269 — Unlock insights with benchmarking

Hello and welcome to the MindTools L&D podcast, weekly show about work, performance and learning. I'm Ross Sticky. Back in episode 244, Owen Carian again discussed the value of benchmarking as they launched the new learning performance benchmark, formerly the towards maturity learning health check. Now, five months on, without it'd be worth hearing from someone who's actually used the benchmark to find out what their experience was like. To do just that, we're joined by James Hampton, head of development engagement as he saw it, Colonel James. Hello. And my MindTools colleague, again, Akmai Sai, hello, again. Ross, you're the surname that, the way you spilt my surname, the way you pronounced it was immaculate. I've had some practice notes. This is like the, I think the third or fourth episode we've done together and I think I boosted it the first time. So I've been practicing, practicing every sense. Still very impressive, Ross. Thank you again. Thank you. I appreciate it. So again, to start with you, can you just for anybody who missed the last episode, can you give us an overview of what the learning performance benchmark actually is? I'll try and do a bit more than that, Ross. I'll try and provide it for two perspectives. The first one is from the community perspective. The learning performance benchmark is that support L&D and building a multi level understanding of their organizational learning in order to measure and more importantly have business and organizational impact. It has a deep legacy rooted in evidence and data-led insights. And from a research perspective, it is a data collection powerhouse for us that underpins the findings of most of our research reports, really. In particular, our annual benchmark report, which comes out on a yearly basis, it has allowed us to highlight trends, provide insights for the last 18 years and hopefully for the next 18. Obviously, I was very detailed, both detailed and succinct. Thank you so much, Ross. And so what value does it offer, L&D? Again, I'll come to you first and then James, we can talk about how you've used it. There's a number of ways that we can look at it. So whenever we do the analysis, we try and look at repeaters and people that do it continuously. And what we find is that at any leaders that continuously benchmark are 20 to 29 percent more likely to be from organizations with high impact learning coaches. That's what we find when we analyze over 3000 organizations and those that repeat continuously as well. From another angle, it allows you to connect with the C-suite, proactively challenge legacy expectations to identify priority actions that makes the biggest difference. But even if none of the above kind of applies to you, at the very least, the learning performance benchmark will help you reflect, spark new ideas, and give you some food for thought. It's built for that. And James, would you agree with against characterization? Is that something that you see sort of value being added at C-suite? Yeah, totally. Certainly from how we're thinking about learning development from a strategic point of you, how we're sort of lining it up to what the business is doing and trying to understand whether we're achieving our goals really. So it's really, really helps provide value from that side of things, but we're able to kind of measure it against what the business is doing directly to see whether it's actually following through to. I always wanted to ask a person that has actually done it. I always look at it from a data perspective and get into the city as every tour. I know. It's so detached. I'm always curious, James, from the review when you go through it. What stands out for you? What did you find was the best part of it? What did you find the most difficult part of it? I find the question really challenging. So it really challenges the thinking, even though I've been doing it for quite a few years now. It really centers the mind back into what are we trying to achieve here? Certainly as a team previously to kind of the last year, it was me by myself. So I had no one to bounce off really to kind of understand and measure other than kind of measure the work that we were doing externally. So it asks questions that push us back on my thinking. It allows me to reflect on, okay, I said this last year, how have I achieved any of that stuff? And so it particularly challenging you start off with to pick between kind of nine dots and whether, you know, whether I really think that I'm really great or whether I'm not particularly there yet. But also just it's really reflective. So it gives me a space in time during the year to go, what have I done? Is it where I said I was going to be and, you know, how close am I getting to that top 25% or the top 10% that I'm not indeed. Oh, UX researchers will be frolicking out of them up hearing this. I'm glad the helps quite quite a lot. I wonder from a dashboard perspective, does that, was that helpful too? Yeah. I think initially where the dashboard has come from and gone to, it's now in a really, really great place. Previously, it was me just doing this. And when I had done it by myself with the team previously, I was accused of being a little bit biased. So having that dashboard to share with my team was being really quite helpful. But this year, I was able to bring them into the conversation, make sure that they were part of the scoring a part of the measurement. So that we all had a part to play and then we could go back to that point. We also quite like at the bottom of the dashboard where the research is sitting. So it really puts the evidence back into kind of what you're doing. So a bit of an indicator of what you could do and where you can find more information about how to do it. I think that's really helpful. So beyond the output of the benchmark itself, it seems like you've found a lot of value in the process of reflecting on what are we doing well. And it's a sort of like a, it's something that I think, I don't know, in an ideal world we think we'd be doing all the time. But it's actually a sort of force is you