I've been pondering lately on why we have such a tough time in business putting any real numbers to the value of training.  In fact, it seems that some leaders have completely dismissed the notion of training as important to the success of their business.  Why is this? 

One would think that we should all be predispositioned to understand the value of training.  Consider the fact that most of us spent at least 13 years of our life in a training system called our K-12 schools.  Regardless of whether we liked being there or not, it's undeniable that we learned a few things.  Because of this intense "training" we can now read, write, add and subtract, type, etc.  These are pretty important skills that we would have had a much more difficult time acquiring were it not for this training system.  This would seem to make a pretty compelling arguement for the value of training. 

But even if we accept that training is valuable, the next step seems to be to establish the ROI of training.  Training, and human resources, seem to be held to a pretty high standard when it comes to justifying the value of our solutions.  This isn't totally unwarranted as our peers have wasted enormous amounts of time and money in the past on flavor of the month solutions that never really delivered on thier promises.  To complicate things, executives and finance folks seem to take pride in arguing that you can't really measure the true impact of training because you can't hold all of the other variables of the work environment constant.  This is an unrealistic expectation that we must fight.

Consider the example of going on a diet to lose weight.  If you started on a specific diet, let's say the Atkins diet, and 3 months later you weighed 20 lbs less, you'd probalby attribute your success to that diet.  However, the Atkins diet only instructed you on what to eat.  But other things may have changed in your behavior while on the diet.  Because you were on a diet, you may have also started eating less, maybe not even consciously.  It's possible that your level of exercise increased slightly and you didn't even realize it.  These other factors could also have contributed to your weight loss, but does that mean the diet wasn't successful? 

I think the issue is with measurement.  If training teams across this country got clear on what performance indicators their training was designed to affect, then measurements could be done before and after the training.  If the measures improve, it's likely that it was due at least in part to the training.  But, if they don't improve after a few cycles, the training team needs to admit that thier training isn't working and make some changes.  The job of training professionals is to design training that affects results positively.  To do that you must measure the impact of your training on results. 

-Jason