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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
All-in-one resource to increase effectiveness and ROI of enterprise training and development programs
In The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results, renowned instructors and consultants Dr. Roy Pollock ,Andrew Jefferson, and Calhoun Wick deliver a complete blueprint to maximize the effectiveness and ROI of training and development programs within any organization. In this newly revised and extensively updated Fourth Edition, readers will find tools, guides, and checklists to implement meaningful strategies immediately, supported by the latest research and new case studies from global companies across industries.
Along with key insight into the craft of instruction, this book details how to talk to the business leaders in a way that gets their attention and earns respect. Some of the topics covered in this book include:
- Defining the business outcomes L&D is expected to deliver and effective management of the learning portfolio
- Delivering for application by utilizing performance appropriate instructional methods, adult learning principles, and logic maps
- Maximizing business impact by driving learning transfer and providing performance support
- “Selling the sizzle” when reporting results and common training evaluation pitfalls to avoid
The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results is an essential read for learning professionals, including instructors, instructional designers, trainers, training managers, and Chief Learning Officers, as well as business leaders seeking an all-in-one resource to deliver greater value from training and development programs in an increasingly competitive business environment.
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Seitenzahl: 586
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Praise
for The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning, 4th Edition
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About This Book
Introduction
No Magic Bullet
Core Concepts
It Is All About Performance
Application Creates Value
Learning Is a Process, Not an Event
Call to Action
Note
Overview of the Six Disciplines
Define Business Outcomes
Design the Complete Experience
Deliver for Application
Drive Learning Transfer
Deploy Performance Support
Document Results
Summary
Call to Action
D1. Define Business Outcomes
Start with the End in Mind
How to Define Business Outcomes
Outcomes Planning Wheel
Learning Objectives Are Not Business Objectives
Everything Depends on Getting D1 Right
Create Co‐Ownership
Manage the Portfolio
Summary
Call to Action
D2. Design the Complete Experience
From Here to There
The Learner Experience Defined
Four Phases of Transforming Learning into Results
Ensure Congruity
Summary
Call to Action
D3. Deliver for Application
Learning as a Means to an End
Memory and Learning
How People Learn
More Best Practices
Check the Process
Summary
Call to Action
Notes
D4. Drive Learning Transfer
Learning Transfer Is the Yield‐Limiting Step
Learning Transfer Defined
Why Great Learning Is Not Enough
What's the Problem?
Preconditions of Learning Transfer
The Transfer Climate
The Special Role of Managers
Summary
Call to Action
D5. Deploy Performance Support
Sink or Swim
Power of Performance Support
What Is Performance Support?
When Is Performance Support Most Valuable?
Range of Performance Support
Characteristics of Great Performance Support
Build in Performance Support
People as Performance Support
Summary
Call to Action
D6. Document Results
Why Document Results?
The Only Two Questions That Count
So What?
Now What?
Putting It All Together
Summary
Call to Action
Note
Coda
The Future
Now It’s Up to You
Appendix
Works Cited
Contributors
About the Authors
About The 6Ds Company
Name Index
Subject Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Core Concepts
Table CC.1 Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model
Table CC.2 Information Needed to Troubleshoot a Performance Issue
Table CC.3 Costs of Manufacturing Scrap
Table CC.4 Costs of Learning Scrap
Chapter 1
Table D1.1 Acceptable and Unacceptable Statements of Business Needs
Table D1.2 Major Categories of Post‐Learning Outcomes and Ways to Document ...
Table D1.3 Examples of “What Else Needs to Be in Place?”
Chapter 2
Table D2.1 Twelve Levers That Influence the Business Impact of Learning
Table D2.2 Examples of Redefining the Finish Line
Table D2.3 Rationale for Making “Prework” Assignments
Chapter 3
Table D3.1 Key Concepts of the AGES Model
215
Chapter 4
Table D4.1 Examples of Factors that Positively or Negatively Influence Tran...
Chapter 5
Table D5.1 Common Kinds of Performance Support and Their Uses
Chapter 6
Table D6.1 Examples of Internal Learning Process Metrics (Outputs) versus B...
Table D6.2 Kinds of Evidence
Table D6.3 Attributes of an Effective Evaluation
Table D6.4 Frequent Failure Points in Learning‐to‐Results Process
Table D6.5 Common Data Collection Methods, Advantages, and Disadvantages
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure I.1 The Six Disciplines that characterize high‐impact learning.
Core Concepts
Figure CC.1 Organizations invest in learning and development with the expect...
Figure CC.2 An investment in learning is expected to be more than repaid thr...
Figure CC.3 There are many potential barriers to worthy performance.
Figure CC.4 An organization's performance is influenced by factors in the wo...
Figure CC.5 Mager's question to determine whether training will help.
Figure CC.6 Learning professionals need to adopt a new mindset focused on pe...
Figure CC.7 The fundamental logic of training: Learning leads to improved ac...
Figure CC.8 The value that organizations derive from their investments in le...
Figure CC.9 Organizations that extract more value from learning and developm...
Figure CC.10 The learning transfer problem.
Figure CC.11 The moment of truth is when an employee decides how to perform ...
Figure CC.12 Which path an employee chooses depends on the answers to two qu...
Figure CC.13 Employees must answer yes to both the “Can I?” and “Will I?” qu...
Figure CC.14 Training‐to‐result is a process.
Figure CC.15 The apocryphal 70‐20‐10 model of how jobs are learned.
Overview of the Six Disciplines
Figure 6D.1 The 6Ds extend and complement instruction design systems to stre...
Figure 6D.2 Learning objectives are created to support achievement of the bu...
