Training Industry Magazine - Summer 2016 - (Page 60)

MEASURING I M PAC T IS YOUR BUSINESS ACUMEN SHOWING? WHY NOT? BY AJAY PANGARKAR, CTDP, CMA, & TERESA KIRKWOOD, CTDP Learning and development (L&D) managers must be able to translate how learning efforts relate to business expectations. If you expect to build credibility within your organization, then it is time to start showing your business credentials. L&D managers often ask, "What do we need to know?" Less than actually going back to obtaining a business degree, identifying the most relevant business topics relating to learning is overwhelming and, at times, intimidating. 2 | The mission is your learning strategy "cheat sheet." An explicit mission provides insight to the priority business activities. Essentially, your leaders are giving you the answers on what business areas they expect to see performance improve. Your role is not to become a business expert, but a learning expert. But to effectively interact with the needs of your organization, you must be business literate or, as we like to say, business savvy. The good news is that you are not alone. Others in various internal business activities face the same challenge. Most of your budget and efforts should investigate a) the areas of improvement within each business area, and b) how your contributions will improve employee performance. This will help you to effectively allocate resources to business areas that drive operational growth. Focus on the mission and you will not go wrong. While there are a myriad of business topics to know, let's focus on the ones that you must know and apply quickly. FINANCIAL LITERACY STRATEGIC LITERACY Don't panic. Being strategic is actually good news for L&D. Why? Your company mission is the one thing that matters most to leadership. Everything operationally drives to achieving the mission. Be aware of this when interacting with business leaders, but especially as you move up the hierarchy. There are two reasons for being strategically aware: 60 1 | Strategy is how your organization achieves its mission. The path for every work/job objective will (must) eventually contribute to achieving it. It is easy to conclude, then, why leaders preoccupy themselves with strategy. Every organization, even non-profit ones, is under tremendous pressure to produce positive financial results. For leaders, it is about stakeholder "accountability" or how your efforts contribute to helping primary business activities achieve profitability. In recent years, many L&D methodologies have attempted to financially account (or measure) training's impact. But business leaders don't expect training to have a direct financial correlation with financial results.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - Summer 2016

Perspectives
Table of Contents
Three Strategies to Ensure Your Training Has Tensile Strength
Experience, Exposure and Education
Beyond the Classroom Paradigm
Applying the Buddy System
Purpose-Driven Professional & Organization Success
Making It Personal: The Four Pillars of High-Impact Mentoring
Blowing Your Millennial Mindset
Hidden Forces: Unconscious Bias in Learning
Memory: The Critical Bottleneck to Learning
Gender Barriers & Solutions to Leadership
Cognititive Collaboration: Utilizing Diverse Thinking & Behavioral Preferences
Get Into the Act: Accelerating Collaborative Teamwork
Dispelling the Five Myths of Microlearning
Quicken Loans: Culture Driven
Developing Global Leaders: On-the-Job Leadership Development
From Where I Sit
Why Do We Wait to Train Our Managers?
Is Knowledge Overrated?
Is Your Business Acument Showing?
Avnet Expands Services with ExitCertified Acquisition
Company News
What's Online
Training Talk

Training Industry Magazine - Summer 2016