Start Speaking the Language of Business and Know Your Numbers- Valutrics

When you plan to pitch a learning and development investment or decision to someone with the power to sign cheques, you may be unsure what to say. If so, ask yourself one question; it will help you find the right approach.

That question is this: what would Andrew do?

Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835 in Dunfermline, Scotland. The industrial revolution put his father, a weaver, out of work and drove his family into poverty. Andrew emigrated to America as a teenager and joined the Pennsylvania Railroad at 18. He took out a bank loan and invested in sleeping cars. Six years later, he was named superintendent of railroad’s western division. Two years after that, he invested his sleeping car profits in an oil company. At age thirty, he founded a company to build bridges of iron instead of wood.

In 1875, Carnegie opened his first steel plant. Fourteen years later, he was earning $25 million a year from steel. In 1901, Carnegie sold his empire to J.P. Morgan for $480 million, becoming the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his days a philanthropist.

Andrew Carnegie is the quintessential hardnosed businessman. Your objective will often be to do convince Andrew what you say/do is worthy of investment. When in doubt about ROI, just ask yourself “What would Andrew Carnegie do?”

Metrics are measurements that matter. The internal customer for metrics is your sponsor. Your sponsor is the person who pays the bills. I assume your sponsor is a business person. It might be a committee of business people. When you talk with a business person, you must talk like they do. Executives only care about training as it relates to execution. Their interest is in moving the corporation forward. You should share that interest. That is why they pay you.

The days when corporations were larded up with layer upon layer of management whose job was to translate strategic imperatives from above into job descriptions and projects down below are long gone. Now all of us are supposed to sing from the same hymnal without the intermediaries.

If you work for a public company, define your job in terms of the issues described in your firm’s annual report. Getting ahead in business requires forming solid working relationships with your sponsor and the other stakeholders it is your duty to support.

So before you go any further, ask yourself these questions. First, who is your sponsor? And second, who are your important stakeholders? Once you know the answers to these questions, you are ready to proceed. Without them, you cannot progress.

You and your sponsor Measure results throughout your programme, not just before and after. Keep your sponsor informed. Ask people where they bank, and they’ll tell you where they keep their current account.

This holds true even if their relationship with their mortgage banker is fifty times larger. Frequency is sometimes more important than content. Monitoring things early on may enable you to make mid-course corrections.

The responsibilities you share We’ll get businesslike right away. Peter Drucker is hailed as the father of management. He is a business guru’s guru. Drucker singled out eight characteristics of effective executives.

These are precisely how you and your sponsor are going to address metrics.

• They asked, “What needs to be done?”

• They asked, “What is right for the enterprise?”

• They developed action plans.

• They took responsibility for decisions.

• They took responsibility for communicating.

• They were focused on opportunities rather than problems.

• They ran productive meetings.

• They thought and said “we” rather than “I.”

There’s no cookie-cutter formula for applying metrics, but there is an underlying process. Generally, you’ll follow these five steps to identify, agree upon, assess, and use metrics. This is not rocket science. It’s the same process you already use to accomplish a lot of things in life. Let’s briefly consider each step.

Results do not exist inside the training department. In fact, results do not exist within the business. Results come from outside the business. Imagine a no-nonsense businessperson, say, GE’s former boss, Jack Welch. If you can explain yourself to Jack, you’ve mastered this step.

The only valid metrics for corporate learning are business metrics. Examples are increased sales, shorter time to market, fewer rejects, and lower costs. How do you decide what measures to apply? You don’t: that’s the responsibility of your business sponsor, the person who signs the cheques. Together you agree on what’s to be done and how you’ll measure success or failure. Once you’ve settled on the project and its metrics, get it in writing.

The projects could be training and/or an incentive bonus plan and/or more advertising. Training programmes are often part of a larger scheme, and it’s fruitless to try to isolate them. In fact, savvy training directors look for major corporate initiatives they can hitch a ride on.

You must evaluate the impact of your efforts with the measure you set up back in step 2. In other words, you are not allowed to mimic Charlie Brown, who would shoot an arrow and then paint the target around it. Why stick with the measures you came up with before? Because that’s how to maintain credibility with your sponsor. You can bring

The only thing worse than learning from experience is not learning from experience. Your post-mortem on the completed project should include a section titled “What to do better next time.” This is where you start the cycle anew. Don’t just talk like a business person; become a business person .