to sit down and think where are our development areas? How are we doing? What can we do better? Is that right? Yeah, we definitely wouldn't, I wouldn't, I don't think find a time and point in the year to physically sit down and do all those things because usually just quite busy full-on. And before you know, it's kind of certainly the last two, I don't know where they've gone. So you kind of having that little nudge to go, okay, there were reviews out to transfer, kind of do that review pushes me into kind of going, okay, what did I say last year? Can I remember whether I've actually followed that one up strategically? And how better than we are within the last year or the years before? And the trend analysis that's there is helped me to kind of picture where I was at those certain points in time to see what's changed, to see who am I? as the leader in this team, whereas previously I was just by myself and I could a team, how is that changing things for us and what things are we good at now and what things do we still need to work on? So yeah, I think it kind of just helps you to, they're never going to underestimate the value of reflection and having that time and space to reflect with others is hugely valuable. James, I got a tricky question, maybe even a challenging one in this case. I'm wondering, you know, as part of this process, can you give an example like a tangible out, as a result of you doing the the benchmark or the questions or anything that you have then implemented something in the workplace? I'm just trying to figure out because whenever we create the benchmarking, when we created the questions in the variables, these are in a way deconstructing specific concepts like learning in the workflow, but from a behavioral perspective and I always wonder how do organizations implement some of these ideas in house? Yeah, I think what we know that we do pretty well is that we're pretty well aligned and to our business, strategically we kind of partner with it so it's allowed us to know what we were good at and we've been able to do that stuff which is good and reassuring. Well, it's sort of also indicated that over the years we've been good and not so good at kind of working with the environment and because the environment has changed, we've had to do different things. In particular, working with our IT teams, I'm always quite accused of being a bit of a maverick in the business and like to launch some technology and I'll push it through and probably don't spend enough time with my IT teams to kind of make sure that it's going to land. So it's forced me to kind of reflect on that part and am I bringing in the right stakeholders? So what we've done is we've worked really closely with our IT team now before COVID we launched a new platform, made sure that we spent some time with them, made sure that we could deliver on what we needed to deliver and we've seen real success from that. We also knew that we were good at observing the measurements of certain courses and getting feedback on those sort of things but we weren't particularly good really reviewing the bigger picture of data and pulling data together so using engagement survey data alongside learning data to try and see whether learning is having a huge or better bigger impact on kind of retention and just general performance on the kind of business KPI side of things. And so because that kind of measurement was coming out, this year we spent a lot of time looking at our data, we've been much more able to focus to it, we can now kind of position learning alongside engagement and whether that's improving things for our people and then we can kind of challenge that further. So it's really pushed us a bit harder and the other thing is around I suppose learning in impact is that communication wasn't sitting in the kind of people team, it sits at the marketing team and there's nothing against the marketing team but I wanted it to be much closer to learning and learning impact for me was about how we communicate about what we do. So learning then came underneath me and we started to roll those sort of things and having a bit more of a connected focus to kind of learning and the big, I suppose the biggest system of things that are out there of the things that help people to get better at their jobs. That sounds amazing. I have so many questions Ross but if you have, I think it's a good question. That's why you can take it. Well I was going to ask so like what was the, so if we take that communication piece as an example, what was the specific insight from the survey that then led you to realize okay, communication is sitting under marketing but actually it'd be more valuable if we had a bit more input on that. So I guess what was the kind of end and from the dashboard the benchmark survey results through to tangible change in the way that you approached communication. I think the questions within learning impact are around kind of bringing people alongside with the vision and connected to the per person then measuring it back and what we could see is that we probably weren't doing as much in that forum. We were kind of expecting people to come to us. We didn't have a platform at that point. We were kind of relying on word of mouth to kind of demonstrate success of our programs. And while we were smaller at that time it was kind of okay but businesses massively grown in the last few years and so we had to do something about it. So the tangible bit was that kind of connected to people's divisions and it's not that we were necessarily scoring really badly in it but it just heightened that that's something we haven't really thought about or we haven't really spent time on it. Where can we go to kind of try to improve that and would it make any difference? And again I'm a huge abys but I think I do believe that kind of making that change is massively helped what we do and how we're doing connecting people to the learning planets of how we do learning at sea salt. And I think like an important point there as well as there was something that you had to take action on. So the completing the benchmark survey is not