Figure 6D.3 L&D is a process that is expected to produce outputs of greater ...
Figure 6D.4 Learning professionals need to design the complete learning jour...
Figure 6D.5 Learning new skills and knowledge is only one step in the proces...
Figure 6D.6 There is always a gap between learning and doing that some learn...
Figure 6D.7 The practice of the Third Discipline helps learners bridge the l...
Figure 6D.8 There should be a clear line of sight from learning experiences ...
Figure 6D.9 Learning transfer is an essential step in the process of convert...
Figure 6D.10 The lack of serious post‐training follow through is false econo...
Figure 6D.11 In the absence of learning transfer, training is scrap; it cons...
Figure 6D.12 Learners who experience early success are motivated to continue...
Figure 6D.13 Managers must choose among many competing opportunities and nee...
Figure 6D.14 What leadership really wants to know is whether the learning ac...
Figure 6D.15 If you are standing still while your competitors are improving,...
Figure 6D.16 Rigorously evaluating results supplies the insight necessary to...
Figure 6D.17 Summary of The Six Disciplines.
Chapter 1
Figure D1.1 To ensure that learning adds value, start with the end—the busin...
Figure D1.2 Many business leaders order training as they would a take‐out me...
Figure D1.3 Learning professionals who want to earn a seat at the management...
Figure D1.4 The four questions of the Outcomes Planning Wheel.
Figure D1.5 It is vital to ask “Why aren't they doing what they need to be d...
Figure D1.6 Learning objectives exist only to support business objectives. D...
Figure D1.7 The last and critical question for the planning discussion is “W...
Figure D1.8 The Boston Consulting Group growth‐share matrix.
Figure D1.9 Application of the BCG Grid to training portfolio management.
Chapter 2
Figure D2.1 Successful learning interventions are a journey from a current l...
Figure D2.2 Learning is a journey that encompasses numerous trips and advent...
Figure D2.3 The five domains of the FIRST‐ADLX framework.
Figure D2.4 The four phases of the learning‐to‐improved‐performance journey....
Figure D2.5 The same stimulus produces different results depending on expect...
Figure D2.6 Participants' attitudes about training become self‐fulfilling.
Figure D2.7 Simon Sinek's “Golden Circle.” Employees want to know
why
before...
Figure D2.8 Be sure the “invitation” to a training program doesn't read like...
Figure D2.9 Prochaska and DiClemente's Stages of Change Model.
Figure D2.10 The real finish line for learning is improved performance.
Figure D2.11 Sample program timeline that illustrates the complete learning ...
Figure D2.12 Learning transfer (application) is the weakest link in most lea...
Figure D2.13 A sense of making progress helps sustain behavior change.
Chapter 3
Figure D3.1 Learning is an essential step in performance improvement, but it...
Figure D3.2 Major categories of memory (and therefore learning).
Figure D3.3 Key steps in learning for application.
Figure D3.4 The brain receives more input than it can process; most input is...
Figure D3.5 Working memory has a finite capacity. As new items are added, ol...
Figure D3.6 Beyond a critical point, adding more content actually reduces th...
Figure D3.7 Responding appropriately to a stimulus requires repeated retriev...
Figure D3.8 The more that new information is personally meaningful and makes...
Figure D3.9 Learners want to know why they are being asked to learn specific...
Figure D3.10 The value chain for learning illustrates the linkage between le...
Figure D3.11 In a completed value chain, each learning experience is linked ...
Figure D3.12 Three steps in effectively applying new knowledge and skills.
Figure D3.13 Pianists who are considered expert have practiced far more than...
Figure D3.14 Scaffolding (stepwise skill building) helps learners climb the ...
Figure D3.15 The Power Law of Forgetting. Without reinforcement, memory deca...
Figure D3.16 The spacing effect: Revisiting a topic at intervals enhances re...
Figure D3.17 The amount of learning versus degree of concern (stress/anxiety...
Chapter 4
Figure D4.1 Investments in L&D are expected to result in improved performanc...
Figure D4.2 Behaviors are the causal link between learning and results.
Figure D4.3 In any process, the step with the lowest yield limits the effici...
Figure D4.4 No matter how great the learning is, if transfer is poor, the re...
Figure D4.5 The 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness.
Figure D4.6 The projectiles of even the most powerful cannons ever built alw...
Figure D4.7 Unless energy is exerted to drive transfer, change efforts lose ...
Figure D4.8 People and organizations have great inertia that resists change....
Figure D4.9 Action (or inaction) results from the interplay of personal inte...
Figure D4.10 The lack of concern, the lack of measures, and the lack of resp...
Figure D4.11 When training fails to produce results, it doesn't matter whose...
Figure D4.12 The health of the transfer climate determines the efficiency of...
Figure D4.13 The transfer climate comprises opportunities, incentives, imped...
Figure D4.14 Managers' priorities influence the amount of effort devoted to ...
Figure D4.15 Range of managers' reactions to their subordinates' use of new ...
Figure D4.16 When a manager is neutral (says nothing), the impact is negativ...
Chapter 5
Figure D5.1 Customer satisfaction depends on the whole product experience, w...
Figure D5.2 People have trouble remembering the details of a procedure.
Figure D5.3 Performance support sustains efforts to apply new skills and kno...
Figure D5.4 Introduce and use job aids during instruction.
Figure D5.5 Managers need performance support to coach effectively.
Chapter 6
Figure D6.1 There are always constraints; managers must choose among many co...
Figure D6.2 Value is subjective.
Figure D6.3 Output (efficiency) measures, such as reactions or knowledge gai...
Figure D6.4 To be successful, an evaluation must clear all four hurdles.
