Welcome to Seertech's Learning Effectiveness Advisory Service presentation. I'm your host, Scott Mahoney, and I'll be walking you through how we look at providing guidance to organizations who are interested in improving the learning effectiveness of their business. And when I say learning effectiveness, I'm not just talking about that in abstract terms of learning measures only. I'm talking about learning effectiveness as it relates to business KPI impact as well as return on investment. And that's really important to look at all three of those measures because without that, you're not truly going to be trusted as a strategic learning and development partner for your organization. Alright. So let's get started. A little bit about me. So my name is Scott Mahoney. I'm chief strategy officer for Seertech Solutions, based in Denver, Colorado, originally from Australia. I've been working in this industry for a long, long time, and I've been working at Seertech for a long, long time. I was one of the founders of Seertech back in 2003. And I spent the last twenty five years, working globally with large organizations to help them improve the way that learning is treated within their organization, turning it from sort of a compliance checkbox into a strategic asset that is valued by leadership, particularly c-level, as a true strategic asset and as a powerful differentiator and, competitive advantage unlock mechanism. We work with many organizations to help them, through that process really by seeing learning as something that can actually have tangible benefit across various different parts of the business. Not just for the learners and achieving the direct learning outcomes that the learning is being set up to do, but also to support being able to drive tangible business value that you can measure that aligns with business goals. And then at the same time, measure the return on the investment that you made into the learning to determine whether it was successful or not. And if not, why not? So you can then, drill into the reasons to then address the root cause. And this has been something I've become very passionate about, and I've put a lot of, thought effort, into building models and, being able to validate that process to the point where I now wanna be able to share it out with our customers and also with the market in general. And so that's part of why you're here today. Alright. So let's actually look at how we do that. But before we do that, let's just look at some of the challenges that organizations face, but also some of the opportunities that you can unlock by by measuring the value of learning and aligning it with business goals. And I start here with, this slide, which really does talk to, unfortunately, how a lot of organizations operate. And that is they operate at their learning development departments, but then also their wider businesses from a perspective of hope. And hope really comes about as a result of I hope what I am doing will work. That's that's great to feel that way, but that's actually not something that is eminently scalable and certainly not eminently repeatable. And so you running a business based on hope without a mechanism underpinning it is of concern. And not only that, but it opens up you and your organization to significant risk as well as to, you know, ramp and spend without true value being realized. And so this whole process I've put together is really as a result of addressing this one thing, and that is hope is not a strategy. By putting a strategy around how you treat learning and development from the perspective of alignment with business goals, alignment with metrics that you can measure to prove value, aligning it with solutions that are gonna make sense for your organization and not just buying the next thing off the shelf, And then being able to prove and communicate proof to your stakeholders of the value of your efforts. That's so important to be able to look at all of those things. And I've put them together into a framework, which I like to call the 4 C's of learning effectiveness consulting. So let's look at that. And how do we shift L&D from being seen as a business cost to a benefit? And by the way, one of the reasons why learning development tends to get cut earlier than other investments made by an organization is a pure accounting rule. And that is that in most countries, learning and development is actually seen as an expense line. It's not a capital expenditure. And so it's easier to cut when a, when a accountant is looking or a CFO is looking at ways in which you can actually save money now and get that money on the books now. An expense line item has immediate effect in terms of cutting the expense. Whereas a capital expenditure or even a headcount move may not have the same desired impact from a financial perspective. And that's why in times of tightening economic constraints, pulling the money or funding from learning development is easier because it has immediate effect. And so you don't wanna be on the end of that. You wanna be demonstrating value so that you can't be pulled. Well, this is in part what the learning advisory service and particularly the learning effectiveness index, which I'll talk about shortly, that's what it's designed to address. But reactive learning development propagates a cycle of low demonstrable value, and that results in low trust. And that low trust results in low investment. And so you don't want to be a reactive learning development, team or leader. Right? You don't wanna be an order taker. You wanna have a seat at the strategic table. You wanna have a a place where your council is valued because you're able to deliver and show that you're delivering value. And, again, if you think about being reactive, it sort of ends up in a doom spiral where you end up being disconnected, you end up, having poor impact, and you're not seen as a priority of investment. Whereas if we look at strategic l and d partners, when they engage as a true partner delivering value, they end up generating greater revenue growth. They end up with much more productive employees that also last longer, so lower churn. And you also end up with significantly higher, increase in spend priority for learning development projects because leadership can see the value of what the spend is returning. And that's really, really important. So in order to move from that reactive cycle to a strategic partner, it doesn't happen through magic. It happens through effort, but