LO's & Performance Management LO10648

Dave Pollard (pollardd@inforamp.net)
Tue, 22 Oct 1996 10:54:05 +0000

Replying to LO10598:

We have also been very interested in measuring "learning" performance,
since we are essentially a knowledge-driven organization and "learning" is
the most important element of our people's performance appraisal, and in
fact of our success.

It seems to me that there are 3 points in the learning process where
one could attempt to measure "learning":
1. measure learning "behaviors" (e.g. # days training attended)
2. measure competencies acquired
3. measure the results of applying learning (e.g. sales of new
products, development of new products etc.)

Our organization has taken the approach of measuring the learning of
Business Units by measuring results (i.e. type 3 measures), and of
measuring the learning of Individuals by measuring behaviors (i.e. type 1
measures). The breadth of competencies in our organization, and the
difficulty of measuring them, have prevented us from using type 2 measures
as extensively as we would like to, though we are now looking at this more
closely, since ideally they should be better than type 1 measures.

Even more difficult than measuring the "individual results" (acquired
competencies) of learning, is measuring the extent to which learning has
contributed to "business unit results". If a business unit is growing and
profitable we can generally conclude that its members are acquiring,
sharing and deploying knowledge effectively, but the degree to which
learning has (or has not) contributed to business unit success is very
hard to gauge. Which is too bad, in business, because those averse to
learning new things can never really be convinced that the business unit
results would have been much different if our people had learned any more,
or less.

Dave Pollard, CKO, Ernst & Young Canada
Caledon Hills, Ontario
pollardd@inforamp.net
Dave.Pollard@ca.eyi.com

-- 

"Dave Pollard" <pollardd@inforamp.net>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>