Figure D6.5 Improved performance is achieved only if employees change their ...
Figure D6.6 Management already accepts the link between behavior and results...
Figure D6.7 D1 and D6 should be bookends for any learning initiative.
Figure D6.8 The most relevant and reliable measures of behavior are direct o...
Figure D6.9 Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method.
Figure D6.10 Managers consider both expected returns (broadly defined) and s...
Figure D6.11 L&D's job is to provide the information management needs to mak...
Figure D6.12 After Langley et al.
328
The Model for Improvement.
Figure D6.13 The four key elements of a logic model. Resources are invested ...
Figure D6.14 Each element of the logic model for a learning initiative compr...
Figure D6.15 We measure six levels of training impact.
Figure D6.16 Manager support can make or break your ROI.
Figure D6.17 The six key activities in evaluating results.
Figure D6.18 Management has four possible courses of action based on the res...
Coda
Figure C.1 The Six Disciplines support a cycle of continuous improvement.
Figure C.2 Key learning journey components and timeline.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Praise for The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning, 4th Edition
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About This Book
Introduction
Core Concepts
Overview of the Six Disciplines
Begin Reading
Coda
Appendix
Works Cited
Contributors
About the Authors
About The 6Ds Company
Name Index
Subject Index
End User License Agreement
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Praise for The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning, 4th Edition
“Implementing the concepts from this book has been transformative for our learning organization. Embracing the 6Ds has helped us achieve what some consider the holy grail of corporate learning: getting people to apply training and measuring the positive outcomes.”
—Thomas A. Deinzer, Senior Vice President, M&T Bank
“This is a timely refresh of the The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning. This is an easy'to'read, application'focused guide that is a must'read for the modern performance'oriented learning designer who wants to deliver value for the business.”
—Matthew Donovan, Chief Learning and Innovation Officer, GP Strategies
“The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning has tremendously helped me, and my teams, realigning our efforts to business outcomes. ‘There is no magic bullet,’ the authors say; this book may in fact be that. Your magic bullet to a higher impact of your learning interventions.”
—Marcello Rinaldi, International Learning Director, AbbVie
“The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning isn’t just a ‘must'read,’ it is a ‘must'do’ for any learning professional truly interested in making an impact with real, tangible results. After years of applying this methodology, I just cannot imagine any other way.”
—Jim Page, Executive Director, Customer Engagement Skills, Novartis
“The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning was a breakthrough book on a breakthrough mission and I am so happy that Roy, Andrew, and Cal continue to bring this message to the marketplace. It is a must read.”
—Ed Trolley, coauthor, Running Training Like a Business
“Roy, Andy, and Cal have built something purposeful and enduring for the entire learning industry.”
—Gurpreet Kalra, Head of Talent Development for UKI, Tata Consultancy
“The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning methodology is a game'changer for learning professionals. At LTEN, we’ve seen firsthand how the approach empowers our members to create lasting value through learning programs. This book is an excellent resource for anyone looking to enhance the effectiveness of their training initiatives.”
—Lauren Harbert, Executive Director, Life Sciences Trainers & Educators Network (LTEN)
Roy V. H. Pollock
Andrew McK. Jefferson
Calhoun W. Wick
The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning
4th Edition
How to Turn Training and Development into BUSINESS RESULTS
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial intelligence technologies or similar technologies.
Illustrations by Ris Fleming, copyright © 2025 by The 6Ds Company unless otherwise noted.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available:
ISBN 9781394285396 (Hardback)
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Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Illustration: © Ris Fleming‐Allen, © The 6Ds Company
This book is dedicated to our families, for encouraging us to pursue our dreams; to our clients, for allowing us to join them in their pursuit of excellence; and to our colleagues in learning and development around the world, for their commitment to helping others become all they can be.
About This Book
This book is for everyone who is a provider, sponsor, purchaser, or consumer of corporate learning and development (L&D) programs. It describes a proven process and tools that have helped companies achieve breakthroughs in corporate education and significantly increase the return on their investments in learning and development.
It is based on our work with learning professionals around the world over the past two decades as well as published research in a wide range of fields. It includes insights and best practices from thought leaders as well as numerous tools, checklists, and recommendations to help you implement the concepts. Its focus is eminently pragmatic; you will find specific ideas for practical application throughout the text.
This fourth edition of The Six Disciplines has been extensively revised to incorporate new material, research insights, examples, expert perspectives, and feedback from readers and thought leaders.
Introduction
Managed well, the learning function can become an indispensable, strategic partner with significant impact on an organization's goals.
─David Vance1
The core message of this book is one of opportunity and optimism. It describes how organizations can seize the opportunity to make their learning and development (L&D) efforts even more effective than they are today and how learning professionals can make the work they do—and, therefore, themselves—more valuable.
You know from your own experience that some training and development initiatives are more effective than others. Some are enlightening, inspiring, eminently useful, and even transformative. They repay their costs many times over in terms of improved performance: better customer service, fewer defects, greater efficiency, more effective leadership, enhanced productivity, and so on. Unfortunately, other workforce development efforts produce no discernible change in performance; they are a waste of time and money.
And therein lies both the challenge and the opportunity. The challenge is to discover why some initiatives succeed while others fail. The opportunity is to apply those insights to improve learning's impact and eliminate wasted time, effort, and money.
