Inside the Latest Measurement Techniques

Having spent most of my career in a line position before coming to Motorola University, I have to admit that the learning measurement conundrum was quite a mystery to me. From where I came, measurements were based on the goals we wanted to achieve: customer satisfaction, costs, margins, earnings, innovative growth, productivity, defects, cycle time, sales, market share, waste, retention, etc.

Basically, it boiled down to three fundamental focus areas: your customers, your business operations and your talent. We used a very simple but purposeful approach called “goal, question, metric” (GQM) that NASA originated and Victor Basili perpetuated.

Measuring costs money. On a recent CLO panel, I referred to this as the “ROI of the ROI” or “ROI2” because a great deal of the learning community is fascinated with the concept.

Seeking to measure things that don’t need to be measured or are not convincingly measured is a waste of money. As Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

What counts for your learning function? What counts for my organization might be different than what counts for yours — our organizational cultures might differ. We might be at different points in the evolution of our learning function, or we might have different business needs, speak a different language, have different target audiences, etc.

In other words, your goals might be different from mine. Thus, although I certainly will share some measures Motorola University uses, I’ll more seek to provide you a thought process or a measurement strategy by which to determine the right measures for your learning function.

Goals are the Most Critical
The most important question is: What are your goals? The answer will drive your measurement suite. Basili expresses goals in terms of: