Few years ago L&D was only seen as a cost element in company’s balance sheet. It was never considered as an integral part of any organization. There was definitely a gap between L&D and performance and goals and most importantly to bottom line and top lines of any organization. But today I see that disconnect less and less said Lavleen Raheja at the L&D League conference. Business world has swung back and forth in the last few years between elevating the learning function to the highest levels, down to minimizing the execution gap in an organization. Raheja said how they have connected performance which is the result and lead measures to L&D. The entire session surrounded around mainly two essential elements connecting to L&D. These are:

Performance/Result- This is the key component of any organization. But just mere performance no longer works. In order to survive in this competitive world, companies should consider performance to be superior and sustained. These are the two words which were being used by Jim Collin in his book ‘Good to Great” and a lot of greatness come from these two words. The building blocks of any great organization are Sustained Superior Performance, Intensely Loyal Customer, Winning Culture and lastly Distinctive Contribution.  He also spoke how to minimize the execution gap in the organization with the help of L&D by leadership development, individual effectiveness or behavioral change.  

Lead Measure: These are the holy grail of performance measures. Lag measures are metrics whereas Lead measures are actions. Think in terms of losing weight. Measuring your weight on a scale is the lag measure.  A key lead measure to losing weight might be keeping track how many times a week you exercised 30 minutes a day.  Another lead measure would be, tracking how many calories you ate per day.  Coming to business we often oversee the lead measures in the execution process.  We expect our employees to instinctively know how to accomplish the lag measure. But companies should focus on the lead measure and not lag measure to battle the whirlwind and accomplish organization goals. Two important consequence of lead measure are:

• Predicts goal achievement 
• Easier to influence

L&D needs more transformation and every organization needs to embrace and infuse it into their organization in order to have a planned and a successful business with an alignment with their principles. We should all start with a small step as the saying goes “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”.

Finally, he concluded the session with a small and informative video on the principle of TRIM TAB with a question to everyone, are you ready to become the TRIM TAB in your organization?

(This article has been built from the session delivered by Lavleen Raheja, ‎Chairman & CEO of FranklinCovey India & South Asia on “L&D can predict Organizational Performance” at L&D League Annual Conference 2016 on 20th October, 2016.)