No Magic Bullet
Twenty years ago, we set out to answer the question of why some L&D initiatives create greater value than others. We were hoping to find a magic bullet—like the one in the German opera Der Freischütz, which never fails to hit the target—the one factor that differentiated highly effective L&D programs from less effective ones. It turns out, not surprisingly, that there is no one magic bullet. What we discovered instead is that highly effective learning organizations follow a disciplined approach to defining, designing, implementing, and evaluating L&D initiatives. We distilled these best practices into Six Disciplines (Figure I.1) and described them in the first edition of The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning in 2006.2
Figure I.1 The Six Disciplines that characterize high‐impact learning.
Since then, we have taught the Six Disciplines approach to several thousand learning professionals, in dozens of different companies, countries, and industries. This new edition of The Six Disciplines distills what we have learned from and with them as they implemented these principles in their organizations. It provides a proven and practical roadmap for learning leaders and business managers who want to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of talent development. This new edition also includes insights from recent learning science and human performance research.
Learning versus Training versus Development
There is some confusion and disagreement about the terms “learning,” “training,” “education,” and “development.”
In this book, we use the word “training” to refer to an intentional effort by an organization to teach its employees how to do something the organization knows how to do and needs to have done. This could be mastering relatively simple tasks, like taking an order, to more complex skills, like making a sale, fixing a jet engine, leading others, or improving a process.
Our use of the word “training” does not presuppose any particular methodology or technology; we intend it to include the whole spectrum of purposeful instruction—from e‐learning to classrooms, structured to social, mobile to mentoring.
Some learning professionals have objected to the use of the word “training,” arguing that it implies low‐level programming of behavior, as in training a dog or hamster. They have suggested replacing “training” with “learning” when it involves human beings, hence learning and development (L&D) rather than training and development (T&D).
Learning is what happens when an individual gains new knowledge, skills, or insights. Hence, “to learn” is different from “to train.” We have found it impossible to replace every instance of “training” with “learning” as we are unwilling to accept the phrase “we are going to learn you how to be a more effective leader.”
Organizational learning refers to the shared insights, tacit knowledge, know‐how, and culture of an organization that make it unique; it is much more than the sum of what the individuals in the organization know, and it persists even as organizational members change. To remain viable, both the organization and the individuals it comprises must continue to learn and grow.3
We define “education,” in contrast to training, as the process of preparing people to deal with novel challenges in which the best path forward is unknown (and often unknowable) in advance. As such, education tends to focus more on universal skills (like reading and math) or principles and theories rather than specific skills. Education is the work of schools and universities and generally outside the scope of corporate learning departments.
“Development,” as in learning and development, entails sequential training, educational, and experiential opportunities over time that help individuals achieve their full potential.
The department charged with ensuring that employees have the skills and knowledge they need goes by many different names. We will use “Learning and Development” (L&D) as the generic term for the learning function as well as for the process of providing the requisite knowledge and skills. We prefer to use “learning and development professionals” rather than “trainers” because L&D is a profession and because learning and development professionals include specialists in a whole range of fields, including instructional design, learning technology, delivery, mentoring, facilitation, evaluation, and the like.
Last, we generally use the terms “business,” “company,” or “corporate” to refer to the entity that provides the learning opportunities for its members, since we expect that most of our readers will be from for‐profit businesses. The principles we discuss, however, apply equally to L&D efforts in not‐for‐profit enterprises and government agencies.
A knowledgeable and competent workforce is essential for any organization, whether or not it is expected to produce a profit. Indeed, given the generally more limited resources of not‐for‐profit organizations, their need for efficiency and effectiveness is even greater. Therefore, we ask readers from charitable organizations, educational institutions, the military, and governmental L&D departments to read “corporation” in its broadest sense. When we say “business objective,” read “organizational objective.”
Core Concepts
Business education is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
—van Adelsberg and Trolley4
Four themes recur throughout this book. They are:
Organizations invest in learning and development to improve performance.
Many factors affect performance.
Learning adds value only when it is
applied
on the job.
Learning is a
process
that can be improved.
These four themes support the fundamental premise of The Six Disciplines: Company‐sponsored learning and development initiatives add value today. But these initiatives can—and should—generate even greater value.
In this chapter, we introduce each of these four themes as a foundation. In subsequent chapters, we show how they support the practice of the Six Disciplines and how those disciplines work together to optimize the value of learning initiatives.
It Is All About Performance
Whether organizations succeed or fail, whether they persist or perish, depends on their performance relative to alternatives. Those alternatives might be another product or provider, or they might be simply to do or buy nothing. Even governments and government agencies are not guaranteed immortality. Any organization that fails to meet the needs of its constituents will eventually be replaced. Individuals and organizations who perform well prosper and grow; those who perform less well wither and die.
Continuing to thrive in a changing environment requires adaptation. Learning is key. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, put it this way: “Always keep learning. You stop doing useful things if you don't learn.” Jack Welch put it more bluntly: “When the pace of change on the outside exceeds the pace of change on the inside, the end is near.”
Organizations provide learning and development (L&D) opportunities for their employees to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge necessary to keep up with the pace of change and achieve the organization's mission and vision. Business leaders don't really want training per se. What they want are the benefits that effective training provides: greater productivity and enhanced competitiveness. When they invest in learning and development, they expect performance to improve (Figure CC.1). In an enterprise, learning matters only if it meaningfully contributes to the organization's sustainability, mission, and goals.
Figure CC.1 Organizations invest in learning and development with the expectation that performance will improve.
While many factors contribute to an organization's success, its performance is increasingly a reflection of the strength of its human capital. At the turn of the millennium, Fitz‐Enz5 presciently wrote: “People, not cash, buildings, or equipment, are the critical differentiators of a business” (p. 1). Proof of his observation is that the world's most highly valued companies today—for example, Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), Meta, and Microsoft—are prized more for their intellectual property, know‐how, and human capital than for their fixed assets (bricks and mortar).
