I’m getting a little frustrated. Even though it’s something that seems blindingly obvious, and is spoken about at every L&D & HR event I can think of, L&D and HR departments are still operating in a vacuum.
We spend weeks designing “transformative” programmes. We obsess over the content. We agonise over the catering. And when it’s all over, we proudly present a report that says 95% of people “enjoyed the session” and 100% of the compliance modules are “complete”.
But if you took that report to leadership, would they care?
Probably not.
In some of the workshops I run, I often ask HR & L&D leaders – “what are the top 5 KPI’s that your most senior leadership team care about – think the Board, SLT, C-Suite?”
I guarantee you they aren’t losing sleep over “Staff Retention” or “Sickness and Absence” in isolation. They care about market share. Net profit. Customer lifetime value. Speed to market. Yield…
They care about the bottom line. And yet… more often than not, L&D & HR folk aren’t aware what the bottom line really is.
If you don’t know the metrics that matter at the top of the food chain, you aren’t a strategic partner. You’re a cost centre. And in a world of relentless change, cost centres are the first things to get cut.
The Discipline Trap
I recently attended the Learning Network Mastery Day on L&D Data and Metrics. My friend and former chair of the Learning Network, Tom McDowall, spoke about his work on Metric Chains – I cover something very similar to this concept in my work for the CIPD, so I found it really validating to hear someone else articulating something similar (on better looking slides than I use…)
Subsequently, he wrote a blog post on what he termed “The Discipline Trap”. It’s a trap I see practitioners fall into every single week in my work with different groups.
The Discipline Trap is what happens when we get so bogged down in the how of our craft—the instructional design, the learning theories, the HR processes—that we forget the why. We focus on “L&D metrics” because they are easy to measure. We can see them. We control them.
But these metrics are inward-facing. They tell us how well we are doing our “discipline”, but they say absolutely nothing about whether we are helping the business win.
Breaking out of this trap requires bravery. It requires us to stop acting like “trainers” or process experts and start acting like business performance consultants. It means moving away from the safety of the “happy sheet” and into the messy, complex world of business KPIs.
And the sad thing is, I feel a bit like a broken record. As I am writing this, I feel like I must have said this before several times. I must be getting a little boring.
We need to break the “Discipline Trap”
Enter the Metric Chain
So, how do you bridge the gap? How do you prove that a leadership workshop in Manchester actually moved the needle on global sales?
This is where Metric Chains come into play.
A Metric Chain is a simple, logical flow that connects your intervention to a top-level business outcome. It’s the “so what?” of your entire strategy.
It works like this:
- The Business Goal (The “What”): Start at the end. What is the organisation trying to achieve this year? (e.g., Increase regional sales by 12%).
- The Performance Gap (The “Who”): What do people need to do differently to reach that goal? (e.g., Sales managers need to improve their coaching of junior reps).
- The Learning Metric (The “How”): What skill are we building? (e.g., Ability to deliver constructive feedback using the GROW model).
- The Activity Metric (The “Do”): What are we actually delivering? (e.g., A three-month coaching mastery programme).
When you build the chain from right to left (starting with the business goal), you ensure that every penny spent on training is an investment in the company’s future. If you can’t draw a straight line from your workshop to a board-level KPI, you shouldn’t be doing it.
You can read Tom’s perspective on this here too. It’s pretty good and much more detailed than my light-touch here.
Struggles with Data
Whenever I talk about this, I get the same pushback.
“It’s too hard.” “The data is messy.” “We can’t isolate the variables.”
So, most people give up. They ask us to “just focus on the delivery”. They want the “fun and exciting” part of the training without the “challenging and provocative” part of the measurement.
But here’s the truth: Business is messy. The Big 4 consultancies know this. They don’t wait for perfect data before they make a recommendation. They use the best evidence available, they make a bold claim, and they measure the impact as they go.
At Cognitive Union, we like our clients to be a bit braver. We want you to embrace the “curve balls” of data analysis. Because even a “fuzzy” metric that points toward a business goal is a thousand times more valuable than a “perfect” metric that points toward nothing.
Practical Steps for L&D and HR Practitioners
If you want to start leveraging data to enhance your practice, you don’t need a PhD in statistics. You need a change in mindset.
- Get out of the HR office. Go and sit with the Sales Director. Talk to the Head of Operations. Ask them: “What is the one number you need to change this quarter?” * Stop reporting on activity. No one cares how many people attended your webinar. They care what those people did after the webinar.
- Identify your “Leading Indicators”. You might not see a 10% increase in profit overnight. But you might see a 20% increase in “quality of sales calls” within a month. That’s your proof of concept.
Use the Metric Chain. Use it to plan. Use it to sell your ideas to the board. Use it to prove your worth.
Forward. Fearless.
For twenty years, Cognitive Union has been helping businesses adapt and thrive. We’ve seen the “box-ticking” era of HR come and go. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t create change.
Making sense of exactly what you are trying to achieve, why you are doing it, and what the result will be. That’s what we bring to the table. We lead from the front, helping you navigate the change, and the “ups and downs” of transformation.
Change is inevitable. But being irrelevant is a choice.
Stop falling into the Discipline Trap. Start building your chains.
Cognitive Union is a progressive, boutique learning and performance consultancy. We work with forward-thinking businesses. Transforming their people. Shaping their culture. Helping them embrace change and take on the world. Find this blog useful? Sign up to our email newsletter (bottom of this page) where you can receive articles like this and other insights (not publically published), and you can also follow us on LinkedIn.