going to it's not going to radically transform your L&D function before you. You have to it gives you actionable insights. You have to take action. Yeah with that doubt a benchmark a benchmark and it's a snapshot in time isn't it? So it certainly did it in 2020 and it was very elevated and the feedback was that you know you've over-scored this James you know this isn't we're not as good as what you think we are in these areas. So that was you know part of the thinking of kind of okay but what do we need to do to make this more realistic and you have to you have to do stuff and everything's going to do and then what's going to do anything for it. It's actually like that kind of silver bullet as someone going to do something for you it's not going to change. But it's that that's the I think that's why I really like about this this tool is that even when you do overscore yourself ultimately you need to bring it back to our business you need to bring it back to your colleagues and it's a discussion which then ultimately again creates reflections as well actually are we that good in this particular area and it's such a coincidence that you were speaking about the role of IT because my colleague and I today we're reviewing the questions we do this every year to ensure that you know first and foremost they are still up to date the calculations are still correct are we still tracking everything that we need to track and we were specifically looking at relationships and networking within LND and some of the questions are fairly chronological in the way we look at them. So for example we have a good relationship or connection with IT marketing etc that's like almost the first level with the second level being we interact with them more often we pull in people and the third phase almost the third maturity phase is we have actual clear processes of including these people in what we do is is is clear they know it's coming we know it's coming there is a collaboration piece in a very similar way I'm bringing it back to the research side when we create a report content editors know they're just because they're the experts so they always are brought in. So it's such a great thing to hear James that it has brought out that for you because we know that knowing what critical questions to ask of the IT systems of the IT experts of data experts knowing what to say to people like this the language that you use with different functions has a crucial effect on how mature an LND function is within an organization. Yeah I think that maturity is the bit that's challenging because it's easy to say yeah I have meetings with people yeah I speak to people but how good are they you know how mature are they and how deep are they because if we can pat ourselves on the back we're being okay we're just having meetings and we're probably still always done what we've always done get when what we've always got but if we can challenge ourselves to go step further and having that research to back that up to say you know this research says that if you do this then you're going to get a better result for me it was always okay what are those top 10% doing you know who are these people I want to know who they are I want to know what they're doing because I want some of that because I kind of need to see whether it's going to work here so yeah having that challenge and knowing where the levels are just challenges you back to kind of think about a different way so yeah he's available from that perspective. I was going to see my next question actually which was to go back a step like why you're interested in benchmarking in the first place like why do you why is it important for you to know what that top 10% is doing because while some lnd challenges are probably consistent across a lot of organizations there are probably some challenges that are unique to see salt so why it was important for you to understand kind of where you sit relative to other lnd functions. I suppose I can say I'm a fairly unique position because I've migrated into the learning development field, a max military, a max teacher for about four years after leaving the military and then I came into learning development and for me it's about a sense of curiosity of kind of okay I'm in this world how are people doing this well and I want to be the best so I'm quite competitive and I kind of was like so okay where am I now and what do I know now and what is the what's the benchmarking and the research telling me of what people are doing and what successes are they getting so I've spent I think 2014 I was reading pretty much all of the tools maturity stuff trying to understand what was happening all the case studies to try and learn and then it was a you're really a case of kind of okay I'm going to set a strategy based on what I think I can do and then really trying to test to see whether it works or not so there's an element of being really curious what other people but just trying to experiment to see if I do what these people are doing here is that going to work and then the benchmarking kind of just ties you back to that again to say okay this is the strategy I've set out I'll am I meeting what I need and for me I suppose over the course of those years I've seen the successes of working on it we've definitely not been good at everything that's way off the market you know I could never say that but I suppose this element sent me to better than others and it gives us that focus to go on it so yeah certainly comes from a kind of I want to be good at stuff I think but it's also you know where do you evaluate in your assumptions by understanding where you are where you want to be and what others are doing in that respect so ultimately the benchmarking I would argue is only one source of data one angle of data and it's a it's a it's a very relevant angle of data if you if you are especially bringing up a new strategy or testing the strategy you've had in place for the last 12 18 months so yeah great to hear super interesting yeah for sure one thing that you both sort of I've been interested in both of you answering this is that you talked about