Moreover, in developed countries—as well as in many developing countries—the service sector is now larger than manufacturing, mining, or agriculture.6,7 In the United States, for example, the service economy—including professional and business services, real estate, finance, and healthcare—amounts to nearly 80% of the gross national product.7
Service operations are driven primarily by intellectual capital.
That trend has implications for L&D. In service industries, the quality of the customer's experience depends more on the performance of the individual service provider than on the company's reputation, average performance, or know‐how.8 If the particular employee with whom a customer interacts is rude, wastes time, or cannot answer questions, then the customer is likely to take their business elsewhere, even if the company's overall reputation for service is good.
Thus, to succeed in a service business, a company must reduce the variability between its best‐ and its worst‐performing employees (so‐called Human Sigma8) as well as to improve its average performance. Training and development plays an important role in this regard. That is because “in manufacturing businesses, a significant investment in equipment may be required to improve labor productivity. In contrast, service operations are primarily driven by intellectual capital.”9
The point is that corporate‐sponsored learning is a business activity. It is an investment that an organization makes in its human capital to improve current performance as well as ensure future competitiveness. Therefore, as workplace learning professionals, “we are not in the business of providing classes, learning tools, or even learning itself. We are in the business of facilitating improved business results.”10 Like any other investment, the investment in learning is expected to pay a return (Figure CC.2).
Figure CC.2 An investment in learning is expected to be more than repaid through improved performance.
Thomas Gilbert,11 a leading thinker in human performance management, introduced the concept of “worthy performance” in his book Human Competence. Gilbert defined worthy performance as performance for which the value of the accomplishments exceeds the cost of the behaviors required to achieve them. He specifically distinguished performance from mere activity (behaviors). Performance includes the outcomes and their worth to the organization. In business, then, worthy performances are actions that produce high‐value business‐relevant outcomes at relatively low cost. Superior performance means producing valuable outcomes faster, more consistently, and at lower cost than your competitors. To deliver superior performance, workers must have the right knowledge and skills, and those must be kept up to date, which is the rationale for having an L&D function.
Many Factors Affect Performance
Any effort to improve performance through learning must recognize that there are many potential impediments to worthy performance. For example, employees might know how to perform a task and be willing to do so but lack the information or the tools they need. Or they might not be clear about what is expected of them or might lack incentives or meaningful feedback (Figure CC.3).
Unfortunately, when confronted with a gap between the current level of performance (“is now”) and the desired performance (“should be”), many managers assume that the problem is with the employees and that training is the solution. But training is effective at closing performance gaps only when the root cause is a lack of skill or knowledge. If there are other root causes or contributing factors, then training will fail to close the gap.
To avoid wasting time and effort on a training initiative that is doomed to fail, learning professionals must work with business managers to identify and address the real impediments to performance—a process known as performance consulting.
Figure CC.3 There are many potential barriers to worthy performance.
A useful model for thinking about the factors that affect performance is the 4W model developed by the International Society for Performance Improvement.12The model posits that performance is influenced by four factors that, in English, all begin with the letter “w”: the world, the workplace, the work, and the worker (Figure CC.4).
World
refers to factors in the business environment that are largely outside a company's control, such as government regulations or actions by competitors.
Workplace
refers to the internal company environment and includes such things as resource allocation, how departments interact, employment and compensation policies, cultural norms, and management practices.
Work
refers to how the work itself is structured and the processes, tools, systems, and information available to facilitate the work.
Worker
refers to the characteristics of the employees: their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and engagement.
Figure CC.4 An organization's performance is influenced by factors in the world, workplace, work, and worker.
Pit a good employee against a bad system, and the system will win every time.
The important insight that the model provides is that it is the combination of these four factors that determines performance. Therefore, efforts to improve competitiveness need to consider and address all the potential impediments to worthy performance. For example, if employees lack the tools they need, or the time, or the information, they won't be able to perform to their full capability, even if they have the requisite skills. If the work process is fundamentally flawed, or if the computer system is outdated or hard to use, performance will suffer. As Geary Rummler13 famously remarked: “If you pit a good performer against a bad system, the system will win almost every time” (p. 11).
Need for Systems Thinking
Isolated initiatives rarely solve business issues because business issues are inherently systemic in nature.14 “At its fundamental level, every organization is a human performance system. It was founded by people, run by people, for the sole purpose of delivering value to the people who are its stakeholders … a comprehensive approach to organizational improvement must begin with such a premise”15 (p. 145).
“‘Systems thinking’ means taking a holistic approach, keeping the entire system in mind when we try to address a problem or make a change”16 (p. 10). Systems thinking is a fundamental shift from our tendency to see problems and solutions in isolation. A characteristic of a system is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; its parts interact to function as a whole. “Dividing the cow in half does not give you two smaller cows”17 (p. 4).
“Taking a systems view is vital because organizations are very complex open systems … A systemic approach considers the larger environment that affects processes and other work. The environment includes inputs, but, more importantly, it includes pressures, expectations, constraints, and consequences”12 (p. 591). To design a learning intervention without considering the influence of the learner's manager, for example, is to invite failure.
All the elements of a system must be aligned and mutually reinforcing for optimal performance. If the goal is to create a coaching culture in the sales force, for example, then it is not enough to provide training on effective coaching. The rest of the system must reinforce it. The performance management system must evaluate and reward the quality and quantity of coaching by frontline managers. The managers of managers must read and comment on the quality of field coaching reports, and their managers must coach them, and so forth. Otherwise, “We value coaching” is just an empty slogan.a
The key thing to remember is that when performance is suboptimal, you must take a systems approach; you cannot simply assume that the problem is a lack of skill or that training alone will solve the problem. Your job as a learning professional is to help business managers think more broadly about what is contributing to the problem and what it will really take to achieve the results they desire. Unfortunately, “training is easier to blame than poor processes, poor leadership, lack of standard processes, etc.”18 (p. 10).