it's structured effort that is a process. And anyone can follow that process if they're so inclined. So looking at those success measures, moving from being a reactive to a partner, it's really about building trust. And building trust is through demonstrating value. And part of the demonstration of that value is defining success measures and then managing to those success measures and evaluating those success measures and then promoting those success measures in order to gain more adoption, more trust. The reactives don't do that. Partners do, and the results speak for themselves. So if you can create value through your strategic alignment, through being able to measure and value the right things, being through delivery and through proving that, then you will continue to get investment. So how do you do that? Well, if we think about it, organizations, they don't fail for lack of effort. They fail because effort wasn't pointed in the right direction. And that's what I see time and time again. It's not because people don't care. It's because they don't know where to put that effort. Well, the four c's consulting model is that blueprint for that success. And so when we think about consulting, it's not consulting which is having a latte sitting down having a conversation. It's a very structured approach. And it starts with, as we mentioned before, connecting to business strategy. So any activity that you take from a consulting perspective or any change that's taking place must connect to business strategy. If it doesn't, then the question will always be asked, why are we doing it? And so understanding aligning with your top priorities. Right? What are the things that really matter? That is absolutely critical in order to make sure that you are embarking down the right path with this effort of change that you're looking to adopt. And so connecting the business strategy is really important. The next one is, okay: I've connected to a business strategy. Well, how do I know if I'm actually successful? What does success look like? How will I measure it? How will I actually even understand, and at what point in time will I understand that I've been successful? So clarifying those goals and then aligning it to metrics that you can measure are really important. And this is where we get into the learning effectiveness index, which I'll cover off shortly. Next is where we start to craft the solution. And I will not count I wish I had a a penny for every time that, a learning strategy has started from a solution perspective. Right? The solution should be downstream. It should not be the focal point of your initial efforts in aligning with your business to deliver on a change. Right? The the the solution is downstream of that. And once you get to the solution, though, again, you're working backwards. You're always looking at, does this connect to the business strategy, and can I measure its success, and what does success look like? And so aligning your strategy with a solution must ensure that it covers those other bases. But once you've crafted your solution, you've delivered your solution, now you have to communicate the value. And by the way, before you even start down this path and before you get investment, you also need to communicate the value of the solution that you're looking to adopt that will align and deliver on a business strategy through measuring these goals and metrics. Being able to communicate how you're going to do that, how you're going to measure it, and then when you are going to measure it, when you're going to communicate measurement, and then when you're going to or who you're going to communicate that to is really, really important because otherwise, you won't get the trust that you need to unlock the investment to start the project in the first place. So all four of these things need to work together in order for you to be successful. So how do you do that? Well, I'm glad you asked. Strategy is pointless without action, and the things that really matter to your stakeholders are the things that you should be focusing on and prioritizing as part of your learning development strategy. So how do we do it? Well, if we want to connect to a business strategy, we're asking ourselves several questions. We're also undertaking several actions. So the check boxes show action. So research is important. What are the goals? What are the challenges? What's a company strategy? How does what I am looking to do or my business stakeholders are looking to do align to that? That's really important because if you don't have that first checkbox checked, then, unfortunately, everything else you're doing may be totally misaligned, which would be a complete waste of time, energy, and money. Cross functional planning meetings are important in this. So making sure that you're not just talking with one person, you're talking with all the stakeholders that matter Because the last thing you want to have is your, activity wide added later on when somebody pops their head up and saying, hang on. I wasn't consulted, and this is really important. Now you don't have to boil the ocean on these things either. You can actually have these meetings and conduct them pretty quickly. But you need to be focused on what you're trying to achieve, and that goes back to that first checkbox, which is company strategy, goals, and challenges. Does it align to that? And then the identification of the business KPIs or OKRs that you're looking to impact. That's really important because, again, you're not doing this for the sake of it. You're doing it to achieve a goal. Understanding those goals, really important because that obviously flows through into the next "C." The questions down the bottom there, what strategic goals are most urgent? That actually helps with priority. And then do you actually have capabilities or performance gaps? And if so, then you need to understand those now because capabilities you can leverage. Performance gaps are things that you actually need to determine whether you've got gaps on. And if you have got gaps, what do I need to do to address those? Assuming we've done that, we now move on to clarifying our goals and methods. And this is really where we take that business need and we translate it into objectives, particularly learning objectives. And we look at these things as what are our objectives, also what are our gaps to achieving those. So this is where you start to take your strategy, as a sort of abstract concept and