engaging with the learning performance benchmark has not something that you've done it's not something you did once and then just thought oh that was interesting and I never did it again you engage in it every year yeah what is the the value of that sort of annual process besides the sort of reflect a piece that you've talked about already like why is it helpful to think of this not as a one off exercise but as something that you're going to do continually or sort of regular intervals I think the the primary reason is that your first time is a baseline you know you have you're you're testing where you are you're trying to figure out where you are or where you sit on the maturity curve the second time third time fourth time is you understanding what actions are having an impact on your organization is trying to almost create a framework of impact to say this is what the organization cares about this is what my function does and how are these two things related and of course these two things related will not be on the same you know plain it'll be multi-level it will be things like the technology side the behavioral side the strategic side the alignment side there will be the individual perspective the team perspective the departmental perspective. There's so many angles to learning a development that it's you have to think of it holistically. And first time only is just to start, you need to continue it to ensure that you get the maximum value out of it. I think for me it's about, as opposed it is similar ways about that progress. So I think the first time that curious of kind of, as I said, sort of measuring yourself at the beginning of the other people is interesting. It's useful to know kind of where you sit. But then you kind of have to know how you're progressing. It almost doesn't matter as much what other people are doing after the first time. It kind of helps. But what really matters is how you're progressing and whether you're comfortable with it and whether that relates to what's going on in your business. So if my experimentation based on the case studies and the research didn't work, then I've kind of got to go back to the drawing board and I've got to go there again and try to understand. And look at other things outside of it as well because I think it's just a snapshot in a moment of time. And there's so much emotion attached to it because it's so close to what we do is we're really connected to it. So you kind of have to look outside and maybe ask other questions from other people in your business to see whether that is pulling back to what you think you're doing. So it isn't just about the benchmark. I think it's a much bigger picture. You can't just go on what that's saying. I think you're going to be getting one or the same. And it's the self-assessment, isn't it? So yeah, so no one else is telling me anything here. I'm telling myself things. And I can easily be biased at which I have been. So you know, it's important to have that challenge around for more people. I just want to stress what you said, James, is specifically the biased part but also the area of connecting with other departments or other people because a lot of the questions in the benchmark are fairly broad and encompass a lot of the organization. And so you almost forced us you to really think, do I have a good relationship with this department? You know, either right person to answer this question or do I need to have a chat with them and see actually, you know, do I actually, if you're biased towards your results, then ultimately you will have a biased output and it won't necessarily give you the truth. I think people deep down know when they've overestimated how much and as you said, I think when you go back to their business and you look at it, it's great that you get challenged on that because that just brings you down to the point where it says, okay, we need to have a collective understanding of where we are. So that's another, I think a major benefit of benchmarking which is a collective vision. You're all on the same page after going through this process where you understand, okay, this is where we think we are all are and this is how we can be forward. It's such a brilliant way of aligning the rest of the business to Alan D. Speak as well because you know, you can easily regularly be challenged. Any Alan D. here is told that you talk in Alan D. You don't talk in business. So if you can get some alignment from this other state conference in terms of to get into your mindset, then you can kind of find some level playing field with each other and then you kind of work collaboratively with these things as the only way to make this work. Can't do this by yourself. So you have to try and work closely with those key stakeholders to get them to understand your world just as much as we need to understand theirs. It works both ways. So it's a great tool to be able to do that. If I am working on Alan D and I'm listening to this episode and thinking, maybe I should be doing this benchmarking thing. What would you say to them James? Well, you're definitely going to give yourself plenty of time and because there's certain questions in there that you need kind of evidence for. So a good example is budgetary. I'd absolutely had no idea what percentage of my budget was digital and what wasn't and what was face-to-face. So you kind of have to be a bit more organised and have everything to hand. I think it's okay to do it by yourself. The first time around is it's the very first time going through the motions. It's okay to kind of just answer the questions based on what you think. But know that maybe in the second time next year you're going to bring the rest of the team aboard. I think it is valuable doing it with your team. Even though I've just said it's okay to do it by yourself. If you bring them in you do get that extra richness. So you do get the feedback of your being biased. I would also, if you're confident enough to bring in those other stakeholders because they will be able to tell you face-to-face whether you are working with them in that way or not because then that will