Practical Application
▢ Don't assume that every performance problem is caused by a lack of skill or knowledge and that, therefore, training is the answer.
▢ Apply systems thinking to problem analysis and the selection of solutions.
Performance Consulting
A vital skill for learning professionals to develop is that of performance consulting—the ability to analyze a performance issue, identify the contributing factors, determine whether training needs to be part of the solution, and recommend other changes that must be made.
Figure CC.5 Mager's question to determine whether training will help.
We have carefully avoided using the term “training‐needs analysis” because to do so assumes that training is needed. As Broad and Newstrom19 noted: “Training is expensive to design and deliver; it should be the last, not the first, intervention the HRD professional and the organization should consider in order to improve employee performance” (p. 5).
Robert Mager20 suggested that the key question to ask in analyzing a performance shortfall is: “Could they perform adequately if their lives depended on it?” (Figure CC.5). If the answer is yes, he argues, then that means they already know how, and, as such, you should forget training as the solution: Training people how to do things they already know how to do does not improve performance. Something else is the root cause of the performance gap and must be addressed.
But what? A useful model for elucidating contributing factors is Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model (Table CC.1). Gilbert11 posited that performance is affected by six factors, three of which—information, resources, and incentives—are environmental, and three of which—skills, capacity, and motivation—are attributes of the individual employees.
To perform optimally, employees need information, resources, and incentives from the company as well as personal skills, capacity, and motivation. A shortfall in any of the six categories will lead to suboptimal performance. The goal of the performance consulting process is to identify all the barriers to performance, regardless of where they originate, to ensure that the proposed solution will be effective.
Table CC.1 Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model
Environment
(Work & Workplace)
Information
Resources
Incentives
Individual
(Worker Attributes)
Skills
Capacity
Motivation
Table CC.2 lists the kinds of information you need to gather (through observation, interviews, surveys, etc.) to identify what is preventing employees from performing optimally. If the answer to any of the questions in Table CC.2 is no, then it represents an impediment that needs to be minimized or eliminated. Be sure that your fact‐finding includes input from the people who actually do the work, not just senior managers or supervisors.
Table CC.2 Information Needed to Troubleshoot a Performance Issue
Environment
Information
Do employees know what is expected of them and what the standards of acceptable performance are? Do they receive timely, frequent, and meaningful feedback on their performance? Do employees have ready access to the information they need to perform? Is it accurate, clear, and timely?
Resources
Do employees have the resources—tools, materials, facilities, systems—they need to perform adequately? Are employees given adequate time to complete their tasks? Are the work, the tools, and the materials designed for easy use?
Incentives
Are there both financial and nonfinancial incentives for performing well? Do employees value the rewards? Are rewards contingent upon performing well? Do employees believe that? Are there negative consequences for poor performance or noncompliance?
Individual
Skills
Do employees have sufficient skills and knowledge to perform to standard? Is there a better way to accomplish a task than is currently being used? Are the best practices of exemplary performers shared with other employees?
Capacity
Do employees have the mental and physical capacity to perform the tasks required? If special skills are required, must employees prove these before being allowed to perform? Is the workload reasonable?
Motivation
Are employees motivated to make the effort necessary to perform well? Are they fully engaged? Are they enthusiastic about the company's vision and mission? Do they believe good performance will be rewarded? Have disincentives to performing well been eliminated?
Both Gilbert's and the 4W models emphasize the importance of including environmental factors in the analysis of performance challenges. As Cathy Moore21 noted, “It's rare to see a performance problem that doesn't have a substantial environmental component” (p. 121). That is why both training and nontraining solutions must be considered. For example, if employees lack critical information at the moment of need, a simple job aid may suffice. As learning professionals, we need to develop a new mindset if we want to evolve from order takers to trusted business partners.22 We need to stop thinking in terms of classes, events, and learning objectives and start thinking in terms of business outcomes, performance goals, and processes (Figure CC.6).
Figure CC.6 Learning professionals need to adopt a new mindset focused on performance.
Our goal is to help the organization achieve its performance goals, even if the ultimate solution is not a traditional L&D program. The flow chart in Exhibit CC.1 will help you uncover contributing cause(s) and develop solutions. For detailed descriptions of performance analysis see Rummler and Brache;13 Van Tiem, Moseley, and Dessinger;12 Addison, Haig, and Kearney;23 Kaufman and Guerra‐López;24 and Robinson and Robinson.25
Practical Application
▢ Never agree to offer a training program without first conducting a performance‐needs analysis to be sure that workers lack essential skills or knowledge.
▢ Ask managers: Could the workers perform adequately if they really had to?
▢ Be sure that you—or someone on your staff—are skilled in performance analysis.
▢ Keep in mind that most performance issues have more than one cause. Be sure that you design comprehensive solutions, not just training programs.
Exhibit CC.1 Flow Chart to Help Identify Appropriate Performance Improvement Intervention
Application Creates Value
A third theme that we will touch on repeatedly is that value is created by the application of learning, not by its acquisition. This is summed up in the adage that “one definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing and expect a different result.” For performance to improve, employees must do their jobs in ways that are more efficient, more effective, or both. This is what Rob Brinkerhoff26 calls “the fundamental logic of training” (Figure CC.7).