now you're starting to apply logic to it. You're also looking at how we're going to measure this. And this is where learning effectiveness impact or, learning effectiveness index, LEI, comes into play. And then you can also determine things like lead and lag indicators, which gives you more guidance on when you're going to measure certain things. What does success look like? How will you know if you've achieved it? Are there specific benchmarks or expectations that you need to meet or exceed? They're important questions to to ask and have answered at this point. The next one is really about that solution side. So again, not jumping straight to it, but choosing appropriate technologies that are going to deliver on the goals that align with the business strategy. And so whether that's an LMS or an LXP or learning content or some other learning technology or technologies, choosing the appropriate ones to meet those goals is really important. And also sense checking to make sure that they are going to achieve those goals. If you think about experiences, so the experiences that we design and implement have to be revolving around those key outcomes. Right? So if the experience that you're looking to put forward for the audience that you're looking to address isn't going to achieve the outcomes you're looking for, then you need to rethink your solution alignment. You also have to work backwards from the outcome. So, again, I always think about it from even from a reporting perspective when I'm when I'm putting together a strategy and then looking to execute on that. I always say, how will I measure success? How will I know if I've delivered on the goal that I'm trying to achieve? And if I can't articulate that in terms of the solution that I'm aligning to be able to measure those things or deliver on those things and then measure those things, then I've got a real problem. I need to address those questions first. And I always like to look back from how am I gonna prove it. So that's a that's a a good place to work from is working backwards from the goal. And then whatever you do, unless it's something very small scale, you want to design it so you can scale it. If it's got lots of manual steps and lots of manual processes, they're all friction points that ultimately will set you up for potential failure. And so you wanna avoid that where possible. So the other thing you need to think about is who needs to think, feel, or do something differently. Right? What is the goal that you're looking to achieve from this program? Obviously, it's a goal of change of some sort. So, you know, which learner groups need to change what behaviors? That's really important question to ask and have answered. Which tools best support the goals? They're not always new tools. A lot of the LMS, you can actually use existing tools to get those outcomes. Do you know what capability you have with your existing tools? If you don't, find out. Really important. And then again, as we mentioned before, how do I prove success? How do I measure success? And how do I prove it? And then how do I use that information to then further improve it or, potentially use it as a milestone to go, hang on a sec, stop. We need to go back and review what we're doing from a strategy perspective because we're not achieving the goals. And then finally, and this is the one that Learning Development Professionals universally do really poorly, and that is communicating value. And when I say clearly communicating value, it means that it has to resonate with the audience. Giving the audience data that's not relevant to them does not help. In fact, if anything, it hinders your position of trust with those stakeholders. Instead, you have to communicate value in terms that they'll understand, which means that if you've got senior stakeholders that care about their business KPIs and that's all they care about, that's what you're communicating. What you are doing is impacting this KPI that you care about this much. That's what they all care about, and that's what they all respect and trust you for delivering to. C-level operative, they're looking at not just KPI achievement, but they're also looking at how much did it cost me. So they're looking at return on investment. How much money is it costing me to achieve this outcome? And is it the juice worth the squeeze? That's what they'll care about, and that's how you need to present it. And you need to present it not just with data, but with the story that then talks to your narrative, talks to what is it that I'm trying to say, to who, and what's the outcome I want from saying this thing. That's what you're proving. Right? And that's what you're communicating. You should also be thinking about cause and effect. So by putting this much effort in here, we got this much benefit there. Or here was my before state, here is my after state. Really important to talk about those impacts and particularly impacts over time because trends are as important as absolutes when you're measuring things. And, you know, you need to really understand your communication style of your audience. So who's your audience? What are you communicating? What's their style? How are they going to best assimilate that information? Understand that you have a greater chance of being successful with your communication strategy. And again, what story do you need to tell and how do you best tell it? Really important. And getting that right will ensure that you move from that reactive learning development, player into a strategic partner where your stakeholders will continually value what you do. And I know from personal experience, when I was running learning for a for a major bank in Australia, I was able to go through this process multiple LMS. And it eventually got to the point where I didn't have to prove the value of what I was doing because it was implicitly trusted because I had a process that I was following to achieve the value every single time. That's where you wanna be. You wanna be seen as a strategic partner. You wanna be brought in early to the conversations around moving those business KPIs and how you can play a role in doing that. And this process, together with the learning effectiveness index, will help you do that. Alright. Thank you very much for your time, and I'm looking forward to bringing with you next the Learning Effectiveness Index so you can see how that works in conjunction with our 4 C's model, truly value and prove learning impact. Thank you.