. A client usually has the authority to approve budgets and provide funding and support resources to assist in the project’s development and implementation. The director of the training department may be a client, in the absence of a direct client. For example, an open enrollment offering in which participants from many different departments enroll in the same offering of a course requires one central sponsor.

Committee: When a training committee exists, it usually serves some type of governing role in the project. This term is used interchangeably with other related terms, like steering committee, task force, action committee, training committee, or project committee. Sometimes, for the duration of a training project the project manager will interface with a committee instead of the sponsor or client. This can be an effective method to get broad management support and resources for a project, but it can also work against expediency. A committee often is involved when the project is large, cuts across functional or departmental lines, or when the project involves an outside compliance agency.

Delivery: This is the phase of the training and performance process when the learners become engaged with the solution. Delivery is the execution of all of the activity that surrounds the learning engagement to facilitate learning.

Effective or effectiveness: The outcome of working a process, providing services, or performing a task or behavior that conforms to standards or criteria of quality. Effectiveness is a measure of quality.

Efficient or efficiency: The outcome of working a process, providing services, or performing a task or behavior that conforms to standards or criteria of time or resource utilization. Efficiency is a measure of quantity.

Learning transfer: The context of learning transfer, training transfer, or performance transfer, as used in this book, refers to the participants’ applying what they learn to situations in the work setting. Transfer completes the training and performance cycle and should serve to favorably influence business outcomes.

Linkage or linked relationships: See Performance-centered framework.

Open enrollment program: A training offering in which participants are enrolled from multiple departments or from multiple companies.

Participant: Participants are the target for the training being delivered. In some countries participants are called delegates. Even though participants are a type of client, a different term is used to distinguish them from the client who is requesting or funding the project.

Performance driver: Any factor that tends to influence how people perform. For example, coaching and positive reinforcement from a supervisor tend to influence favorable employee performance.

Performance-centered framework: A way in which to view linked relationships that affect performance. Linked relationships occur when one action or set of circumstances influences another action or set of circumstances. Here are several examples:

• Training results: A customer service training program provides skills that influence improved service to the customer, which in turn drives a business outcome of improved customer satisfaction.

• Performance needs: A work team is making errors in filling customer orders because they lack the proper knowledge of how to use the order-filling process. The missing link of proper knowledge of the order filling process results in errors, which results in customer receiving the wrong orders, receiving orders late, or receiving incomplete orders, and so on.

• Performance needs: A work team is deficient in performing the task of providing acceptable customer service because effective customer service guidelines are not properly communicated and reinforced by their manager. The missing link of guidelines results in inadequate customer service.

As the last two examples illustrate, the framework is the key to viewing performance issues when conducting needs assessment activities and making decisions about training and performance solutions. It helps to ensure that we view performance from every possible angle and see the linkages. It aids us in ultimately viewing performance, performance gaps, and performance requirements in the proper context.

Pre-engagement action: Any action or activity to begin participant involvement prior to the actual learning engagement. Examples are pretesting participants to determine current knowledge and skills; initiating discussion between participants and their supervisor to discuss how the training relates to job expectations and to set relevant goals; and assigning specific reading materials, review of web site content, or completion of job tasks to prepare for participation in the learning engagement.

Program, project, or solution: This references the initiative that is being funded for a population. The term program is used interchangeably with course, intervention, solution, or project.

Project manager: This is the owner of the training project from beginning to follow-through in the work setting. This person