Figure CC.7 The fundamental logic of training: Learning leads to improved actions that generate greater business value.
Unless newly learned skills and knowledge are transferred and applied to the work of the individual and enterprise, the training has been a waste of time. Or, as Jim Kirkpatrick and Don Kirkpatrick27 wrote, “If the trainees do not apply what they learned, the program has been a failure even if learning has taken place.” (p.6)
Waste Is the Enemy
In today's competitive business climate, no organization—whether for profit, not for profit, or governmental—can afford to waste resources, least of all human resources. That is why a central tenet of Lean Management is that waste is the enemy. Waste is any expenditure of time, money, energy, or other resource that does not produce value for the end customer.28 For a company to remain competitive, waste must be systematically and ruthlessly eliminated through process improvement.
Since World War II, the progressive elimination of waste has dramatically improved the quality of manufactured goods and simultaneously decreased their cost. By and large, however, the principles of process improvement and Lean Management have not been rigorously applied to learning and development.
As a result, there continues to be great variability in the impact that L&D initiatives have on organizational performance. Some produce substantive value, others, little to none (Figure CC.8). That variability creates opportunity: Organizations that can extract greater value from training and development than their competitors enjoy a competitive advantage (Figure CC.9). Why? Because they realize the same value for a smaller investment, or, conversely, they spend the same time and money as their competitors but extract greater value. Either approach provides competitive advantage. By extension, learning professionals who deliver highly effective learning interventions are more valuable than their peers who deliver only average value.
Figure CC.8 The value that organizations derive from their investments in learning and development varies widely.
Figure CC.9 Organizations that extract more value from learning and development have a competitive advantage.
The High Cost of Scrap
Manufacturing scrap is any product that fails to meet the customer's expectations or quality standards and that, therefore, must be discarded or reworked. Scrap is costly in terms of the raw materials and labor wasted (tangible costs) as well as the damage that defective products cause to the company and its brands (intangible costs). As Deming29 famously pointed out: “Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them” (p. 11). Scrap also represents wasted opportunity; resources that were tied up producing scrap could have been employed to create value (Table CC.3).
Table CC.3 Costs of Manufacturing Scrap
Tangible (Out‐of‐Pocket Costs)
Intangible Costs
Materials Labor Overhead Capital (buildings, equipment) Rework/Recalls
Customer dissatisfaction Damage to company reputation Reduced brand loyalty Opportunity costs
Scrap is expensive.
No manufacturer nowadays can compete successfully against companies that have more consistent quality and lower scrap costs. For these reasons, manufacturers have worked relentlessly to drive down the scrap rate by applying continuous improvement methodologies.
What does this have to do with learning and development? In the first edition of The Six Disciplines,2 we coined the term “learning scrap” to refer to training that employees attend but never use in a way that improves their performance. Unused learning is the training equivalent of a defective product; it fails to meet the customers' expectations—in this case, the business leaders' expectation of improved performance.
Learning scrap—like manufacturing scrap—is costly and puts a company at a competitive disadvantage. Learning scrap squanders the tangible costs of labor (of both trainers and trainees), travel, materials, technology, vendors, and the like as well as the opportunity costs of having people waste time in programs learning things they cannot or will not subsequently use (Table CC.4). Altogether, companies waste billions of dollars each year producing learning scrap30 and probably several times that amount in lost opportunities.
Both learning and manufacturing scrap cause customer dissatisfaction, which adversely affects future use. If managers invest their employees' time and departmental resources in a learning initiative but fail to see performance improvement, they are dissatisfied. They conclude that “the training failed,” and they are reluctant to invest in future learning initiatives.
Table CC.4 Costs of Learning Scrap
Tangible (Out‐of‐Pocket Costs)
Intangible Costs
Materials Labor (both trainers and trainees) Overhead Capital (training facility, equipment) Travel
Customer dissatisfaction Damage to L&D reputation/brand Opportunity costs
The Elephant in the Room
Learning scrap is the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it is there, but no one wants to talk about it (Figure CC.10).
Figure CC.10 The learning transfer problem.
© Leo Cullum/www.cartoonstock.com.
The fact that training often fails to improve performance has been recognized for decades. As far back as the 1950s, Mosel pointed to “mounting evidence that shows that very often the training makes little or no difference in job behavior.”31 Thirty years later, Baldwin and Ford32 reviewed the literature and concluded:
There is growing recognition of a “transfer problem” in organizational training today. It is estimated that while American industries spend up to $100 billion on training and development, it is estimated that not more than 10 percent of those expenditures actually result in transfer to the job … . Researchers have similarly concluded that much of the training conducted in organizations fails to transfer to the work setting.
Has anything changed? To find out, we have asked hundreds of workplace learning professionals to answer this question:
After a typical corporate training program, what percentage of participants apply what they have learned well enough and long enough to improve their performance?
The vast majority of training providers themselves estimate that less than 20% of corporate training actually leads to improved performance. Business leaders concur. In a survey conducted by McKinsey & Company, only 25% of business managers said that training and development contributed measurably to business performance.33
Of course, those are only estimates. Training professionals admit that they rarely, if ever, measure how often training leads to improved performance. In a study of learning transfer, 60% of more than 3,000 respondents admitted that the primary method for evaluating transfer was either anecdotal feedback or “simply a guess.”34 Even the most widely cited figure—10%—was also just an estimate.35
The failure of training to improve performance is the elephant in the room.
