“This is not your grandfather’s keynote,” said Kevin Yates, as he kicked off a session in the early afternoon hours of Monday, Oct. 16. “We’re going to solve a measurement mystery together. I’m going to be Sherlock, and you’re going to be my Watson.”
Yates, who is known in the global training, learning and talent development community as the L&D Detective for Impact Investigations, was the opening keynote speaker for Chief Learning Officer’s 2023 Symposium held October 16-18 in San Diego.
Yates began with a prompt for the audience: Use one word to describe your experience with measuring impact for training and learning. Answers included difficult, fuzzy, bumpy, challenging, painful, discouraging, complicated, ambiguous and many more.
“I’ve heard all of these, and it is all that, isn’t it?” Yates said. “Measuring the impact of training and learning can be difficult, but it is absolutely possible.”
In defining “impact,” Yates clarified that he is narrowly focused on the extent to which training and learning contribute to human and business performance. Defining impact, he explained, is the biggest failure that he continues to see in our industry globally.
“If you don’t define impact in the beginning, it’s going to be very difficult to measure in the end,” Yates said.
Interested in watching this full session? Yates’ keynote address and all other 2023 CLO Symposium sessions are available on-demand now.
Photo courtesy of Brant Bender Photography.
