Why Your CEO Doesn’t Care About Learning

When you drove to your office today were you thinking about how well your car does its job of carrying you where you need to go? We doubt it. We only notice when things go wrong, become too expensive, or need replacement.

That’s the way your CEO thinks about learning.

What is important to your CEO is the financial performance of the organization. If you only measure learning with smiley sheets and efficiency measures, you are not, in the CEO’s mind, producing value. Even worse, you are reinforcing stereotypes that many business operators have regarding learning organizations.

In industry surveys, research organizations like Bersin by Deloitte, Brandon Hall Group, and Chief Learning Officer’s Business Intelligence Board ask business leaders about learning performance. They frame the questions to give us a broad picture of how well learning organizations align to the objectives of the business.

• Deloitte reported in the 2016 Global Human Capital Trends report that almost every respondent said their organizations are not developing skills fast enough or leaders deeply enough.^[1]
• Brandon Hall Group showed that 77% of survey respondents rated themselves at Level 1 (tactical) in analytics capability.^[2]
• Only 53% of the CLO Board’s HCM Advisory Group’s survey respondents said they are satisfied with training measurement. Just 35% measure business impact and 19% measure return on investment.^[3]

Journals and industry experts bombard CEOs about their need to focus on learning, we think that is the wrong approach. If CEOs are not getting information about how learning impacts the business, we can understand why they don’t focus on it. The way to start the conversation is by showing the return on investment.

Before we lay blame, we should consider the circumstances in which CLOs find themselves. The most often cited reason for the lack of ability to measure learning is lack of resources. In the CLO study, almost 70% of respondents have fewer than 2,500 employees. Most of the affordable LMS platforms for small businesses do not point with pride to their analytical capabilities, and 35% of survey respondents have only manually generated reporting.

So, what is a CLO to do? From our experience, we can make recommendations that will show the value of learning in the language CEOs understand. We believe these suggestions will help you gain support for better measuring tools to become a valued resource for improving business results.

1. Learn the language. The language of business is Finance, and unless you frame your results in financial terms, you will not get your CEO’s attention. Fortunately, learning the language doesn’t require a significant investment. We recommend the HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers (HBR Guide Series) by Harvard Business Review.
2. Learn the business. Only 17% of Deloitte’s respondents said HR teams have a good understanding of their companies’ products and profit model.^[4] Talk to your strategic planning team and learn everything you can about how the business operates and why it operates the way it does. Network with the revenue-producers in your organization.
3. Recognize your role. It is not uncommon for L&D to be buried three or four levels below the C-suite. If that is true in your case, accept your role as an internal consulting team and help your leaders become the best business partners they can be.
4. Form alliances. Seek line-of-business leaders who want to talk about organizational performance and how learning can impact their results. They own both the operational data and the business results, so work with them to improve their results and measure the impact of learning. Let them take the lead in showing how learning pays off.
5. Team up with your CFO to make the business case for learning measures that matter. If you don’t have a direct connection to the CFO, start with the Finance analyst who helps you with your budget. They will be glad to work with you, and can help guide you through the process of bringing better analytical capabilities into the business.

For a guide on how to plan your alignment journey, read our e-book on How to Align Learning and Development to Business. It is a step-by-step guide to becoming a strategic business partner.

References:

1. "Global Human Capital Trends 2016.” Deloitte United States. 2016.
2. "The Importance -- and Reality -- of People Measurement and Analytics." 2016 Brandon Hall Group HCM Measurements Study. February 15, 2016. 
3. “2016 Measurements and Metrics.” Chief Learning Officer’s Business Intelligence Board, HCM Advisory Group. 
4. "Global Human Capital Trends 2016.”

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