Although direct measures are lacking, both business leaders and learning professionals perceive that most training efforts fail to deliver improved performance. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that more than half of business managers felt that employee performance would not suffer if the L&D department were completely eliminated.36
The lack of concern about the high levels of learning scrap is surprising, given the amount of time and attention management pays to tracking and reducing waste in other parts of a business. No company could stay in business long if its other processes were as inefficient as most L&D initiatives seem to be. Imagine what would happen if FedEx accepted 100 packages but only 20% arrived as expected. FedEx would be out of business overnight.
Successful companies understand that meeting customer expectations is paramount. So they invest some of their top talent, technology, and resources to improve their business processes with the goal of zero failures. Surprisingly, they have not applied the same principles to L&D. In the nearly seven decades since Mosel called attention to the problem, organizations have made little progress in increasing the yield of training and development initiatives. It seems likely that senior management is simply unaware how much time, money, and opportunity is being wasted annually in suboptimal learning programs. For our own survival, and for the good of the enterprises we serve, we in L&D need to have a much greater sense of urgency about reducing learning scrap. We need to embrace the principles of Lean Management and invest time, talent, and effort to reduce waste and increase the yield from learning.
What Causes Learning Scrap?
Whether learning adds value or is relegated to the scrap heap depends on what we like to call the moment of truth. The moment of truth occurs when an employee has the opportunity to apply newly acquired knowledge or skills on the job. At that inflection point, they can choose one of two paths (Figure CC.11): Complete the task in the new way they were just taught or continue to perform as before (same old way), which might have been to do nothing.
Figure CC.11 The moment of truth is when an employee decides how to perform a task.
If they choose to perform in the new (and presumably better) manner, then the learning creates value. If they persist in (or revert to) performing in the way that they had previously, then performance won't change, the learning adds no value, and the investment in learning was a waste: learning scrap. We should think of L&D as standing for Learning & Doing, since both are required to generate value.
The challenge for learners is that doing something in a new way, especially the first few times, usually requires more effort than persisting in an old way. It takes sustained effort to climb up the experience curve, which is why we have drawn the “new way” as a flight of stairs in Figure CC.11. Moreover, performing the new way may initially take longer or even produce inferior results until the person achieves proficiency. In contrast, the “old way” is easy and predictable. It has the force of gravity behind it; no effort is needed to slide back into old habits. Indeed, habits are so powerful that “unless you deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new routines—the pattern will unfold automatically”37 (p. 20).
Which path an employee chooses depends on the answers to two critical questions: “Can I do it the new way?” and “Will I make the effort?” (Figure CC.12). Unless the employee answers both “Yes, I can” and “Yes, I will,” the learning adds no value to the organization (Figure CC.13), regardless of how much was learned or how the knowledge was obtained.38
Figure CC.12 Which path an employee chooses depends on the answers to two questions: “Can I?” and “Will I?”
Figure CC.13 Employees must answer yes to both the “Can I?” and “Will I?” questions for learning to add value.
Any suboptimal step in the learning‐to‐results process can deter employees from applying what they learned. The process can fail at the very beginning—in the initial problem definition—or at the end—by what is monitored and rewarded—or anywhere in between. Lists of common points of failure have been compiled by Spitzer,39 Phillips and Phillips,40 Latham,41 Hoskins,18 and others.
A participant in one of our workshops suggested that there is perhaps a third question: “May I?” That is: “Am I allowed to use what I learned? Will my manager let me?” We have always lumped this into the “Can I?” question, but it is worthy of separate consideration: Even if employees are capable of performing and willing to do so, they still may fail to act if they perceive their manager doesn't approve. We return to this issue in D4: Drive Learning Transfer.
The point is that, to be effective, corporate‐sponsored learning needs to be conceived, designed, and delivered in the right way, at the right time, to the right audience, in a conducive work environment to ensure that both the “Can I?” and “Will I?” questions are answered in the affirmative. How employees answer those two critical questions is influenced by all of Gilbert's six factors in addition to how the learning itself is designed and delivered. We apply the “Can I?” and “Will I?” questions throughout the discussion of the 6Ds.
Practical Application
▢ Keep in mind that waste is the enemy of competitiveness; seek to minimize learning scrap.
▢ Use the analogy of learning scrap to manufacturing scrap to help raise management's awareness of the cost of ill‐conceived or inadequately supported learning initiatives.
▢ Assess proposed learning initiatives in terms of how likely participants are to say “Yes, I can” and “Yes, I will” afterward.
Learning Is a Process, Not an Event
The fourth core concept is that improving performance through learning is a process rather than an event. A process is “a series of planned activities that convert a given input into a desired output”42 (p. 197). Process thinking has generated consistently higher‐quality goods and services at lower cost. Process thinking has also reshaped the nature of competition, so that today “competition is not between people, products, or companies: it is between processes”43 (p. 15). The organization with the process that produces the greatest value, most reliably, at the lowest cost wins.
Corporate‐sponsored learning fits the definition of a process: A series of steps is needed to transform inputs of people, time, and materials into the value‐added outcome of improved performance (Figure CC.14). As with any other business process, the quality of the outcome is only as good as the weakest link in the chain of events. So, for example, even if the learning itself is superb, the value it creates for the organization will be minimal if the application step is weak.
Figure CC.14 Training‐to‐result is a process.
W. Edwards Deming,29 one of the founders of the quality revolution, argued that every process could be improved “constantly and forever … to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs” (p. 23) by identifying the currently weakest step, devising and implementing a solution, checking the results, and sustaining the change. Unfortunately, learning is still treated as a one‐and‐done event in many organizations. To optimize value, learning must be managed as a process and the tools of process improvement brought to bear.
Is Training Even Necessary Anymore?
One might speculate that given the astounding amount of information available on the internet—something like a billion websites and 64 zettabytes (billion billion bytes) of