just start some really great conversations as well off the back of it. So yeah, what I would say is be organised and think about it is probably the best advice. Again, would you have anything to add to that? I would say of course do it. It will help you think outside of the box. You can see how your peers and competitors are approaching similar challenges and really support your conversations. I think that's a key aspect of it. As James said, it just allows you to go to a stakeholder to go to someone that you may not have a conversation with often and just ask, am I doing this? If you looked at this question and he said, is again doing this or is James? Is my department doing this? Do you think you would agree with it? And it allows you to open up channels. And if people want to find out more about the information from the benchmark, where should they go again? They go to our website, mindtoolsforbusiness.com and they will see it right there. Okay, we will put a link to that in the show notes. Okay, so we'll move on now to our regular feature pilot in this week for each year or something. We picked up in the past seven days. Again, do you want to get us started? Oh, I knew you were going to go for a. No, normally I go to Owen first, but Owen is not here, so. This is the hardest question. This is the meat of episode here. I know. It's because it's so hard. I'm trying to think like, how I actually learn it. You know, I recently finished a book, a Phil Knight's Shoe Dog, and I did not realize there is so much to making a shoe. I genuinely did not know. And not only did I not know, but then when the. I think the Nike Air was created, like this, this, this, the foamy kind of look. There was two scientists working on it funnily enough. And I think they got like a really good percentage as a result of the creation of it. But yeah, the thing that I learned is that making shoes is very hard. I know not a lot to learn there, but I didn't realize it. I saw that I think it was this week. There's a pair of Michael Jardins shoes sold for like a record price at auction. I was like one point. I think it was over a million anyway. It was a lot of money. I used fair of shoes. From Michael Jardins. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Can't really feel at price of that. Amazing stuff. I will definitely recommend reading that. All right. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. James, what did you do on this week? Yeah, this is really, really hard to think through. But I suppose the thing that I've learned this week is, well, I for the last few weeks, I've decided to start writing a bit of an article on LinkedIn. And so what I've learned is that if people don't read it, it's okay. Basically, I think a few people have read it. This isn't shameless. Plug for it as well. So it's kind of something I've been doing. But yeah, I said a few people have read it. Some people like it. A couple of people have commented and said that my grammar in my English is pretty poor, which is probably true. But I think just generally the learning is I'll probably keep doing it. If people like it, it's great, but it's okay if people don't. Of course, the article about it. I just finished a master's degree on and my thesis was on learning organisations. So I've just been kind of showing some of the. What a nerd. What a nerd. Yeah. I'll put you up more. Do you not think you're anything better? I mean, you have two more readers, you know? And again, I'm sure I'm sure we'll go on it. Yeah, so yeah, I've just been sharing some of the research that I found. That's cool. Well done for a couple of new masters and we will. You may not want to plug your article, but we will fiddle into it in the show notes. So, Fed have his address to the director and read it. Feel free to criticise the English. So my wife in this week is, well, last week, my wife went to get a pedicure and she has been badgering me for ages to come with her and get a pedicure. And for a long time, I've been resistant to this. I'm like, "Not really this year, it's for me." I eventually gave up last week and decided to go along. And it was quite an experience. Not sure if I repeat it again. I think I've learned that I don't really like pedicures. I enjoyed the. These are this thing with hot wax, really cover your feet in hot wax and then sort of peel off it and it's like, "The warm toes thing." I didn't really enjoy the cheese grater on your foot to get off. I'm a runner, so my fear in a terrible state. And so I felt a bit sorry for the perlady that had to work on them. But I felt a little bit like I was being prepped to go into some sort of meal. It was like a cheese grater and then sort of gently stewing. And I'm back at the hot water. So, as a new experience, anyway, I learned that pedicures are quite nice, not quite my cup of tea, but it's something new, anyway. I always get pedicures and manicures confused, because I'm not sure which one is which, but now I know Ross. Yeah, didn't get the manicure, it just did the pedicure, but you should have got the pedicure. I feel it did feel really nice afterwards, but yeah. You'll have to learn all over again to make sure you're all right. I know, these are really exciting. I know, I know. I'm really excited. I don't want to lose by amazing calluses. I feel pain in my feet. And that's all for this week. If you'd like to share your thoughts on this show, you can find me on Twitter @RossToKeyMT. You can find Gent. @GentOfMethy. And James, besides your amazing LinkedIn article, where can people again touch with you? Well, Twitter handle is @activeodcoach, which relates to when I was probably more of a personal trainer, rather than anything to do with Alan Deegb. And I'm not very active there, but you can find me there. Inactive booty coach. Yeah, exactly. You can also treat @MineToolsFB, that's mine tools for business, for more from us, including details of our performance for toolkit, custom e-learning, and drumroll learning performance benchmark, visit minetoolsbusiness.com. If you've enjoyed the show, leave us a rating or a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.