Into action?

I’m having a look at a book on evaluation that I am finding has a lot of value. A familiar model (not well-referenced, mind you), for one. Not as nuanced as Thalheimer’s Learning Transfer Evaluation Model (LTEM), but comprehensible. And importantly, really good analytics of problems and ways to communicate them. However, there’s one aspect that I’ve seen elsewhere, and it’s bothered me without me being able to articulate why, until now. And I realize it’s about putting learning into action. What do I mean?

So, the book talks about three types of learning outcomes: basically informational, then changing behavior but not impact, and then finally impact. The explicit belief is that organizations have learnings of all three types, and therefore they’ve aligned evaluations to that belief And, as I said, they have (so far, I’m not done ;) good evaluations at each step that identify ways in which the learning can go wrong and remedies. In many ways, reminiscent of Julie Dirksen’s latest and important book Talk to the Elephant. All good, but I have a quibble about that initial breakdown.

To me, you don’t give people information and expect them to do nothing with it. You give it with a reason: whether it’s what HR policies are available, or how you handle commission, or what have you. You want people to use the available HR opportunities if relevant, and likewise you’d like commission to be motivating. Sure, you can see whether people passed a test on the knowledge, but why would you give it to them unless you expect them to do something differently as a result? That, then – doing something differently – is really your goal.

The same with workplace behavior change. You don’t want it to lead to anything meaningful? I doubt that. Why would you ask for things to change if you didn’t think it mattered? If you do, then there’s got to be some reason, some outcome, and therefore some way to measure it. You want people to do things different for a reason! That is, there’s some impact. And that, to me, should be checked.

In both cases, ultimately your motivation is for something different to happen. Which should impact some organizational metric. Otherwise, why did you bother? The point being, I don’t think giving people information, or asking them to do something differently but it’s not meaningful to the org, is done just because. I think it’s because you want some thing to change, you want the audience to put it into action.

I have to ask myself, of course, whether folks might do something and not care to measure the impact. Ok, for Cover Your Assets type of stuff maybe, but that’s learning for legal’s sake, not learning’s sake. Is this just too persnickety? I suggest that it’s not, in that assuming you’ll have a good impact is kind of naive. Don’t you want to ensure that you are?

Look, it’s good at each stage to look for reasons it might not be working, and remedy thereto. But that’s doesn’t mean you can stop after one or another stage. You should have a reason, and you should therefore have an outcome that you’re looking for, and therefore that you can measure. It could just be observation, and it may be subtle and/or long-term, but I’ll suggest that there are measures. I think you do want to put learning in action, and thus have an impact. Yes, I recognize that’s an ideal, but is there really any justifiable reason to stop short? I’m perfectly willing to hear that there aren’t the resources to do more, but that’s pragmatics, not principle. On principle, am I wrong? Seriously? Let me know.