Building Management Support for Performance Measurement and ROI: Ten Tactics for Highly Effective Evaluators

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Implementing results-based evaluation strategies requires support from an infrastructure of diverse stakeholders with complex interactions and reporting relationships. Since many individuals assume multiple or shifting roles in an evaluation effort, a major implementation challenge is to identify the right people, get them involved, foster their commitment, and keep them well informed at all stages of the process. Engaging the participation and commitment of different management groups is critical and poses special challenges because managers must approve time and resource allocations for all phases of ROI implementation--including planning, data collection and analysis, and communication of results. Typical management concerns that can impede full support of ROI process implementation include concerns about:

• Conflicting priorities or moving targets
• Time, cost, or evaluation resource requirements
• The credibility of WLP's role as a business partner
• Expectations regarding utilization of the process
• How negative results will be used

The following ten tactics will help you address these concerns and enlist evaluation support across all levels of management. Applying these approaches will also enhance your credibility and perceived value as a strategic business partner.

Tactic 1. Provide Management Workshops

One effective approach for engaging management support is to conduct ongoing and new hire workshops regarding a manager's role in learning and performance. Use this opportunity to examine the consequence of inadequate management support for training, learning, and performance, as well as to show how the ROI process can improve WLP results and save money. Typical workshop content includes the following:

• The overall importance of results-based training or performance improvement in relation to critical business needs
• Best practices in results-based training
• Management's role in achieving desired results

These sessions can be an expansion of the communication briefings held during specific impact studies and should be routinely incorporated into new hire orientation for middle management groups.

Tactic 2. Ask for Management Involvement

An effective way to enhance commitment to the ROI process is to ask for what you want! Invite managers to serve on an executive steering committee, an internal advisory committee, or on an impact study review team. The role of managers in these groups is to provide input on a variety of issues including: business needs; business processes; job task requirements; workplace metrics; environmental constraints; implementation issues, and evaluation targets.

Tactic 3. Show How Projects Have Helped Solve Major Problems

It's not always about showing hard numbers or a financial return on investment. Most managers simply want to know whether the implementation is on track, meeting targets, and solving problems. Providing information about how a training or non-training solution has added value to individual and operational performance is a convincing way to secure commitment to the process and negotiate for measuring select solutions at an ROI level down the road.

Tactic 4. Strengthen Relationships

While it's important to actively collaborate with managers before, during, and after solution planning and implementation, the best time to establish support is before you need it. Take time to build allies, develop partnerships, and understand the needs of your business and its stakeholders. Develop business profiles, process maps, project histories, and organizational charts of your client organizations, including your goals for sustaining a working relationship with each group. This will not only help position you as a business partner, but will reduce the amount of time it takes you to respond to evaluation or project requests.

Tactic 5. Leverage Existing Tools to Communicate Results

When a training effort or impact study has achieved significant results, increase managers' awareness by using standard business or financial reports to communicate the objectives of the effort, when it was implemented and by whom, and the results achieved. You can also utilize existing forums, such as newsletters, internal web sites or intranets, metrics meetings, quarterly updates, or staff meetings to continually educate your clients. Frequent, targeted communications to management groups about evaluation projects, plans, and strategies will bolster the visibility and influence of workplace learning as a viable and value-added catalyst for organizational change.

Tactic 6. Use Technology

Use technology to increase evaluation literacy and management understanding of the ROI process. For instance, you can use technology to:

• Offer online needs assessment, self-assessments, or evaluation templates for key managers or leaders
• Create an internal listserv to exchange information about training needs, business issues, and evaluation trends
• Provide regular briefing sessions (managers/employees/sponsors)
• Market train-the-trainer services for project sponsors, ROI Advisory groups, or site ROI champions
• Publish testimonials
• Involve multiple stakeholders in project action plans

Tactic 7. Put a Face to the Numbers

Some of the most compelling elements of a results-based effort are the human interest stories that emerge from the process. Consider inviting a select group of participants into a management review meeting, perhaps one dealing with a project that met some resistance. These face-to-face testimonials typically have powerful results because they:

• Reinforce to participants that their WLP involvement makes a difference to the business
• Reinforce to managers that most participants genuinely care about making a difference
• Allow participants the opportunity to share how application of learned skills or knowledge improved their job performance and/or work climate
• Allow participants the opportunity to reinforce the consequence of inadequate management support for training, learning, and performance

Tactic 8. Use Project Management Skills with Executive Managers

Given the infinite number of possible projects in an organization and the finite nature of resources available, evaluation leaders must think like project managers and position their ROI strategy and resource requirements in a meaningful organizational context. Impact studies happen because a sponsor chooses to commit resources to it, and he or she believes that it will achieve a beneficial result for the organization. As an evaluation project manager, make a business case for your evaluation effort by:

• Aligning measures of WLP effectiveness with important business metrics (i.e., revenue, quality, customer service, retention)
• Focusing on areas with the highest potential for improving business performance
• Clearly defining schedule, scope, and resource requirements throughout all phases of the evaluation lifecycle

Sponsors are the stewards of the organization's resources in much the same way that project managers are stewards of the resources allocated to their projects. Both are charged with assuring that resources are allocated wisely. Serving as a project manager will help assure that your evaluation resources are allocated in an optimum manner consistent with project goals.

Tactic 9. Provide Progress Reports

Implementing a well-managed evaluation process includes regular status reviews to update both sponsors and managers on the health of the project, its performance against its goals, resources expended to date, and predictions of the schedule and resources required for completion. The review also provides an opportunity to review and reflect on:

• Initial assumptions about the training solution
• Interim results
• Needed changes or improvements
• Changes in responsible parties
• Risk events that may have occurred or recently emerged that may impact desired performance goals and/or solution implementation

Tactic 10. Proactively Manage Risks

To gain and maintain management support, the ROI leader must also convey a desire to consciously manage risk. This is a facet of implementation that is often underestimated by WLP professionals. But tackling risk management yields the following benefits:

• It provides an opportunity to remind sponsors that there are risks
• It legitimizes risk management as a standard practice in ROI implementation
• It positions you as being a proactive business partner
• It positions ROI implementation as a change management strategy

Managers use risk management information to assess whether the project remains viable; whether it is consistent with pressing business needs; and whether it is worth the risk of continued investment. It's not unusual for sponsors to cancel or redefine evaluation projects in response to emerging news and in response to changes in the organizational environment. Electing to continue an evaluation project should be a considered and conscious choice. There is a myth that well-managed evaluation projects always meet their goals, finish on schedule and on budget, and show bottom-line impact with a positive ROI. In the real world, some evaluation projects fail to realize their expected value. When this happens, the evaluation project manager must address hard risk management issues with key stakeholders.

Summary

That elusive seat at the executive table must be earned through a strategic, results-oriented focus. Clients and managers who approve WLP budgets need evidence that WLP efforts are worth the investment of time, money, and resources. This means moving beyond typical measures like counting people, hours, and programs to measures that reflect job performance, business impact, and return-on-investment. The principles of enlisting management involvement through relationship building, effective project management, and proactive communications have broad application to both the internal and external ROI professional. Take up the challenge. Commit to making a little progress every day, maintain a willing spirit, and keep moving forward. Finally, consider this--the more you help other people get the results they want, the more they will want to help you achieve yours.

2006 ASTD, Alexandria, VA. All rights reserved.